I need a new webhost. [Archive]

turtle

2008-10-30, 00:48

I'm using Surpass (http://www.surpasshosting.com/) for my Corporate site, personal blog, family forum, family gallery and email right now. Actually, most of my email now goes through Google via Apps. My shared host is really slow though. I need more speed. The download and upload speeds really suck.

My wife is doing a blog in iWeb and it takes 40 minutes to upload the folder via SFTP to her spot on the host. The folder is 139.7MB!!! 40 minutes for 140MB?! :mad: Not only that but for me to D/L said folder via SFTP it takes 46 minutes! My internet connection isn't the issue because I'm at 10/2MB with "PowerBoost".
http://www.speedtest.net/result/347193755.png

Going to their site they have a test setup for you to verify the speeds (http://www.surpasshosting.com/technology-speed-test.php) so I figured I'd give it a go. Ping test:
--- 72.29.87.105 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 38.140/40.633/45.736/2.224 ms
The speed test has you download a 114MB file from one of their servers. I downloaded it and was getting speeds of 600KB/s. Not bad really, but not great. So after downloading it I uploaded it to my server and was only getting speeds of about 330KB/s on the high side and staying at about 270KB/s taking just over 7 minutes total to upload via SFTP. The ajax uploader via Safari maxed at 450KB/s and settled at about 270KB/s taking a total of 7 minutes too.

Taking it to the next step I downloaded it from my server (http://www.turtle2472.com/gige-orl-dimenoc.tar). I'm at a whopping max of 150KB/s via SFTP taking 15 minutes! What kind of crap is that? So for giggles I downloaded it via Safari and maxed at 505KB/s for a few seconds and then dropped and hung around 260KB/s. That time it ended up taking 7 minutes to download.

I'm entertaining the idea of bumping my home plan to the "Home Office" plan from Cox and getting all the port blocks lifted and a static IP so I can just host everything here out of my house. The only problem there is I don't really want the hassle of maintaining the system and keeping everything running like that. I'd rather someone else have to so this. Plus, it's about another $40 per month on my cable bill to move up to that service.

I've been really spoiled by cPanel at Surpass too, so I would like some similar control tool like that. I have a Leopard Server system that's running my TM backups and some file hosting too. I'm sure I could move it to the DMZ and run it, but I'm still not sure I want the hassle to deal with that aspect of hosting though I would love the "control" aspect so I would know that my info is safe.

So what are some hosts out there that would actually give me and my users good speeds. Am I asking too much and are my expectations too high? I can partly understand that the iWeb site is multiple files and that's why it takes so long, but that just seems to be way to long.

Chellovek

2008-10-30, 04:13

been using 110mb.com for some random sites. It's free to try out, uploads haven't been teh' snap, but it sounds faster than your current predicament.

PKIDelirium

2008-10-30, 16:52

Have you filed a support ticket with Surpass, maybe ask to be moved to a different server? I've never had these issues.

turtle

2008-10-30, 19:57

I have posted on Surmunity and am going to see what they put there. It's good to know that I might be an isolated incident. I've actually really liked Surpass.

World Leader Pretend

2008-10-30, 22:56

I'm a fan of Dreamhost (http://www.dreamhost.com/). They seem to be giving away unlimited everything right now in celebration of their birthday, so I might try to sign on while you can.

turtle

2008-10-30, 23:45

I submitted a support ticket now. I'm getting nothing on Surmunity.

I've looked at DreamHost again but their prices aren't as good as Surpass and they didn't fare to well when we (AN) used them. I'm running a fair number of different things and DH doesn't seem to be the best fit. It's still shared hosting and now I'm starting to think I really need a VPS or Dedicated. I just don't want the expense for that though. :\

turtle

2008-10-31, 15:18

Sales came back and said I need a VPS or Dedicated server. Is this just some salesman trying to up-sale me or do I really need that level of web host? :confused:

PKIDelirium

2008-10-31, 15:58

It sounds to me like there's something wrong with the box you're on that's messing up the speed. I've never had anything slow down that bad.

turtle

2008-10-31, 21:58

Well, now they are saying the I need a dedicated server because of my IMAP needs. They also recommended I upgrade the server from the standard 10Mbits to 100Mbits connection. Seems the VPS would actually be about 10Mbits. :\

scratt

2008-10-31, 22:25

As some people and some threads here can attest I have had my share of bad luck with Shared Hosting packages..

