Elliot Swan

• Milo March 22nd, 2008 @ 1:41 pm (#)

  I have a VPS from servint, expensive but worth it! There support is fantastic.

• Adam Wilcox March 22nd, 2008 @ 2:20 pm (#)

  I’ve been using Segpub.com.au for a few months, and I found them to be extremely helpful and reliable. But as an Australian company, support replies tends to come in at strange times for me.

• Joseph Pecoraro March 22nd, 2008 @ 2:35 pm (#)

  Here, try AN Hosting. That is the hosting that I use at their rather robust $6.95 a month plan. I’m quite happy with it. I probably don’t get anywhere near the number of visitors you get. I do monitor downtime and even though there has not been much it has improved considerably over last year. I would estimate its about 98% uptime a year.

  I only have a few issues with ANHosting. One is that CPanel and phpMyAdmin are rather slow (but more importantly SFTP is snappy). I have a local setup where I do all of my development and then just upload it; so the times that I have to actually go into either of these tools are rather rare (once or twice a month for random reasons). Secondly, I believe they pulled support for .htaccess in favor of phpsudo files. This upset me but I worked with support to get the single issue that I had resolved in just a few days. On the bright side there are some very cool one click WordPress setups, along with plenty of other tools that are available through Fantastico.

  As far as support goes. One method is that ANHosting has a Live Chat feature on their home page. It normally takes me about 20 minutes to get setup with a rep to discuss my problem. In the end my problems get resolved about 75% of the time and I get the answers I want about 90% of the time. Again, nothing I have done is mission critical so my expectations are limited.

  I’m pleased with the service but then again I don’t know how any other company’s compare and I’m technical enough that I can typically solve problems myself. Anyone can email me if you have questions, I’ll try to answer them to the best of my ability. I’m in no way affiliated with ANHosting but I would like to see how they compare to your hosting company (I think my third year with them is ending this Summer).

• Elliot Swan March 22nd, 2008 @ 2:50 pm (#)

  Thanks for the suggestions guys.

  @Joseph: Not sure I could handle no .htaccess support…

• Joseph Pecoraro March 22nd, 2008 @ 3:41 pm (#)

  That is exactly why I wanted to mention it. But I would encourage you to give them a ring to see what the details are. When I find a serious need for .htaccess myself I’m going to pester them myself =)

• Richard Saunders March 23rd, 2008 @ 3:45 am (#)

  I’m currently using a Grid Service account with MediaTemple at $20 per month while not the cheapest out there I have generally found them reliable.

  Support is good too, with quick resolution. They also keep you up to date via email and through their blog on any system maintenance that takes place.

  I have been happy with their service and would recommend them.

• Brett Elliff March 23rd, 2008 @ 12:32 pm (#)

  I have a Dedicated Virtual (dv) account with Media Temple for over a year now and I have had nothing but excellent service and support from them and they uptime is the best I have come across.

• RuelMinds March 24th, 2008 @ 1:40 am (#)

  Try Philhosting.Net. I currently used it in all of my sites.

• Marc Grabanski March 24th, 2008 @ 9:18 am (#)

  Media Temple (dv) dedicated virtual for web applications ($50/mo)… (gs) grid service for my less server intensive websites - blogs, information websites. $20/mo.

• craig March 24th, 2008 @ 1:23 pm (#)

  I have 2 (gs) grid service accounts with Media Temple. Been very happy with them so far…

• Elliot Swan March 24th, 2008 @ 2:05 pm (#)

  Looks like a lot of happy (mt) users.

• Joseph Pecoraro March 24th, 2008 @ 3:36 pm (#)

  Actually (mt) was in my number 2 choice so I’m not surprised that so many people liked it. They have some really great offers.

• Daniel March 25th, 2008 @ 3:36 pm (#)

  I love dreamhost! Why do blue?

  But a close 2nd for me would be MediaTemple.com if DH let me down.

• Lasha March 30th, 2008 @ 7:21 am (#)

  Hey! I’m using Site5 as my host, and have been with them for over a year already. Barely any downtime, super fast servers, and great support. They all seem to know what they’re talking about when they talk to you and stuff. There are so many hosts out there it’s kind of ridiculous to choose the “best” one. Haha.

• Andy Kant April 4th, 2008 @ 9:12 am (#)

  I recommend against MediaTemple’s GridServer (but not their dedicated virtuals), the performance on it considering how much it costs is pretty poor, although the presentation and management of it is great. I had a GridServer for about 1.5 yrs but recently left, now I use WebFaction. WebFaction is a very developer-friendly host, it always has the latest web technologies (and multiple versions thereof) along with the ability to deploy different technologies throughout your directory tree. If you like to try out new web technologies or use a variety of them (I use Rails, Django, and PHP), then give it a try, otherwise they are probably overkill as a general use host. WebFaction’s panel is geared towards developers and not general users as well.

• Andy Kant April 4th, 2008 @ 9:19 am (#)

  Since there’s quite a few pro-GridServer posts, let me clarify what I didn’t like about it:
  - Huge MySQL bottleneck (possibly a bad neighbor issue, but MySQL performance is pretty terrible unless you pay extra for a dedicated container - specifically, make all your queries on a single connection or you are screwed, even then its pretty slow though; also, don’t use Shaun Inman’s Mint on a GridServer because it will cause your site to take 2-3 minutes to load just on a static page)…I have had $5/mo hosts with better database performance than the (gs)
  - Network speed isn’t the greatest

  What I liked:
  - Awesome control panel
  - Great customer service
  - The GridServer directory tree is very well organized and easy to use (want a subdomain? just create a directory for it and it runs automagically)

• Elliot Swan April 4th, 2008 @ 10:18 pm (#)

  @Andy: Hmm, that would be a problem… Especially since I use MySQL for everything, and am completely addicted to Mint.

  I’m kind of at a loss…looks like my Dreamhost account just renewed, so I’m tempted to just stay with it as for the most part they’re great, yet at the same time I’m currently arguing with the support about some (so far) unexplained charges and records that don’t quite add up (they could be totally legit, I just sure can’t figure out where they’re coming from). And that downtime didn’t make me happy.

• Chris Thomson April 6th, 2008 @ 4:34 pm (#)

  I’m also hosted on the (mt) Grid Service. Over the last few weeks, they have been having some problems with 5-10 minute “outages”. This isn’t normal for (mt) at all, though. I’ve been with them for about a year now, and I really like them.

  What I’d recommend if you are worrying about the database issue, is to open an account at (mt) (just buy one month’s worth), then if you don’t want to use them, take advantage of their money-back guarantee and go somewhere else.

• Pete April 17th, 2008 @ 7:04 am (#)

  +1 for WebFaction ( http://www.webfaction.com ). These guys are just awesome!

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