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  • Jake Bunce
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2000
    • 46598
    • 3.6.x

    Host experiences and testimonials thread

    This thread is for posting your hosting experiences. We are looking for rational, supported testimonials here. Don't engage in idle chat and discussion in this thread, it will make the thread less effective. If you want to discuss a particular host than make a new thread, that's what this forum is here for.

    If you would like to discuss hosts or comments in this thread, please do so here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...threadid=48475 instead.

    Let's try to consolodate our host experiences guys. Let's make this thread the one-stop-shop for all people researching new hosts. We are getting way to many repeat threads and host specific threads that just end up being lost in the forum history. Plus I'm always answering e-mails asking me what my opinion is about the various hosts that I have been with. This is an easy way to cover everyone at once.

    The way it works:
    *1. Format: List the hosts you are writing about at the top of your post in bold. This way people know what hosts you are talking about without having to read your whole post. This makes for easy navigation. Below that write about each individual host... Host name -> url -> what plan you use(d) -> link to your site if applicable to this host -> pros -> cons -> and end with your educated overall opinion of the host -> repeat for next host. If you need to make changes to somthing you posted or if you need to add something just go back and edit your post. Spreading your experiences accross multiple threads will make this thread less effective.
    2. Let's stick with your experiences and testimonials only. If we start using this thread for discussions it will make the thread less functional for people researching hosts. Leave the discussions for other threads in this forum, that's what this forum is here for.
    3. Please no flaming. If you have bad things to say that's ok, but back up your claims with something. Random flames like "this host sucks" don't help people who are researching hosts.

    I'll start....

    f5hosting
    hostrocket
    hostpro
    netmegs


    ***********************************

    f5hosting - http://www.f5hosting.com/ - platinum plan

    my site on their servers - http://128.241.204.3/ (note: currently testing vBPortal, not everything is in working order)

    Pros:
    1. Very fast. Great vB performance.
    2. Friendly staff. Charlie (waxxman) is a little bit strange sometimes, hehe. Allen and the others really know their stuff though. They all have an overly-enthusiastic attitude about everything.
    3. 100% uptime from what I can tell so far. Granted I haven't been with them for more than a couple weeks.
    4. Unbeatable price for the features you get. They have specials going on until July 1 where you can get the platinum plan for $18.50 a month.
    5. Support for GZIP. Good GZIP performance.
    6. Excellent and very functional online control panel.

    Cons:
    1. Slow vBPortal performance sometimes. Not really slow, but it takes a while to actually get the query through for a vBPortal page. It used to be really slow but it has gotten quite a bit faster recently. Note: vBPortal is also said to be a very intensive script that can still benefit a lot from some code optimization and stuff. That might be why it's slow.

    See this thread also: http://www.f5hosting.com/forums/show...s=&threadid=59

    I'm using f5 as a "secondary" host that I might switch to soon. I'm also using it as a separate host to test vBPortal. I think f5 is great for smaller sites. Lots of f5 customers are running vB. And some are running vBPortal too. As with anything, I think the "you get what you pay for" saying still applies to f5. Don't expect to host a vB with like 30 simultaneous users and not have problems. Any shared server has its limits. Other than that I would say f5 looks to be a great host.

    *********************************

    hostrocket - http://www.hostrocket.com/ - corporate plan

    my site on their servers - N/A

    Pros:
    1. Very fast. Great vB performance.
    2. Support for GZIP. Good GZIP performance.
    3. Excellent and very functional online control panel.
    4. Great price for the features you get.

    Cons:
    1. Uptime isn't all that. Sometimes uptime and performance are awesome. Then sometimes you hit a period where your site goes to crap. The last couple days have been bad. They tell me they are working to fix it. You will find that different people have different things to say about hostrocket's uptime (whether good or bad). You would be wise to do some extra research.
    2. Support tickets sometimes take a while to get a response.

    Hostrocket is a great host but their uptime needs work (from my experience. other people might disagree). Great performance though. Very fast vB performance with GZIP enabled.

