Looking to leave HostMonster

Hosting
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I’ve been with HostMonster’s shared plan for awhile… I’d say, maybe about 5 or 6 years? I’m not sure how long exactly but it started out really well: quick turn around with customer service, minimal downtime, friendly (and understandable) staff, and solid costs for what it was worth, and good technical functionality of their resources. Now, however, it’s absolutely dismal. The support takes forever for some of the simplest of ticket issues, downtime is frequent (with little-to-no notice), and many of the staff are barely understandable with heavy accents. (For whatever it’s worth, I can handle thick accents but everything else has just taken a nosedive, including simpler things like SSH connectivity or e-mail inbox visibility even…)

What I’d like to find is a reasonable VPS (maybe cloud-based?) host for around $12.00 per-month (or ~$150.00 per-year) that offers the following:

  • Non EIG-based.
  • 2 GB Physical RAM.
  • At least 1 full core (Xeon?).
  • “Plenty of storage for about 6 non-video / non-photography Drupal sites.” (They might have a few videos / images but it wouldn’t be all about videos or images.)
  • C-PANEL (preferably without a recurring license expense).
  • E-mails.
  • Free domain transfers.
  • Tech support worth praising.

Anyone know of such a diamond in the rough? If I have to, I’ll stick it out 1 more year with HostMonster but I’d love to get away from them…

Thanks in advance.

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That sounds fairly hopeful to me. I’d be wary of too cheap an offering—especially if you’re looking for managed hosting. If you’re handy with server administration stuff, it might we worth checking out things like Digital Ocean. But for an actual VPS, there are so many options, but at least one member here has a lot of good to say about Web Hosting Buzz, which has a fairly cheap VPs starter offering, although you have to pay more to get some of the features you listed.

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Thanks, ralphm. I’ve come across a few hosting providers that had me tempted… One was A Small Orange, which I would’ve gone with were it not for the EIG ownership. The other was KickaSSD but the idea that they’re over in another country doesn’t sit well with me. And still another was HostUs, but their systems aren’t completely virtualized and they required a monthly C-PANEL license (which cost almost more than the actual hosting plan itself). Ugh…

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Is there any particular reason that cPanel is required?

The reason I ask is I used to use cPanel but quickly became accustomed to the absence on DigitalOcean.

Many hosts have a monthly scheme which you could test with a free domain name before taking the plunge (excuse the pun).

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John_Betong, I just prefer it. By having it, I don’t have to go weeding through peoples’ exponential amounts of tutorials, StackOverflow posts, and Google search results just to figure out that 1 little thing nobody else on Earth ever had to deal with. :smile:

Using C-PANEL just makes life much simpler… (Matter of opinion I guess.)

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Many thanks for your explicit answer :slight_smile:

I did notice you missed SitePoint for finding solutions :slight_smile:

For $5.00 USD/month I still think it is well worthwhile to try a VPS along with a [Free Domain Name] (http://dot.tk/)

I make notes of the common required Apache2 commands and created templates for installing new domains. The latter requires:

1.  find & replace of the "old-domain-name" to the "new-domain-name"
2.  uploading the "new-domain-name.conf" file
3.  command-console: "a2ensite new-domain-name"
4.  command-console: "service apache2 restart"

FileZilla works well and eliminates a lot of tedious and repetitious maintenance tasks.

The page-speed advantages alone are well worth the additional trouble. Also surprisingly less expensive than the nearly $50.00 USD/month paid to the previous hosting provider.

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Many thanks for your explicit answer

I did notice you missed SitePoint for finding solutions

SitePoint isn’t the only source of expert knowledge. (As wonderful as SitePoint is!) :wink:

 

For $5.00 USD/month I still think it is well worthwhile to try a VPS along with a Free Domain Name

I’ll assume this is a joke… :smile:

 

I make notes of the common required Apache2 commands and created templates for installing new domains. The latter requires:

  1. find & replace of the “old-domain-name” to the “new-domain-name”
  2. uploading the “new-domain-name.conf” file
  3. command-console: “a2ensite new-domain-name”
  4. command-console: “service apache2 restart”

FileZilla works well and eliminates a lot of tedious and repetitious maintenance tasks.

…which covers, what, 0.01% of the extent of web server systems administration, assuming all OSs handle domain assignments the same way (which rarely happens)? At some point, you have to start working on your actual website, app, or whatever it is one works with, hence my preference for C-PANEL: it saves me time. With it, I don’t always need to screw around with command line crap–I can just click a couple things and then voila!, done. Don’t get me wrong: I’m always up for learning more about things non-clicky, but the whole point of technology is to make one’s life easier. So when it’s available, I use it (in most situations; I still like command line stuff, but I’m not an elitist or dork, either, and know when to shelve my geek side when it saves time). Know what I mean? I had thought this would come across without needing a book to explain, but maybe not. (I hope all that didn’t come across aggressively or something–just being honest.)

 

The page-speed advantages alone are well worth the additional trouble.
Also surprisingly less expensive than the nearly $50.00 USD/month paid
to the previous hosting provider.

When did a correlation exist between the use of C-PANEL to administer things like DNS settings, PHP configurations, etc. and page load speeds of a website that exists on the host!? Maybe I misunderstood what your comment meant? And plenty of VPSs exist for around $20.00, so I’m not sure where you’re $50.00 idea came from… Seems the going rate for most VPSs is between $20.00 and $40.00 per-month ($40.00 being on the high side, with your 2 cores, 2 GBs of ram, etc.). (But that’s just from what I’ve researched so far, which isn’t much.)

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cPanel alone is $20/mo per VPS.

When you have a VPS, you are essentially renting your own server. With shared hosting, you’re sharing a server with hundreds, or thousands of others and able to split that cost. (at least that’s what I assume, there may be some kind of other special pricing they give to hosts)

There are open source cPanel alternatives, like zPanel you can install yourself or find a host that has an image prepackaged (you’ll probably have to email support or use one of those little “Chat Now” things).

You can get VPS servers pretty cheap and there are a ton of good options. Digital Ocean, Amazon EC2, RamNode, etc. All around $20-50/mo for 2gb. You’re probably not going to find very many reliable hosts in this price range with cPanel.

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Actually I pay an extra dollar a month for a weekly backup service to run a Joke-Site and five other domains :slight_smile:

Having a free domain allows installation and testing of various packages:

Testing B2Evolution

it saves me time. With it, I don’t always need to screw around with command line crap–I can just click a couple things and then voila!, , done

I noted all your comments about cPanel and still think it is a luxury - just my two cents :slight_smile:

When did a correlation exist between the use of C-PANEL to administer things like DNS settings, PHP configurations, etc

I agree there is no correlation between cPanel and speed although I far prefer having the speed of a SSD drive than access to a cPanel.

Pingdom: Your website is faster than 100% of all tested websites

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cPanel for VPS is likely going to cost no less than $5/mo. It is more commonly $10 - $15 /mo. With some companies it costs $20/mo. So $12/mo is very unrealistic for such high specifications, unless you are know somebody personally that is willing to cut you a deal or something. You could find something with those specifications for $25 - $35. And in one year, that might come down to $20 - $30, but cPanel is still going to cost you $10 or more each month.

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