Managed VPS Hosting

[destrekor]

The company I work with is in the middle of redesigning and consolidating their web presence. They have a main domain, a client-specific domain, and a domain for a specific branch/team of their main business.
Right now domain registrars and hosting is kind of everywhere, partly because one is brand new and under the designer's control at the moment.


They are overpaying terribly for a locally-based hosting provider, very limited shared hosting plans.


The designer and a few others have recommended dreamhost's VPS. I'm one trying to debate if 300MB of dedicated RAM is good enough ($15/month), if it'd be best to settle on 600MB ($30/month), or if that's overpaying and money is better spent elsewhere.

As their IT department, I have no particular desire to manage a web server. Thus, a fully-managed offering and strong support seems right up my alley. I've heard Dreamhost fits that bill, but is there anyone else?
I haven't seen others with supposedly unlimited storage/bandwidth, but if it's a large and reasonable limit it would work.


If it helps - their sites aren't the breadwinners - their more just for information, and outside of the main website, it's really just for sales people to show clients what's up and what they can do.
I don't want to pay for more than they need, but I also don't want to have a website struggling along when everybody else's website loads fast for whoever is viewing it.

 

[SunnyD]

Ask Vivi.

 

[destrekor]

BTW: if there's a choice in location, Great Lakes region or East Coast is probably preferable. Unless, for the best stability it is elsewhere for whatever reason.
If it's in the US, I won't let location come before features/service/support. It'd be a nice bonus though to be closer to the main client base.

 

[Phoenix86]

Ask Vivi.

This

 

[ViviTheMage]

We have our main data center in Chicago. Are you looking at specifically VPS and managed VPS's, or are you looking more towards a shared hosting place you can put all of these sites, and anymore you want to add?

 

[destrekor]

We have our main data center in Chicago. Are you looking at specifically VPS and managed VPS's, or are you looking more towards a shared hosting place you can put all of these sites, and anymore you want to add?

I'm looking for the ability to have a shared hosting package for a few websites.
I also want a certain level of guaranteed resources; even if the company doesn't use many, I don't want the websites to be subjected to the whims of other customers. And, while I haven't ever messed around with VPS or even really dug into privatized dedicated hosting (which, in a way, our Exchange/SBS/IIS server is tied into the the one top-level/FQD and acts in that way - but I haven't done much), I imagine having the full control of the entire server, software wise, could come in handy at a future date, if not sooner.

But, with a VPS in mind, I am most definitely looking for a fully managed VPS. As in, not only does it have a control panel, but if I can't get something done or figure it out, it can either be done for me or someone can guide me through it.
How big is your company? As in, is there a competent, accessible, and readily available support staff?

And do you have an uptime guarantee? And is there any kind of information showing reliability/uptime for recent times?

I'd love to support a member of the community, but I also want/need to do right by my company/client.

BTW: I see disk space mentioned - what about bandwidth?
What is the control panel? Is it cPanel? Plesk? Something else? If it's by choice, are there any other fees?
What kind of regular memory requirements does the control panel and other necessary software/services consume of the allotted VPS memory?

You can reply here or by PM - your question here served as a prompt for many others and I think I asked everything, at least everything on my mind about work at this time of night.
So I'm not ignoring your PM, this just served the same purpose for the time being.

 

[DaveSimmons]

ServInt is expensive but has very good and fast customer service. If you don't want to manage this yourself it may be worth the extra cost.

We've used them at work for something like 8 years now. One VPS could host all 3 domains.

 

[ViviTheMage]

But, with a VPS in mind, I am most definitely looking for a fully managed VPS. As in, not only does it have a control panel, but if I can't get something done or figure it out, it can either be done for me or someone can guide me through it.
How big is your company? As in, is there a competent, accessible, and readily available support staff?

There's 2 of us, I would consider us competent, accessible at almost all hours of the day. We do evening emergencies if needed.
And do you have an uptime guarantee? And is there any kind of information showing reliability/uptime for recent times?

The last 178 days on one of our cPanel servers: 99.991% another is: 99.760%, but this is our internal monitoring, and includes reboots, upgrades, etc for maintenance. We have not had any outages this year. We have yet to set up external reporting on uptime. We do guarantee 99.9% uptime though.

I'd love to support a member of the community, but I also want/need to do right by my company/client.