    *********************************

    hostpro - http://www.hostpro.com/ - freedom 200 plan

    my site on their servers - http://www.mac-gamer.com/ (currently have an htaccess in place that redirects to my hostrocket acct)

    Pros:
    1. Excellent uptime.
    2. Prompt responses to support tickets.
    3. Excellent online users guide.
    4. vBulletin "capacity" is excellent. The number of users I had on my forums never seemed to effect performance. In fact, when I signed up with them they said that it isn't mySQL capacity or server capacity that I should worry about. They said my monthly bandwidth allotment would be the limiting factor before their server capacity would.

    Cons:
    1. On rare occassions I used to get "network latency" (as stated by their support techs). This caused generally slow performance sometimes. This was a temporary issue.
    2. Online control panel is pretty bare, but functional for what it does do.
    3. No support for GZIP.
    4. Pricey. $$$
    5. Their whole site layout, online users guide, support ticket system, etc... takes a little getting used to. But it works.
    6. vB performance isn't as fast at times as some other hosts that are half as much.

    As a server they are very stable with great uptime. Very consistant in general.

    ********************************

    netmegs - http://www.netmegs.com/ - fully virtual standard

    my site on their servers: N/A

    Pros:
    1. Excellent uptime.
    2. Excellent support. Bini is awesome.
    3. Awesome UBB 5.45c performance.

    Cons:
    1. When I went from UBB to vB 1.1.5 back in the day it totally jacked their server. I got MySQL max connection errors, performance issues, etc, etc. They ended up moving me to an isolated server to better guage my usage. I ended up moving to a different host because I didn't want to deal with it. Though, Bini was very accomodating.

    Awesome host in general, but not good for vB forums. (in my experience. I have heard otherwise from other people)
    Last edited by Jake Bunce; Sun 23 Jun '02, 9:47am.
  • Chris Schreiber
    Senior Member
    • Jun 2000
    • 4113
    • 4.0.x

    #2
    Verio Dedicated Servers

    ***********************************

    Verio Dedicated Servers - http://home.verio.com/products/dedicated/index.cfm - Linux Package

    Server Specs: RedHat Linux Pentium-III/650 with 128MB RAM 9.1GB SCSI drive.

    Some sites on my server: http://www.fast4gl.com/ http://www.progresstalk.com/

    Pros:
    1: Very good hardware, I have yet to see a hardware problem on my server, or others that have dedicated servers from Verio.
    2: Absolutely the best network and connectivity around, this is my main reason for Verio, they provide super fast connections for just about any location connecting to my server.
    3: 100% network uptime, I've never been unable to access my site... this is also verified through 3rd party monitoring of my server.
    4: They aren't the cheapest place to get a dedicated server, but I think they provide an excellent value for the money.

    Cons:
    1: Their sales and support departments are well below par... unless you have made contacts, you will may have a difficult time getting questions answered.

    Overall, I am extremely happy with Verio dedicated.... I have been a customer for over a year now. Also, many of the largest vBulletin sites (including this site) are also hosted by Verio. If you are looking for dedicated solutions, they should be on your short-list of hosts to look at.
    Last edited by Chris Schreiber; Wed 27 Jun '01, 6:18pm.

    Comment

    • Martz
      Senior Member
      • Apr 2001
      • 1051

      #3
      Updated
      KDA Webservices - Shared Hosting.

      Home page: www.kdawebservices.com

      Pros:
      • Exceptional friendly real-time and non real-time support for no extra cost.
      • Very fast shared server (Dual PIII 1.4GHz / 3GB RAM) which I have to use pretty much to myself.
      • Gzip compression as standard.
      • Very nice control panel with phpmyadmin, mysql admin, stats, sub domain management etc etc.
      • Excellent uptime and server loads, they also provide graphs and stats of most of their services - showing they are not affraid of letting people know how their service performs - a sign of confidence and professionalism imho.