I have pretty much tried them all at various points. And at the end of the day no matter how good these hosts are you are at the mercy of your neighbors on the server, and / or the restrictions the provider puts on your server to try and keep it all running nicely.

In the last 12 months or so I have taken the plunge and actually got myself a dedicated server. The company I am with now is www.server4you.com.

I am on a package that costs about $700 a year primarily because I now do actually need to host quite a few medium to busy sites. However server4you, not to be confused with the German clone company (who don't have .com on their URL) are very very good. Low grade Tech support is online 24/7, and more technical help is typically a ticket and 2 hours away.

They also offer dedicated servers for as low as $29 a month. The only downside with those is you have to buy the whole year. With the more expensive ones you can suck it and see for a month at a time.

If you can stretch to $29 a month for a dedicated server I don't think you'll look back...

It has all the bells and whistles, including remote backup, remote reboot, and nice fast backbone access for copying.. I moved my old sites from a friends server to my new server over the backbone in a few minutes.

And now that I am 100% in the driving seat on my server I have been able to make it pretty damn secure, and keep all the features I want. It's kind of become a labour of love and I have learned a lot.

To date, apart from one time when their billing dept. turned off my server, I have had 100% uptime.. Initially they setup my server and put me online before I had even paid, which caused some confusion a week later! But when they did take my server offline they only took the control panel down, not my web site... Nice touch.

Oh, you can pay by PayPal too.

Brad

2008-10-31, 22:27

I'm a fan of Dreamhost (http://www.dreamhost.com/). They seem to be giving away unlimited everything right now in celebration of their birthday, so I might try to sign on while you can.

AppleNova used to run on DreamHost. Remember when it was ass-slow and every day we'd have that little "We're down for maintenance" message up for a few minutes here and there? Yeah, DreamHost sucks hard if you have anything beyond light usage like simple static file hosting.

DreamHost oversells and underdelivers to a maddening degree. They cram hundreds of clients on the same server and when you have a problem (and you're a smart techie who knows how these things work) they give you slow and/or wrong answers due to either incompetence or lack of any serious desire to support their customers.

But I'm not bitter. :)

World Leader Pretend

2008-11-03, 01:26

AppleNova used to run on DreamHost. Remember when it was ass-slow and every day we'd have that little "We're down for maintenance" message up for a few minutes here and there? Yeah, DreamHost sucks hard if you have anything beyond light usage like simple static file hosting.

DreamHost oversells and underdelivers to a maddening degree. They cram hundreds of clients on the same server and when you have a problem (and you're a smart techie who knows how these things work) they give you slow and/or wrong answers due to either incompetence or lack of any serious desire to support their customers.

But I'm not bitter. :)

Huh, I guess I shouldn't recommend them anymore. I maintain a half-dozen sites (all of which are relatively static and simple) along with my webmail and I've had 100% uptime. I'm by no means an advanced user, so for a Chipotle Burrito per month it is fine, but I'm sure you are much more knowledgeable about these things. :)

turtle

2008-11-03, 22:20

So now I'm looking at hosting myself again. It's $80 per month to have Cox open up my ports and give me a static IP address. I'm already paying $43 per month so how much of a difference would it really be?

If I went with something like Linode and their lowest VPS it'd be and extra $20 per month anyway. $55 a month to go with Surpass' lowest VPS and $65 for a dedicated server. Their server would have lower specs than my current server too.

My connection speed would be 10Mbps down and 2Mbps up with PowerBoost. What does that compare to Surpass' advertised 10mbit uplink speed? Does this mean my upload speed from here would be 1/5 what it would be from their server farm? I never did understand the math on this one. :\

scratt

2008-11-03, 22:35

Did you see my post about server4you ?

