Aral Balkan

I do all my own web development these days with either Python/Django or JavaScript. (Have you seen Joyent's excellent SmartPlatform yet or checked out node.js? It's the future.) That said, I still have legacy sites that run PHP/MySQL and my blog is powered by Wordpress. I'm also not too happy with my current web host (my sites fall over whenever I get linked to from somewhere popular) so I've been on the lookout for a new web host for some time. However, as I tweeted yesterday, "I hate looking for hosting on the web – it feels like walking through the red light district in Amsterdam – very seedy."

Thankfully, one of the cool things about having geeky followers on Twitter is that you have a wealth of valuable knowledge to tap into if you need help from time to time. In Twitter parlance, this is known as #lazyweb.

So, Yesterday, I asked my Twitterverse if they could recommend a good web host for me for a LAMP stack with PHP/MySQL. Here are some of the recommendations I got, in hopes that it might save you some Google-time:

• VPS.net: recommended by Alex Morris and Jay Greasley – reportedly handled Andy Clarke's Hardboiled HTML5 book/site launch really well and you can start for just £1/day and scale as you like.
• Servage recommended by a UX hero of mine, Joachim Bondo, who says "I’ve been fireballed a few times without any hiccups."
• MediaTemple recommended by Dustin Senos, Jessica Lares, Fabian, Tristram Bates, and Matt Lo.
• Rackspace / Rackspace Cloud recommended by Maria T, James Devonport, and Steve Workman ("great, but expensive").
• Slicehost recommended by Kirstie Haxby.
• Linode recommended by Paul Ardeleanu, Martin Pilkington, and Georgios Kaperonis.
• Dreamhost recommended by Uli Kusterer (Pros: "Their admin panel. Great usability w/o having to know much about hosting. Also: support via chat" Cons: "isn't very fast"/"might fall over under load") and Mike Lee ("I love them… I've been with them for 13 years and never had a problem or run out of bandwidth. I can't say that of most companies."), Isaiah ("cheap, easy, reliable"), and Brian Sexton ("usually pretty good"). Steve Workman: "cheap but not quick". Martin Pilkington doesn't like them, saying "I was with Dreamhost for a while. Good features for the prices, but their uptime was terrible and support mediocre."
• Bluehost recommended by Isaiah ("they’re cheap and easy but fall victim to Utah power grid.") and Mark Groves ("impossibly cheap"). [Then again, not sure that "impossibly cheap" is a positive recommendation.]
• Hetzner (German, site has English version) recommended by John Clarke.
• Idologic recommended by Nick Kuh ("I've experienced tonnes of different hosting providers and would highly recommend [them] they really know their shit.")

Of the recommendations, VPS.net looks very alluring. As does Servage, MediaTemple, and Rackspace CloudSites. If I wasn't afraid of sys-admin, I would probably consider Linode and Slicehost.

Also interesting, as pointed out by Tristram Bates, is MacMiniColo.net. They host using Mac Minis as dedicated servers from the US. (Although you're looking at a much higher initial outlay since you need to buy the Mac Mini.)

I hope you find this helpful in narrowing down the field if you're on the hunt for a new web host. If you have any other recommendations (of hosts that you have personally experienced yourself and are happy with), please feel free to leave a comment and share your experiences with the rest of us.

Photo courtesy of grantlairdjr via Flickr.