BTW: I see disk space mentioned - what about bandwidth?
This is actually listed as 23mbps port, you can get more as needed, but you are allocated 23mbps, so if you were to push 23mbps the entire month it would be about 6.7TB or so if my math is right.

What is the control panel? Is it cPanel? Plesk? Something else? If it's by choice, are there any other fees?

If you are getting a VPS, we offer cPanel, DirectAdmin...my preference would be cPanel though.

What kind of regular memory requirements does the control panel and other necessary software/services consume of the allotted VPS memory?

I have seen a 512mb VPS handle a few sites with cPanel running CentOS a-ok but they do monitor their memory usage pretty well, I would advise 1-2GB if you have anything that is heavy PHP though.

You can reply here or by PM - your question here served as a prompt for many others and I think I asked everything, at least everything on my mind about work at this time of night.
So I'm not ignoring your PM, this just served the same purpose for the time being.

We are a small shop, some people like that some don't, so I wanted to be up front with that. It means you'll be talking to the owners for any support questions and issues.

 

[RossMAN]

ServInt is expensive but has very good and fast customer service. If you don't want to manage this yourself it may be worth the extra cost.

We've used them at work for something like 8 years now. One VPS could host all 3 domains.

Dave is correct as usual

Long post coming in about 10 minutes ...

 

[ViviTheMage]

Yeah, if you're looking for a larger company, singlehop.com is also awesome from what I hear. ServInt as well.

 

[RossMAN]

Dreamhost is acceptable for personal or hobby sites hosting but I would never use them for a companies web presence.

Assuming you're looking for enterprise-level hosting and reliability/support are critical then keep reading.

Here are my suggestions based on personal experience and after reading hundreds (thousands)? of reviews on WebHostingTalk's VPS forum

Listed in order:

1) KnownHost.com is at the top of their game and one of the most respected and reputable companies in the hosting industry. I see they now offer SSD VPS which I wasn't aware of, I may need to inquire about upgrading my VPS.

Pros: Phenomenal uptime (link), fast and helpful support, 3 data center locations to choose from and 3 hosting control panels to choose from (cPanel, DirectAdmin and Plesk). cPanel is the most popular, however I prefer DirectAdmin which is superior IMHO. I won't derail this thread into a cPanel vs DirectAdmin debate which has been hashed out numerous times on WHT.
Cons: No phone support. This isn't an issue for me as I prefer ticket based support for audit/record keeping purposes. Although sometimes if you have a super quick or critical issue, it is nice being able to pick up the phone and call support 24/7.

If you're looking for sites hosted by KH, here are two hosted in their Texas data center. If you'd like a free hosting account to test it out, please PM me a test domain and your e-mail address, it will be a DirectAdmin hosting account.
http://www.askross.com/AnandTech/QuasmoRossMAN.mp3
http://www.neffers.com <--- not mine

2) Looking for Windows VPS? Take a serious look at FluidHosting.com and Cartika.com
Search WHT for scores of positive and glowing reviews. They're a little spendy but worth every penny for the fantastic level of service and support received.
I cannot recommend these two hosts enough!

3) Tie between WiredTree.com and ServInt.net
Both offer 24/7 phone support which is nice to have but I rarely ever used it.
WiredTree was founded by a former LiquidWeb.com employee and has a loyal following, I had a VPS for about 2-3 years which was rock solid. Their data center is in Chicago, Illinois.
ServInt was founded in 1995 almost 20 years ago and has been a solid choice for quality hosting. They have two data centers in Reston, VA and Los Angeles, CA. Unfortunately the recent ServInt reviews about their support (or lack thereof) haven't been that stellar. When I used them several years ago when they offered DirectAdmin, they were fast and reliable. A few years ago there was a problem outside their data center, one of their execs (CEO?) was on site supervising and posting live updates on WHT, even into the night that seriously impressed me and I will never forget that.

4) LiquidWeb.com offers a nice range of shared, VPS and dedicated servers. Their primary data center is in Lansing, Michigan and they offer 24/7 phone support. I would not hesitate to use LW again if the price/specs were right.

With a VPS you can host dozens or hundreds of domains, your only limitations are the resources.