It's all very well saying that your current host offers a higher spec server than the dedicated options you can afford, but even if your current host has you on a Cray Super Computer you may only be getting a fraction of that because the resources are being shared with Spammers, and all sorts of other web sites..

In any case most Virtual Hosting providers lie about the spec of the machine you are on in my experience.

For $29 a month you can have a grown up server that will certainly do all you need. For $50 or $60 you can have a server that will handle many thousands of visitors a day, and databases coming out of your wazooo, bandwidth way over and above what you need etc. etc.

turtle

2008-11-03, 23:22

Thanks for the reminder of your post. Now it really does make sense. I'm looking through their site must harder now. Do they give referral points if you refer me? PM me anything I'll need to let them know if I do sign up.

scratt

2008-11-03, 23:26

No worries.. I am not aware of any referral benefit so don't complicate things for yourself.... But thanks anyway.

Do make sure you check out both the Budget and Premium options : Tab at the top of the web page. Also grab one of their chat people and ask all the questions you have.. They have always been very happy to chat with me both before and after I signed up. :)

Jerman

2008-11-04, 19:51

I've been a happy Linode customer, as per Brad's mention (http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=28843) several months back. The only thing that I find especially confusing about the whole ordeal is how to manage the email side. It's a pretty difficult install. It now WORKS, but I don't quite understand how. :) I did see you mention you pretty much use Google for email, so you could use a Linode server for everything else?

I've heard both good and bad things about Media Temple, but from what I hear these days, it's mostly positive.

turtle

2008-11-04, 23:16

I ended up signing on with Server4You at their $29 plan. Plesk seems like a pretty good server control panel too. I'll let you know how it works out once I get access to the server and migrate my stuff to it from Surpass.

scratt

2008-11-05, 00:28

Good job mate.. Sorry the election didn't go the way you hoped... but even though we're on different political sides if you have any problems administering your server then do let me know. ;) I can always chat through things I found as I set mine up as it's still fresh in my mind.. especially securing it...

Do take advantage of the Mcaffe offer with Plesk as it really helps when getting the firewall and other settings right for the best security.. At least it gives you some clear indications of where to focus tidying up some of the setup. Not that they are setup bad out of the box by any means, just that there are a few tweaks which are worth attaching.

Plesk is a really nice package for administering your server btw. Over Ensim and CPanel I have found it to be very stable, better presented and more up to date in terms of what you need to administer on a server..

btw If you want to get pretty technical this is a great little guide..
http://www.grafxsoftware.com/faq.php/HOW-TO-Setup-a-PLESK-Dedicated-Server/1/4/

turtle

2008-11-05, 01:44

I went with the CentOS plan because my SME server here at the house is built from CentOS. Which OS are you using? Honestly, I never thought about closing security holes. :o I've been spoiled by shared hosting covering this stuff. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated because I will honestly find out as I go along.

Brad

2008-11-05, 01:52

AppleNova runs on CentOS, for what little that's worth. :p I picked CentOS mainly because I use RHEL (from which CentOS is based) at my day job and it's the only distro I'm really familiar with.

scratt

2008-11-05, 01:54

CentOS here too. :) I took advice and did some research and that seemed to be the one of choice.

Also don't worry about the security holes too much. I run scanners on shared hosts as well as my own server.. I still have a shared package or two yet to die out.. and they are always much lower scoring than my server, and even my server when it was first setup..

My one with server4you out of the box had nothing other than low priority warnings.. Most I cleared up by using Yum to update PHP.

That link I posted for you is the core of my work path when I took mine from the default setting to it's current state.

Lots of stuff like installing an SSL Cert I did for the first time, and it was easy if you take it step by step and be careful.

Basic things also like blocking root login so you log in via a low priviledge account and then use 'su' to get root access are simple but effective ways to put a "lock and a deadbolt" on your server access..

Also stopping certain Apache commands for php code is wise.. Again you can read about that in the link I gave you.. But do be aware that it may kill some scripts features on some packages.. Most have work arounds though.. and stopping scripts from running commands on your server is one of the keys to protecting yourself today.