Comments

• Thanks for this list! BTW, which one did you end up choosing? :)

  by Albert on 2010-11-10 06:26:25

• We have used Memset (http://www.memset.com) for years and are very happy with them, both in terms of amazing uptime and friendly, knowledgeable support. Their Miniserver product is exceptional and we have some pretty high traffic sites (such as 24ways.org) hosted with them.

  by Rachel Andrew on 2010-11-04 15:56:58

• Thanks, Rachel – good to know. Someone else mentioned memset on Twitter but I wasn't sure whether to include them after visiting their site (I guess the old axim "don't judge a book by its cover" applies).

  by Aral on 2010-11-04 16:10:34

• Thanks for the mention there Aral. Have to say, didn't get to say it yesterday, have been using Hetzner for 7 years now, and I have had only 10 minutes of downtime in that entire time. To me that speaks excellence, and their support is top-notch (Germans, what can I say? :P) Really would recommend them, always

  by John Clarke on 2010-11-04 16:17:20

• My experience of VPS.net was good to start with on the surface it appears clean, easy to use and cheap - it's all of those things but mostly it's unreliable. Most of my time was spend emailing support asking why my VPS was not responding - the SAN cloud in London I was part of was faulty, we we're promised a new SAN architecture which I see from the blogs has been deemed not good enough so their starting again - Sorry I need reliably folks. If you want to dabble then VPS is good for that. Daily nodes etc. I've moved to Linode on a recommendation from a friend and never looked back 2+ months of uptime - plus the linode ssh console looks very robust & a great idea - the service has been so good that I've not had to contact support or use that console since setting up linode server. Incidentally i'm no sysadmin and there's just as much of that whoever you choose (VPS/Linode) - both support servers from images and Linode also has stackscripts (http://www.linode.com/stackscripts/) & a great community behind it. You've no reason to trust me Aral, but all I can say is suck it and see Please share your experience? Cheers Paul

  by Paul Hart on 2010-11-04 16:17:57

• I recently moved all my stuff over to an Amazon AWS Micro Instance and I'm pretty happy with it. Big community, decent docs, and I can run anything I want on it as an OS. I use that with a fixed IP address, and use DynDNS for DNS management to point my domain at it. There are a lot of pre-rolled virtual machine images available with LAMP stacks, Wordpress installs and the like, although not all of them run on Micro Instances just now - the forums can generally guide you through any problems. You can then login to any of them (command line if you're using Linux) and install whatever you want on them via your package manager of choice. Great for geeks. Best of all, you can get it free for 1 year just now - if you are a new Amazon customer. See: http://aws.amazon.com/free/ Annoyingly, I signed up about a month before that offer. *cry* I'm paying for a reserved slot for a year, which works out at about $7.50 per month + $54 yearly reservation fee. It's kinda nice playing with AWS too. They've designed a really nice architecture and API for automating interactions with the platform.

  by mnem on 2010-11-04 16:19:38

• Great article! On Linode - you can use StackScripts to get up & running without sysadmin headaches: http://www.linode.com/stackscripts/

  by Paul on 2010-11-04 16:37:59

• Nice post. I have been using www.vidahost.com for the last 12 months and have nothing but praise for them, they are based in Bath and are a very friendly bunch.

  by Ben Reed on 2010-11-04 16:49:01

• Just a quick update: I tried signing up with Servage for a little personal project and paying with PayPal. When PayPal returned me to their site, I was met with a sign in form that didn't accept my username or password. When I tried their forgotten password form, it informed me that the system did not know my email address. So I guess that's a failed sign up then. I've emailed them but not entirely holding my breath for an easy resolution as I heard on Twitter from Joanna that she had trouble reaching them by email. Going to start looking at the other options in the meanwhile…

  by Aral on 2010-11-04 16:51:30

• I've been walking the same seedy part of town recently, so far MediaTemple (dv) looks like the best option for me. I want to be able to install stuff, but I don't want every single little OS security fix to be down to me. That, and mt seem quite active on Twitter

  by Matt on 2010-11-04 18:44:07

• I can vouch for Idologic knowing their stuff. If you want to be in a shared hosting environment on them a friend of mine runs http://iphostmaster.com/ as a reseller of their services.

  by John B on 2010-11-05 19:03:35

• Nice list there! But stay away from MediaTemple. They're really slow at responding to support tickets and has been experiencing alot of downtime.

  by Edwin on 2010-11-06 08:00:45

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  by jason on 2012-04-15 22:52:38