      Cons:
      • US hosting - slight latency, but to be expected with every non-UK site (for me anyway )
      • No support for subdomains from other domains. Now supported!
      • IDE HD's - no SCSI support, but there servers haven't been loaded very heaviliy anyway - so this isn't an issue Now implemented!


      Conclusion
      Someone pointed me in the direction of KDA when I was looking for a new host. It can sometimes be difficult to invest into a company which you know little about, so I aimed to take out one of their midrange packages. Since then, I have been very happy with this service, and would recommend anyone seeking shared hosting to sign up now!
      They are a UK based company, who have servers overseas in the US to save money, and they pass theses savings on to the customer. Also, sometimes you will find that customer relations staff are very nice and friendly before they take your money, and then turn sour and ignorant when any problems arrive. This isn't the case with KDA - as I have asked for some pretty bespoke solutions to be set up for me, and they have either delivered them for no extra charge, or shown me in the right direction - again with a positive attitude which isn't belittling or arogant. All this with a plesant and customer orientated attitude makes me offer a 9.5/10 grade for this host.

      Since I initially wrote this review, KDA have contiuned to offer support and service which I did not expect for the price I am paying. I very much doubt I would get as much "bang for the buck" with any other host.

      Highly Recommended!
      Last edited by Martz; Wed 12 Dec '01, 2:43am.
      HP DL-380 G6, 2x E5520, 28GB RAM, 4x300GB SAS, VMWare ESXi
      -
      Unreal Tournament : Assault forums - irc://irc.utassault.net:6667 -

      Comment

      • Fred
        Senior Member
        • Jun 2000
        • 933
        • 3.5.0 Pre-Release

        #4
        Hosting 4 Less - Normal plan

        URL of host: http://www.hosting4less.com

        Pros:
        • Always up. Say about 99% of time they are up
        • Fast servers.
        • Good tech support.
        • Easy to use for bigginers.
        • Cheap plans, and pretty good deals.


        Cons:
        • Telephone support is only during certain hours. So it sucks when they are different time zone than you.
        • Only allowed 1 mySQL database.
        • No sub-domains allowed.
        • If you exceed the limit for banwidth, they bill you that month without even emailing you about it. So the bill will come up to about $200 a month, and you have no idea why.
        • Have the support reps don't know ****. Only Eric can help you.
        • Control panel blows. Confusing as hell to create pop accounts, ftp accounts, ect.
        • Online file manager is pathetic. It's so slow, and freezes your PC if you have a slow internet connection.


        For a demo of the site on their servers. Go to http://www.truthugs.com. A lot of times the mySQL server overloads and the site is messed (a lot of the site runs on php/ mysql).

        Comment

        • CdoG
          Member
          • Mar 2001
          • 53

          #5
          A+ Hosting: Shared Hosting, various plans.

          Currently using: A+ Deluxe plan.

          URL: http://www.aplushosting.com/

          Shared server specs: Dual 1GHz PIII, 2GB of 100Mhz or 130Mhz RAM (amount of users depends on amount of bandwidth taken by each, and which plan you choose (better plan = less people on your machine)

          Pros:
          • Extremely fast tech support - the fastest I have ever seen, they usually respond in 15 minutes or so (in my experience)
          • Uptime - 99.95%
          • Constant updates to server hardware and software
          • Good web-based control panel
          • Fast, for the most part (read below)
          • Bandwidth - although it says unlimited (which we all know can never really be unlimited), if you look closer, you will see that the amount you pay a month is really the amount of bandwidth you get (i.e. I pay $35 a month, therefore I am allotted 35GB/month, which is actually more than most hosts). Read more about it here
          • RAID5/10 Storage, backups made 3 times a day


          Cons:
          • Once in a while (maybe once or twice a month), my forum loads much slower than normal, and will take forever to load
          • Insufficient hard drive space (450MB is as high as it gets, for $35 a month - maybe it's enough for other people, but not me)
          • Resource-intensive scripts and software (they do not allow UBB because it requires too many resources, but vB is allowed as long as it doesnt take up more than 10% constantly) are not allowed to be run.
          • Sites with over 140,000 hits per day are not allowed on their servers because of the excess load - however, they will be accepted at special rates, which is pretty cool