My server runs WordPress, Drupal and OSC, and all of those run just fine with pretty secure settings. I also got into caching in a big way to lower the load from php web pages for all those packages... But I am not sure if you need any of that.

Also ssh'ing in and running 'top' most days - I have it as a shell script at bootup on my home machine - and seeing what's going on hour by hour as you perfect your setup...

Basically you can do as much or as little maintenance as you like as you go along.. Perhaps an hour a day... :)

But none of the above stuff you have any control over on shared packages..

I find it really fun actually. :)

Brad

2008-11-05, 01:59

And DenyHosts (http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/) for the win!

scratt

2008-11-05, 03:03

Absolutely...
I think DenyHosts was in the default setup from server4you.
I don't remember installing it, and it is there on my setup.

turtle

2008-11-06, 00:25

How long did it take you to hear back from them about your server? I think I'm being impatient. :\

scratt

2008-11-06, 00:27

They were initially very pro-active with me..
At one point I had a half completed order on their web site and they even chased that up to ask if I needed help completing it..

When I signed up I opted to pay by PayPal rather than by CC, and they didn't take any money.. I waited about half a day then chased live help..

I also asked how to pay, and they said just send it through to such and such email address from PayPal. After that chat ended and before I had even done the payment I got the first of about 3 emails reporting on the allocation, setup and completion of my server over about a 3 hour period, same day.

I would give them a kick via live chat, you might find it gees them up a bit..

turtle

2008-11-06, 01:05

That was awesome!

First the pain in the butt part. I couldn't get the chat feature working yesterday so I blew it off. After you mentioned it again today I gave it a try and kept getting greeted with a Safari error page. I thought it was OpenDNS blocking it until I realized it was my hosts file entry blocking it. After getting that cleared I opened the chat and inquired about my situation.

I signed on for a SuperSaver L package for $29 a month. Here is my chat with them:
Welcome to our Live Chat. Please hold, while we connect you to the next available assistant.
You are now chatting with 'Nick'
Nick: Welcome to our live chat service.
Nick: How may I help you today?
Tony: Hi Nick. I signed up for a $29 server package last night and faxed in my forms but hadn't heard anything yet. just wondering what the status was for my server.
Nick: Just a moment, please. I will check that and be right back with you.
Tony: Thanks.
Nick: Actually, the problem is that we don't have SuperSaver L at the moment, but we can offer you another product and assign that one to you within 2 hours, so you will have the server almost immediately.
Nick: I can offer you this one with a discount:
Nick: http://www.server4you.com/us/dedicated/showplan.php?products=0
Tony: Is there an expected opening anytime soon?
Nick: It might take days or a week to get an SS-L available.
Nick: However, I can offer you the Power L, I just gave a link to with $ 10 / month discount.
Nick: Are you intersted?
Nick: * interested?
Tony: I am, but didn't budget for that right now. I'm moving from a shared host so I can wait if needed. I'd rather not because my service there sucks. But $40 a month is more than I was planning.
Nick: Ok, I will talk to my supervisor and see if I can offer you the same price on the Power L, just a moment, please.
Nick: Ok, we can do it - Power L server - $ 29 / month (yearly prepayment) - so the same price as the SS-L.
Tony: Deal.
Nick: Ok, I will go ahead and change the current order with the new product. Expect the welcome e-mail to arrive at your inbox within a few hours.
Tony: Thank you. I look forward to a long relationship with S4U. :)

Now the question is how fast do I kick Surpass to the curb? I'm a very happy man right now, I can't give you enough cookies for the referral based on what I'm seeing so far. :) That saved me $240 a year and I know the Power L can handle my needs and then some! My IMAP email usage won't be an issue on that machine and neither will my connectivity.

Edit: Booo
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to scratt again.

scratt

2008-11-06, 02:38

Nice work... Makes my package look relatively expensive now!! ;)

Based on my experience you'll be setup and ready to go later today...
So once you've transferred all your stuff off your old host you're good to go..
Plesk etc. will be setup on your server and ready to take new websites with all the bells and whistles from hour 1.