Before you make a final selection, I would recommend doing the following:
1) Search Google and WHT for reviews, just like when shopping for a new laptop or video card, read lots of reviews.
2) Find a hot deal, most of the VPS hosts listed above offer VPS deals and coupons KnownHost and WiredTree offer the best bang for your buck deals.
3) Before signing up, contact their sales departments to ask questions, see how quickly they respond, how thorough are the responses, do they offer to call you, etc.

Listen to your gut.

Hope this helps.

RossMAN

 

[DaveSimmons]

ServInt
Unfortunately the recent ServInt reviews about their support (or lack thereof) haven't been that stellar.

I haven't read the reviews, but my recent experiences were good.

I've had to put in a couple of tickets this year to deal with Plesk issues (not really ServInt's fault, Plesk is . . . .quirky), and both times the response was fast and effective. One was for my employer on a high-end VPS, one was a different account for a charity that I help out and they just have the cheapest $49 plan.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I forgot about WiredTree , those guys are great too.

 

[destrekor]

ServInt is expensive but has very good and fast customer service. If you don't want to manage this yourself it may be worth the extra cost.

We've used them at work for something like 8 years now. One VPS could host all 3 domains.

What specs did/does your server have for those three domains?

I've been trying to make sense of honest VPS reviews, but sometimes it's not clear what level of service they have.
Outside of dreamhost, I haven't really seen many, if any, offer anything less than 512MB (Dreamhost's cheapest is 300MB, next is 600MB, etc). But I don't even know how snappy, stable, and how much can be thrown at the servers of those on 512MB packages.

Essentially, our company is paying a tad over $50/month for two abysmal shared hosting packages with the same provider. My end goal is to try and save them some money and walk away with a superior solution (quite possible), but I also want to provide a modern, extremely-secure, well-managed service, backed by superior support.

I will be getting a VPS and migrating everything into that one account. The designer responsible for, well, the design and function of the public-facing side of things, wants a provider that will help keep WordPress up to date and in optimal working order.
At both knownhost and wiredtree, the better 1-click install systems like Softaculous and Fantastico are an additional $1/month, which I'd agree to if only to help provide an extra security blanket for the nastiness that are the popular free CMS systems. But I am NOT trying to get into full web management and web presence administration, so I'm not even going to touch that one. I'll just do what I can to ensure every other aspect of security can be applied appropriately.

What annoys me about knownhost is that cPanel, Plesk, or DirectAdmin are $5/month. Seems a little ridiculous, but whatever. So the good deals they mention grow a little sour when the full picture is seen.
Still great prices and, from what I've read, a remarkable company so it could be worth it. But I haven't seen anything from wiredtree that suggests they are any less worthy of my company's money.

What keeps drawing me back is that I can go cheaper overall with them than WiredTree, but for the money, I get a better package at WiredTree.
Plus they have a 10% lifetime coupon to bring the monthly price to just under $45 for 1.5GB of RAM, 100GB SSD-boosted RAID10, 4TB of bandwidth (on what, at least on paper, sounds like a terrific network).

With that coupon, I couldn't possibly choose the $35 package at knownhost. For starters, with a control panel and to have it be fully managed/supported, that's now a $40 package. It has 1GB of RAM, 50GB of RAID10 storage, and 2.5TB of bandwidth.
For $5 more, I get 512MB more RAM, 50GB more storage, and 1.5TB of additional bandwidth on the meter.

If I really want to shave costs, for $30 @ knownhost ($25 base + $5 control panel/managed), I'd get 512MB RAM, 20GB storage (still RAID10), and 1.5TB of bandwidth.

For comparison, at Dreamhost I'd get 600MB of RAM, true CPU/core allocation, speed, and priority unknown, and "unlimited" storage and bandwidth. Who knows what the limits are. It doesn't sound like their VPS options come with any static IPs, and each one is $4/month (compare with $1/month for wiredtree and knownhost, who each also provide 2 IPs with each package at minimum).
They have a completely custom control panel, for better or worse - but they do offer what sounds like a marvelous 1-click installer with auto-updates and super easy multi-site updates (could be handy). But considering they offer "premium support", I hesitate to ask just how, uh, un-premium their standard support is.
I've heard both knownhost and wiredtree will respond to tickets nearly immediately (15 minutes or less seems a common time I've seen thrown around), and will either fix something directly or walk through troubleshooting, regardless of how time-consuming, until a ticket is resolved.

