Please help me pick what kind of hosting I need.

[Michael McCallum]

Hello, and thanks for coming.

I plan on purchasing a vBulletin license in the near future and I'd like to have a good host for my website that has little downtime with fast speeds. Although I'll obviously be starting out very small with a few members, I plan on going big with this forum and I don't want to have to upgrade to another host again and again. Please note that I am a newbie to hosting, but not managing a community.

I've looked at a few different hosts but I can't decide. Should I go with shared hosting such as TMDHosting (I've used them for a personal site, they're not bad) or VPS hosting? For the option you think is best, please also specify a website where I can get it all setup.

Thanks.

[anthonyparsons]

Your initial statement on planning to go big and not having to move hosts, immediately rules out shared hosting and more likely you are best with a VPS that is scalable. It all comes down to $$$.

VPS.net are good, with a lot of instant scalability, that it is more like cloud hosting that VPS, yet with VPS benefits of root access. Wiredtree are exceptionally good hosts, excellent package, high end equipment. ServInt have premium VPS, if you want the best... being true enterprise level architecture using 15k SCSI RAID10. Linode have some cheap VPS solutions if you know how to manage a server yourself.

[Michael McCallum]

Your initial statement on planning to go big and not having to move hosts, immediately rules out shared hosting and more likely you are best with a VPS that is scalable. It all comes down to $$$.

VPS.net are good, with a lot of instant scalability, that it is more like cloud hosting that VPS, yet with VPS benefits of root access. Wiredtree are exceptionally good hosts, excellent package, high end equipment. ServInt have premium VPS, if you want the best... being true enterprise level architecture using 15k SCSI RAID10. Linode have some cheap VPS solutions if you know how to manage a server yourself.

Thanks for posting!

However, it will take a while for my forum to actually kick off. How much do you think HostGator's business web hosting plan can handle compared to level three of their VPS hosting plan?

[anthonyparsons]

My advice would be to steer clear of someone like hostgator... way to many issues with companies like that when running commercial grade forums nowadays. They endup forcing you up and up to dedicated, all with zero access to really see or understand things for yourself. If you want to run a commercial grade forum, stick with the appropriate hosting quality that goes with it.

Just my two cents.