If you've never used Plesk before the only thing that tends to catch people out is that the root html directory for your site is organized a little differently...

Subdomains are a sub-directory of one level above the main URL's root directory, and you have a separate http and https directory... Shoot me any questions if yuo need to, but if you set it all up through Plesk, which has ample help info, then you should be fine..

Once you are used to Plesk you won't look back..

I just noticed that the guy corrected his typo in the chat : The other cool thing about the LiveHelp people at s4u is that they are actually real people who give a damn and can think.. Sometimes you are on LiveChat with some companies and you can feel them sucking intelligence out of you they are so dumb.. On one occasion with s4u I had a guy who actually could not answer my question, but as soon as he realized it he told me so, apologized, and immediately escalated it to more technical people. Cool IMO.

turtle

2008-11-06, 10:40

:o

How do I log into Plesk? I have my server now and IP address but can't seem to get past the PowerPanel and search isn't turning up anything right now. I've logged in via Coda and SSH but since I'm not a Unix guy I'm kinda lost.

turtle

2008-11-06, 11:49

Ok, two strikes against S4Y but they are correcting them and not a big deal, just imperfections in business.

I can't log into my server because they forgot to install Plesk. :\ Kinda hard to use it if it isn't there. I had chat with support to get that figured out. They are reinstalling my server now.

They didn't bill me for my agreed on rate but rather the normal rate for that server. I emailed them the transcript from my chat and it has been corrected. The best part is they took full responsibility for the error in billing.

They really are human there. I welcome this since Surpass is so non-human. You're only method to communicate with them is trouble ticket. The forums can sometimes offer help, at least I'm told this because I've personally never been helped through the forums.

scratt

2008-11-06, 21:32

Glad you got it sorted... Quite surprised they didn't install Plesk!
But then again they did mess up over my billing also, and again rectify it taking full responsibility very quickly... So yeah.. Very Human! Perhaps too Human! :)

Just for future reference to get into Plesk it's your servers IP:8443, or main URL:8443 and the login details are in your Power Panel.

I found Power Panel a bit weird to find my way around at first, but it's actually pretty simple.

scratt

2008-11-06, 22:05

I had reason to deal with customer support at my old shared hosts last night...

It's worth keeping one of those packages on just to really appreciate the difference between s4u and what I have been dealing with!

After spending 30 minutes online with a guy trying to prove to him that our server was offline, going through various stages of proxy access, pinging, etc. etc. and having him say it was working fine... he finally twigged that just because the lights are on on the box does not necessarily mean that the server is talking to the outside world!

They have also got this annoying habit of block banning IP addresses when any login attempt it made from anywhere.. Which in this case cut of most of Asia from my server!

I love having total control and a dedicated server, which I pointed out to this admin had been up for 3 months with nary a problem under my administration! I offered to secure / administer my server with them for free, but they won't let me!!!

turtle

2008-11-06, 23:26

I'll likely keep Surpass for a while, other than the fact that I just renewed. They have a great place to store things off-site and I'll keep a basic website there for my business.

This server is actually for my family use. I had thought about moving my business stuff to it too, but my business site doesn't do any real traffic. My new server can handle how I want to do email and then some. Kinda funny that I'm going to be using this server for what it is.

I did manage to get into the server during my lunch break this afternoon. Plesk is nice. I was going to the right port before, but PowerPanel didn't have my Plesk details because it wasn't installed. I chatted with the same guy twice over this. It was in the second chat session that he realized I didn't have Plesk.

The directory structure is certainly different than I'm used to. I don't have everything in place yet and my domain names are still resolving to Surpass but I'm getting there. I've told Plesk what domains and am starting to replicate my current sub-domain structure too. This is more work than I'd though it would be. I ended up copying my Surpass domain folders to my local HDD and am about to upload them to the new server. I think the MySQL DBs are all I'll have left to move before changing DNS setting for the names.