My gut is saying the base package at wiredtree, but if I'm missing something or possibly overestimated the need/utility of what we need compared to what that package consists of, I'd like to step down in the interest of meeting that goal of upgrading yet saving money every month. But not if it's really not worth it in the long run, be it more headaches or a service that may get bogged down quickly with minimal growth.

 

[ViviTheMage]

make sure you add an offsite back up option to that disk.

 

[DaveSimmons]

The designer responsible for, well, the design and function of the public-facing side of things, wants a provider that will help keep WordPress up to date and in optimal working order.

Have you considered hosting that part at <yourcompany> . wordpress.com ? That seems the safest way to ensure it is always up to date.

 

[ViviTheMage]

You could batch wordpress to stay up to date, but I wouldn't do that without watching it ... who knows what it'd break.

 

[destrekor]

You could batch wordpress to stay up to date, but I wouldn't do that without watching it ... who knows what it'd break.

Well, according to the sales rep I chatted with at WiredTree, I was discussing Fantastico -- after learning that cPanel's built-in 1-click installs tend to be out of date and limited -- and it sounds like Fantastico makes it easy to 1-click install updates, if they aren't automatic (now thinking back on it, I can kind of stupidly lumped a few questions at the same time. I was multi-tasking and having a web-chat, I can't help it! ), and the sales rep seemed like he strongly preferred Softaculous for all of those reasons... so it is likely even easier with that add-on?
At $1/month, I'll gladly sign the company up for that as part of the package. If it makes life easier for both myself and the designer, hell yes.
The web-presence designer "isn't really too familiar with SSL certs" - so I already know I'm going to be moderately involved with things in the long run if I want to actually want to invest any level of interest and demonstrate I care. Especially after this guy says, when he came onto the design project, he saw that the old wordpress website was, uh, quite infected! D:


BTW: having a _____.wordpress.com website is not acceptable in my opinion. Sure, you can kind of hide it (I think), but for anyone moderately capable of even looking at HTML source will likely see the truth... and I can't help but admit that, in my eyes, that would downgrade my opinion of professionalism for whatever company was doing that.
For personal/hobby/getting a company off the ground? Sure. Once it's actually off the ground and running at a healthy pace? No. Two decades after founding with multiple office locations and high-profile clients? Hell no.
It just so happens that the web presence isn't a money maker for them... yet. As they fancy further expansion and growth, I am going to continue to express little ideas here and there for improvements to their brand image online.

 

[DaveSimmons]

We do, but just for our company newsletter. We didn't want the risk of adding the wordpress app to our main company site. This is a successful company that has been around since 2000.

Our main marketing site is on a ServInt VPS, our newsletter is on wordpress.com, and our application servers and their databases run as Amazon cloud instances.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Yeah, softalicious does keep them up to date if I recall:

http://www.softaculous.com/softaculous/

That can be a bad thing though, who knows what new versions break ... i've had that happen to my site's theme when I update, just an FYI.

 

[xanis]

MediaTemple maybe? They seem to be everywhere and my friend used them to host all of the domains and files for his freelance client projects (I think around 10 or so?).

 

[RossMAN]

Yeah, softalicious does keep them up to date if I recall:

http://www.softaculous.com/softaculous/

That can be a bad thing though, who knows what new versions break ... i've had that happen to my site's theme when I update, just an FYI.

Softaculous > Fantastico

 

[RossMAN]

If you're willing to take a risk on a newer company BBGN has received some great reviews.

Price wise they can't be beat but I would stick with KH/WT/ServInt.

 

[Codewiz]

I had 4GB memory, 100GB SSD, and 4 CPU Cores @ 3.3GHz+ for $40/month at Ramnode.

Now I admit that I got it on sale but I wouldn't run a business on a VPS with lower specs than that. But that is just me.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Destrekor, did you get my PM?

I'd like to bid on this.

We're a SSA16-II Certified datacenter. 20K sqft of top tier datacenter space. We can do everything from colocation, to dedicated servers, (rack or blade), dedicated virtual servers, and managed services. We're not the cheapest, but we're as reliable as you can ask for. We have 2 direct 10gigE lines and 2 1gigE lines. Multiple power feeds, ups, generators, etc.