Good US Hosting Needed Urgently

[3 MORE YEARS]

Hello All,

I need to find good hosting quickly, like today or tomorrow.

I have American sites and UK sites. For the US ones I use well known US hosting company with good reviews. I have been recently very disappointed. I have cPanel Hosting with them and have daily or online backup as part of my plan. However, it's now nearly 12 hours and my site is still not restored.

I am glad I found this out now before later, before making my site live.

I am looking for good US hosting company where I get regular backup (even better if it's more than once a day), and the restores are not going to take this long.

I have been really happy with my UK hosting company, Vidahost. The do provide very good service. I need to find an US version like them.

Thanks

 

[TotallySport]

have you asked vidahost who they would recommend?

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

I have sent the guys there an email just now actually after I posted this. I have contacted them in the past about it, and they had plans of having servers in the USA but I don't know if it's been implemented.

I own IT related businesses but I am not a "technician" or that technical, and people are shocked when they hear that. I understand it on a bigger perspective then most technicians. But I don't know the details is probably the best way to describe it. But I employ people for that. So when it comes to hosting, if things go wrong, I want to send and email and for someone just to deal with it and just get it done. I don't mind paying a bit extra for that (within reason). In those terms the guys at Vidahost have been brilliant. Most companies as they grow change and stop proving strong service. So far Vidahost have managed to maintain it. I hope they continue in that path. I need a similar type of company in the US. I thought the company I chose was like that. But it seems not.

 

[GarryP]

Hi,

You could look at HawkHost.com
They have 3 USA locations, I believe.

I have used them and have had no server issues and they reply to support tickets are fast

 

[Cambridgeshire Website Design]

I've always used http://www.ipage.com and never had a problem. I'm currently checking out https://www.vidahost.com/ thanks for the recommendation

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

Thanks all.

I have made a lot of calls today trying find descent hosting. Initially I just need shared hosting to start off with. However, I have learnt that with shared hosting you can't get SALA's even when you are willing to pay extra. Which is a bit of a surprise.

I have to admit it's been very frustrating to find a good shared hosting in the USA.

Tell me if I am asking for too much? I want a website that has good cpanel hosting. I want regular backup once a day if not more frequently done by the hosting company. If the website goes down I would like to rais e a ticket and expect the hosting company to restore it within 2 or 3 hours. Ideally within an hour. Now even if I am willing to pay extra for this most hosting companies cannot do this. The ones that do, do it because they have good service staff like Vidahost.

For the moment I have decided on the following, I am not sure if it will work. It's only because I have not found a good hosting company. I will pay my currently hosting company $40 a month to give me admin time and to allow me to have a premium service where I can call and email them 24/7 for help. I am not mentioning their name because I want to give them a chance to sort this out. Secondly, I have contacted Vidahost and they now have 1 US server. So I have taken another account with them. So I will have 2 hosting accounts. So if one fails I will move to the other. This is the bit where it get's tricky and where I am not so sure. I want fault tolerance or failover without paying the premium. I will have my wordpress/ecommerce site on one hosting, and I will do a duplicate site on another. I will update both sites manually quite regularly. So I am hoping if "Hosting Company A" messes up, then I can quickly change the name servers and switch to "Hosting Company B". Is this plan bad?

Anyway, that's where I am.

 

[DavidHorn]

Glad you've found a solution you're happy(ish) with. If you ever need to revisit US based hosts, I use - and can recommend wholly - two hosts:

http://mediatemple.net
http://idologic.com

Both have really good phone support; Idologic have better email support than Mediatemple, but overall Mediatemple's product offering and range of services is probably stronger than Idologic's.

I pay Mediatemple $100 per month for an upgraded version of their DV package - it's exceptional, but probably more than you need. I'd recommend their $20 per month Grid Service.

With Idologic, I have a reseller account which costs me about $30 per month.

Like I say, I can recommend both companies highly,

David

 

[amac]

AWS. If you're looking for the best range of services plus the most reliability, they're the best host in my opinion.

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

Thanks. I have heard of Media Temple. One of my old clients who were in the media industry was using them. I will look at both. Do you know if they can do what I am asking for? Which if I had my wish would be backup more than once a day, and restore with 1-2 hours. I want that and not have to pay a fortune. With most backups, I assume it's a matter of automation and couple of clicks to do a restore. So it's not really labour intensive.

Glad you've found a solution you're happy(ish) with. If you ever need to revisit US based hosts, I use - and can recommend wholly - two hosts:

http://mediatemple.net
http://idologic.com

Both have really good phone support; Idologic have better email support than Mediatemple, but overall Mediatemple's product offering and range of services is probably stronger than Idologic's.

I pay Mediatemple $100 per month for an upgraded version of their DV package - it's exceptional, but probably more than you need. I'd recommend their $20 per month Grid Service.

With Idologic, I have a reseller account which costs me about $30 per month.

Like I say, I can recommend both companies highly,

David

 

[Sparx]

I have used Eleven2.com in the past for their UK cPanel servers. However they are mainly based and have the biggest presence in the US. They have very quick support ticket response times, low load (i.e. not congested), can provide daily backups and are reasonably priced.

If I recall they even offer to transfer your sites to them for free, but I didn't take them up on this as I am capable of doing this myself! They have a useful iPhone app as well to manage your hosting account with them.