Is there something else I might be missing? I'd like this to be as painless as possible. Two domain names and a few sub-domains each. Email is currently though Google Apps for the one I'll be moving on the server and the other domain doesn't accept email. Thanks for your help and input. It's really appreciated.

scratt

2008-11-06, 23:42

Sounds like you're pretty much doing what I have done.. My old shared package is a back up and has my less tidy / less critical stuff on it.. As I update each web site I plan to move them across to the main server, but I have a few months with both online so why stress and rush.. :)

Apart from falling foul of the different directory structure of Plesk I don't think you have much to worry about.. Make sure any .htaccess files go across, *if* you need them, or have any custom stuff - but also check that you don't want to go with what Plesk has when it makes a new site.. Sometimes a straight copy misses files like that as they are technically 'hidden' files under Unix.

Also, Safari is pants with the mySQL web interface.. Uploading and downloading databases is very flakey with it.. I use FireFox for any mySQL admin religiously.

But for now, until you have more time to delve into the wonders of SSH on your new server stick with the web interfaces for doing all that and you won't go far wrong.. :)

It is a bit more work running the server yourself, but mainly because it feels like you're on your own to start with and if you're like me you're scared of taking the whole thing out with a stupid mistake.. But it is super rewarding getting it all setup, and once you have done it you realize it's not such a big black box of mystery... I remember the first time I did a full reboot after lots of updates I was almost certain the server would never come back up again.. But it did.. The 20 seconds it took to reboot felt like an hour! :lol:

In the long run you will realize it's a lot less hassle than a shared host.. Cos the thing just keeps on chugging and you won't get taken down by your next door neighbor running a Spam farm!

PM me, or post here if you hit any snags.. I am online Thailand time from about 9am to midnight most days.. :)

torifile

2008-11-26, 11:20

I'm looking for a new host now, as well. So far, it looks like Linode and server4you.com have the most support. I'm not too keen on having to do too much myself. I just want it to work *well* so I can do some work on my own if that needs to happen. I'm also looking for something under $200/year with multiple domains per hosting plan since none of my sites will use anywhere near the bandwidth offered by most plans.

Also, anyone have any referral codes they want me sign up with? I figure if I'm going to go with a new host, one of us ought to make a little dough. Brad, does AN have a referral code to sign up?

Brad

2008-11-26, 11:53

For what it's worth, once I got AppleNova set up on Linode (which admittedly requires a bit of Linux know-how), it's just been cruising since. I occasionally log in and fire off a yum update to make sure we're running the latest and greatest installed packages, but otherwise it just takes care of itself.

AppleNova will get a month of free service if you sign up for Linode (and remain a customer for 90 days) using either this referral code:

18b4c67f046f7ae9f6125a21000d6eb2b3affbbd

or sign up via this URL:

http://www.linode.com/?r=18b4c67f046f7ae9f6125a21000d6eb2b3affbbd

non-truncated URL here:

http://www.linode.com/?r=18b4c67f046f7ae9f6125a21000d6eb2b3affbbd

torifile

2008-11-26, 12:45

Any idea about the multiple domains per hosting plan?

Brad

2008-11-26, 14:29

Any idea about the multiple domains per hosting plan?
With Linode, since the whole (virtual) server is entirely yours, you can do whatever you want with it. Want multiple www domains? Configure the apache config as desired. Don't like apache? Install lighttp or something else or, heck, write your own daemon to listen to port 80. Want to run something completely different like a Quake gaming server alongside your website? Do it. The only limits are your own skills at setting it up. :)

Jerman

2008-11-26, 19:26

Thought I would chime in here.... I've been successfully using my Linode server for several months. The one thing I never quite understood was email hosting. My system WORKED, but I didn't know why. It seems to be the most difficult aspect to manage yourself. So a few weeks ago I looked into Google Apps, and ultimately settled on using a company called TuffMail. I pay a little more each month, but don't have to deal with the intricacies of running the email side of things. I went from getting 80+ spam messages a day to a couple a week. For the record, I was not using Spam Assassin, but been quite happy with this new setup.