          Overall, A+ Hosting has been enough for both my site and my forums. Their tech support is what impresses me the most, though almost everything about them is good.
          -CdoG

          Comment

          • Jordan
            Senior Member
            • Feb 2001
            • 278

            #6
            phpwebhosting.com

            *************************************

            Note: I do not run vBulletin, I have ran vBulletin Lite but still do not expect much feedback on the PHP/mySQL part of phpwebhosting.com.

            phpwebhosting.com - http://www.phpwebhosting.com

            Main Shared Plan (Only 1 available) - No addons.

            Server Specs: Pentium 500+ servers that run Redhat Linux 6.1.

            Website: http://www.halogen-net.com

            Pros:
            • Fast loading times.
            • Pretty good uptime.
            • Very good price.
            • Good for beginners.


            Cons:
            • Horrible support, answers don't seem that friendly and waiting time isn't good.
            • Control Panel needs work.
            • Lack of plans means if your site grows larger than what they offer, you gotta move.


            Overall they have been a pretty good host for what I need. I am happy to say I am moving on pretty soon though.
            Jordan Gadd
            Contact Information

            Comment

            • j_lorence
              New Member
              • Jul 2001
              • 9

              #7
              Ok i posted a thread on this, but was then told to post it here instead so here it is.
              ----------



              At first glance, after you look at what all they give you, they look like a dream company. Basically, they give you unlimited EVERYTHING...or so they claim. Well i recently signed up with them about 3 weeks ago. And they claim to have unlimited bandwidth, but yet when my site was getting alot of traffic, they email me saying that all of our traffic was slowing them down, and if i didnt delete my board, then they would delete it for me and shut my account down. Now I dunno about you, but that doesnt sound like "unlimited bandwidth" to me.

              Also they sent me a kind of a offensive email. Basically the vibe i got from it is that i'm the "$16.95/month" guy and that i dont matter because its the people that pay hundreds of dollars of month that they really care about.

              So i just thought I'd warn you all before more people get screwed over by this company, their "unlimited" everything, and their rude technical support.

              Comment

              • jrwap
                Senior Member
                • Jul 2000
                • 272

                #8
                I just wanted to add that aplushosting is a good host, but VBulletin doesn't run very well on it. The connection to the database times out very quickly so you have to edit out alot of the install and you have to restore backups almost line by line.

                Thanks,

                -JRW
                LostDiscussion.com - Fan base community for ABC's Lost | Club-tC.com - Scion tC Enthusiast Site | PcTechTalk.com - What's your issue? | eInvesting.com - Play the Market, Learn Investing, WIN!

                Comment

                • Nobody
                  New Member
                  • May 2001
                  • 27

                  #9
                  Host: HostRocket
                  URL: http://www.hostrocket.com

                  Pros
                  • Really fast
                  • Really cheap (starts at 9.95 a month)
                  • Awesome technical support
                  • 99.9% uptime
                  • AMAZING control panel
                  • Unlimited sub-domains
                  • Unlimited MySQL databases
                  • Did I mention it's really cheap?
                  • 4-5 Different hosting plans
                  • Unlimited E-mails
                  • Unlimited FTP accounts
                  • Premade CGI scripts
                  • Stats for everything
                  • Custom Error pages
                  • Spam blocker
                  • Affiliate programs
                  • Daily backup
                  • Directory backup
                  • Trouble tickets
                  • And much, much, much more.


                  Cons
                  • Maybe that 0.1% that it will be down for 5 minutes
                  • Nothing else that I can think of


                  That's it, HostRocket is so amazing!

                  Comment

                  • eg_92901
                    Member
                    • Jul 2001
                    • 48

                    #10
                    Stormwire

                    I just started using vBulletin and its hosted on Stormwire.com.

