Dedicated Server or VPS needed...

[CaptainKahuna]

I work for a startup company, and we're developing a web application. We're currently on Dreamhost (pause 5 seconds for laughter) because they were really cheap when money was tight. Now we have a little more cash, and we need speed and some more control.

I'm looking into either a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS). Does anyone have some recommendations for hosting companies? My list of requirements are below:

Linux/Apache/mySQL5/PHP5/Perl/Python
SSH/Shell access
FTP access
Cron
Mailman
Cpanel would be nice
phpmyadmin
Tech support

Any chance I'm going to get what I want for $50-$100 a month?

EDIT: I'm probably going with VPS - does anyone have any opinions on the following companies or insight into how their offerings compare?

BWD Hosting
Dynamic Layers
AmeriHosting
TekTonic
Stacked Tech
WebIntellects
Linode

 

[azev]

I would recomend www.swiftco.net
They are probably the best hosting service I've worked with and their network is awsome.
For a $100 you get their basic dedicated server... You can upgrade as you go for extra $$ of course....

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: CaptainKahuna
My list of requirements are below...

If you go with a VPS you can add pretty much whatever software you want - the point of a VPS is that you have root on your virtual server. So if your application will require specific and/or unusual components that may be a good way to go.

Any chance I'm going to get what I want for $50-$100 a month?

Since you haven't stated any requirements for bandwidth, disk space, or anything else, how is somebody going to answer that? I've seen VPS plans for anywhere from $10-$100+ per month. It all depends on what you need.

For VPS hosts, I know a couple people that have used and recommended Linode, though I haven't tried them myself. Don't know about the dedicated side...

 

[DaiShan]

LayeredTech.com has pretty good rates, I don't have any direct experience with them. Servermatrix.com is also pretty inexpensive, and we host 9 servers there. Their sales team is extremely rude, and their offers are subeject to change at any time (for example I was given a written quote at 4PM on a wednesday and when I called to purchase at 6PM I received no answer, and by 9AM thursday the offer was no longer valid) Their tech support is pretty good, but if you break something it isn't free. All in all I've had pretty good experiences with them, however last week one of their techs halted our box (not rebooted, but halted) because they determined it was down (I put up a temporary firewall that was blocking pings from their scanning servers) This was directly contrary to our escalation procedure on file with them which states that they may never halt or reboot the box for any reason without verbal or written consent from one of three people. We are still waiting to hear back about our SLA. Netsonic.com has pretty good rates, but I've run into 2 significant problems with them: The first, they never gave me a list of IP's to whitelist through our firewall for pings, so the same problem as described with servermatrix occurred. Second, on three separate occasions someone on their network has aliased one of our assigned IP's to their NIC. It isn't a huge deal because it's just a dev box, but still when you go to ssh into a box that you use every day and you are notified that the host key has changed (routing to the wrong box) it is a bit disconcerting.

 

[CaptainKahuna]

Hrm.. Looking at these places, most of them have pretty good prices, but not many offer VPS, and I think a dedicated server is too expensive for my needs...

Also, most seem to offer nothing in terms of support. Can anyone recommend a VPS with some support included? I don't need more than a few gigs of storage for now, and our app is mostly text based, so a few gigs a month are good. We obviously plan to upgrade in the future, but I want to get going on something now.

In the event I can't find something in the VPS realm, can anyone recommend a good business level hosting company that is fast (ie. not Dreamhost) and has good support?

 

[CaptainKahuna]

I've checked out the following companies - any opinions?

*SEE FIRST POST*

 

[CaptainKahuna]

bump

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: CaptainKahuna
Can anyone recommend a VPS with some support included?

The point of a VPS is that you have root on your virtual box. You have the freedom to break it, and the freedom to fix it. I don't think any VPS plans are going to go significantly beyond hardware support, because that would mean supporting a number of different OS's that could be configured all sorts of different ways. If you want more of a helping hand, then look at some kind of managed hosting.