                    So far its been great, no problems at all, very fast and support is excellent. I only pay $17.95 a month, and that's the premium package.

                    I'll find out how good they really are when I start getting more bandwidth and usage off my site. It is brand new.

                    Anybody have any comments on Stormwire.com?

                    Comment

                    • seemaxrun
                      Member
                      • Jul 2001
                      • 59

                      #11
                      earthlink
                      hostfinity
                      pair networks
                      venturesonline

                      Earthlink ( http://www.earthlink.net ): In the early days I was on earthlink.net, which is overpriced for what they provide in a starter site but simple for beginners and that worked during the starting out days. Earthlink will never host a vbulletin though because they do not support both mysql and php. They support only one and then only on one of their servers, the Atlanta server. In addition their online service is non-existent, however their phone service is pretty good. If you do not mind a couple days going back and forth with a problem till they find someone who can fix it. Not all of their techs know what they are doing.

                      Hostfinity ( http://hostfinity.com ): Outgrowing Earthlink I set up a test site with hostfinity.com. The basic package site is cheap, $14.95 per month for a basic package, and Hostfinity was the associated host site to 000.domains.com (my registrar). Hostfinity said they could do more than probably they could, i.e. unlimited bandwidth. But I thought I would wait and see.

                      It did not go real well. Hostfinity does things like decide to upgrade a page and then just leave links pointing to wrong pages till they come bacck the next day. This was a problem for me. Their tutorials are almost non-existent, support correspondence sometimes comes from someone real eloquent and other times from someone who can't spell or handle grammer too well. The first couple weeks went okay in spite of this, I can find tutorials other places and it was cheap and the site was functioning fine. Then my site went down one day and stayed down for six hours. The following day it went down and stayed down a bit over an hour. Which was enough to convince me to move.

                      I have not cancelled Hostfinity yet it will be interesting to see how that goes, they say 30 day money back guarantee and we'll see whether that's really going to happen. Also when my site first went down, Hostfinity reps' initial response was their servers were all online and running fine. That, to me, is not a good answer to "my site is offline." Then I was told the downtime was the result of a server hardware problem. And the next day I was told it was a hacker problem and also they did not understand my concern this could happen with any host. I was not reassured by any scenario there.

                      Pair Networks: ( http://www.pairnetworks.com ) I signed up with Pair Networks next because I figured if they were hosting the creators of php they knew what they were doing with php and mysql. I signed up for the webmaster package which right now is discounted if you sign on for it, although there is a domain set up fee of $15 for each domain that is not really clearly mentioned up fornt. Some of the advantages of Pair Networks are they have great tutorials, a good search engine for the tutorials, and you can host as many domains as you would like on one account. Albeit each will cost you a set up fee. Parking is cheap, $1 per month per parked site, which seems across the board. Hosting more than one domain on one account is a pretty great feature if you use low bandwidth or your clients use low bandwidth and you want to host several domains on one account. It is not so great if you need a lot of bandwidth and data base storage however because you will outgrow that one account fast their allocations are not very big.

                      Some of the disadvantages that showed up for me with Pair Networks were, command functions were difficult to find, navigate, and were confusing to me, (I so did not want to relearn a whole new navigation system, sigh), they did not have customizable error pages (okay it is a vanity thing but it matters to me), and the bandwidth alloted to accounts was low compared to other host sites. So. Even if you could host more than one domain on one account, if one of those domains used a lot of badwidth, you were going to get bounced up fast to reseller and then have to start adding and changing out plans and upgrading fast. (I do not want to move again for a very long time so I would rather be somplace that gave me extra room to grow into in advance.)

                      Pair Networks has been very professional, was fast with responses to questions both before I got an account with them and after I got an account, as well as when I was leaving. When I cancelled my account they were fast and courteous and immediately credited my card back. Which says a lot because you often learn more about a place when you are leaving than you ever do while you are with them and they were good.

                      Ventures Online (http://www.venturesonline.com ): I'm currently on Ventures Online with two domains using their plan 3 for both. I chose them because everyone in here had real good things to say about them, (I was thinking about Hostrocket but someone had a rough time with them so I passed on them) they give you a lot of bandwidth and five mysql databases with the plan I have both domains on, #3, and once you have one account you can set that up as a reseller account and host your other domains at half price -- which means with two domains on separate accounts it is costing me the same as it would have cost to have two domains hosted on one account with Pair. And I have more than double the room. In addition, Ventures Online does not charge a set up fee for domains and Pair did.

                      Ventures Online support has been fast, courteous, and effective, although I have not been with them long I have, um, used that support a lot. There was trouble with POP mail on one account and it took some sorting out and should probably not have been that hard to set up a couple POP mailboxes, (there was no trouble setting up POP mailboxes on the main account it was some sort of virtual alias thing with the resold account) but they were on it and are always nice even though I am probably a problem child. (The computer gods just sort of designated me a learn things the hard way girl I think oh well.)

                      Ventures Online tutorials are not as good as Pair's tutorials, or as comprehensive, searches I do of VO tutorials usually come up empty meaning whatever problem or question I have is just not ever in there. They make up for this with fast support and I have gotten support late at night so this is not just a "we'll be here for you from 9 to 5" scenario. They work late. Although they are a little fast to close out trouble tickets I think, it's not too hard to start a new one so that works out okay too.

                      That's it. Hope it helps. And with luck I will not have any more hosts to report on for a long while here.
                      max

                      http://www.seemaxrun.com/forum

                      Comment

                      • electrobase
                        New Member
                        • Jul 2001
                        • 29

                        #12
                        iserver.com (just changed their name to viaVerio.com ), either URL seems to work.

                        a Verio company (but don't hold that against them.)

                        iserver is set up for for those who want to manage at a reasonably high level by themselves.

                        cgi scripting is supported, with several sample perl scripts

                        telnet, etc is very easy

                        Pros:

                        easy to manage, yet powerful features
                        subhosting limited only by performance and disk limit issues
                        unlimited emails, aliases.
                        pretty good tech support
                        VERY reliable
                        can register domains for $10/year, for up to 10 years.
                        ALL site management, including registrar transfer, is automated/selfserve

                        Cons:

                        a little pricy compared to some posted here (400 mB is $95.00/month) (seems fair for what we get
                        you have to suffer through a knowitall tech answer once per question before you convince them you know your *** from a hole in the ground, and then they are good with help.

                        bottom line: I have been hosting an industry directory site with them for three or four years (depending on how you count acquisitions), and have no desire to leave. they are just flat reliable.
                        Brian Cole
                        Publisher, electrobase
                        __________________

                        visit electrobase, a comprehensive directory of electronics industry distributors, manufacturers representatives, and the lines they carry.

                        Comment

                        • JohnM
                          Senior Member
                          • May 2000
                          • 622

                          #13
                          hostrocket - http://www.hostrocket.com/ - economy plan

                          my site on their servers - http://www.johnmiller2004.com

                          Pros:
                          1. Fast. vB seems to work fine, though
                          2. Very fast support. I had a question answered in 1 minute 30 seconds a moment ago.
                          3. Great control panel.
                          4. GZIP support.
                          5. Great features and price.

                          Cons:
                          1. Downtime?

                          Comment

                          • reveltaion456
                            Senior Member
                            • Jul 2001
                            • 216

                            #14
                            I have been using Ventures Online virtual hosting package four ever since I founded my vBulletin. It has 15 GB of bandwidth and 350 MB of diskspace for about $20.00 USD

                            Pros:

                            Usually Fast
                            Easy to use (Control Panel)
                            Good prices
                            Good customer support

                            Cons:

                            May have some slow periods from time to time
                            Some downtime but not a lot

                            Comment

                            • Jake Bunce
                              Senior Member
                              • Dec 2000
                              • 46598
                              • 3.6.x

                              #15
                              keep the discussion to other threads. you will clutter this thread so it won't be as effective.

                              Comment

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