Any web projects I have, I always go to them.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

Hello All,

I need to find good hosting quickly, like today or tomorrow.

I have American sites and UK sites. For the US ones I use well known US hosting company with good reviews. I have been recently very disappointed. I have cPanel Hosting with them and have daily or online backup as part of my plan. However, it's now nearly 12 hours and my site is still not restored.

I am glad I found this out now before later, before making my site live.

I am looking for good US hosting company where I get regular backup (even better if it's more than once a day), and the restores are not going to take this long.

I have been really happy with my UK hosting company, Vidahost. The do provide very good service. I need to find an US version like them.

Thanks

We were originally a US company and operate out of NJ/NYC Metro, Atlanta and Dallas. I'm confident you'll love the service.

Matt

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

I phoned Media Temple. They sales guy seemed to be against the idea of automatic backup of the hosting/website by the hosting company. He said they did not do it. Then he said they did do it for an one off fee of $75. All very confusing. I am going to stick to my plan for now. Off having two hosting companies and replicating it manually.

 

[JonathanSEO]

I have taken another account with them. So I will have 2 hosting accounts. So if one fails I will move to the other. This is the bit where it get's tricky and where I am not so sure. I want fault tolerance or failover without paying the premium. I will have my wordpress/ecommerce site on one hosting, and I will do a duplicate site on another. I will update both sites manually quite regularly. So I am hoping if "Hosting Company A" messes up, then I can quickly change the name servers and switch to "Hosting Company B". Is this plan bad?

Anyway, that's where I am.

Terrible idea. It can take over 24 hours for DNS changes to propagate over the Internet. So if site A went down and you changed the name servers to Site B's IP address then by the time it's visible across the globe Site A hosting will be fixed meaning a pointless exercise.

Also, why on earth would you maintain 2 identical websites just in case one goes down? Completely illogical.

If you have a reliable host then you're going to have close to zero downtime anyway so all in all pointless exercise.

Glad you're not doing IT Support for me

 

[JonathanSEO]

I phoned Media Temple. They sales guy seemed to be against the idea of automatic backup of the hosting/website by the hosting company. He said they did not do it. Then he said they did do it for an one off fee of $75. All very confusing. I am going to stick to my plan for now. Off having two hosting companies and replicating it manually.

Haha this is too funny. You are not seriously planning on for example, uploading a product on Ecommerce Site A and then uploading the same product on Ecommerce Site B (which is identical to site A just hosted on a different server) as a method of ensuring no down time by quickly changing name servers if one site goes down??

Pretty sure here are plenty hosting companies on there that will help and explain what you need to do in terms of hosting + back ups. Your plan is ridiculous. Would like to see it in action though.

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

@JonathanSEO, thank you. I don't do too badly for someone with terrible ideas.

Thank you.

 

[Optegris]

I take it then jonathan you have never heard of dynamic dns or failover hosting solutions?

To the op, if 100% uptime is critical to you the I would suggest looking at a redundant setup so your site could be hosted on a mini private cloud with the data in a redundant storage or san. The problem is you have to double the servers so you always have a failover.

Frankly, unless you are generating some serious cash, this may be overkill so reliance on a quick restore system might be preferable.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

I take it then jonathan you have never heard of dynamic dns or failover hosting solutions?

To the op, if 100% uptime is critical to you the I would suggest looking at a redundant setup so your site could be hosted on a mini private cloud with the data in a redundant storage or san. The problem is you have to double the servers so you always have a failover.

Frankly, unless you are generating some serious cash, this may be overkill so reliance on a quick restore system might be preferable.

This.

Round-robin DNS won't work for anything but a static site and even then, its a messy way to do it.

I'd say your options are:

- reliable shared hosting with an uptime guarantee - something you have confidence in, and understanding that a shared server even with a great track record can have issues

- a dedicated server with a network uptime guarantee - so any server issues are likely only to be caused by you

- a redundant cloud/cluster

@OP how much is your time worth? You have to value is appropriately. Trying to manually replicate a website over a long time will be hugely expensive. Just choose the right platform, tens of millions of other e-commerce sites do.

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

Hi Guys, Both hosting companies are very good. They probably have some of the best review. It's often down to personal opinion. The site went down yesterday because it was something I have done. However, it's not about fault. I want to the re-assurance. For me paying for two hosting is not much of a spend for this business. I will probably go into even more serious dedicated hosting once the new venture moves in to full operation, until then I don't want to spend that much money. But I have hardly had any sites go down with Vidahost or Lunarpages. So I would not nock them as companies. They are not perfect. I have always done Blue Peter Style cereal box DIY jobs until I get things going, and so far it has not served me too badly, I am still in business, and have more than one business.

When I update the Nameservers, normally it does not take more than an hour. Plus I will have extra backups now, and extra support.

 

[JonathanSEO]

I take it then jonathan you have never heard of dynamic dns or failover hosting solutions?

Yeah, I have both those features as part of my Bluehost $4.95 a month package.

 

[Alan]

So I will have 2 hosting accounts. So if one fails I will move to the other. This is the bit where it get's tricky and where I am not so sure. I want fault tolerance or failover without paying the premium. I will have my wordpress/ecommerce site on one hosting, and I will do a duplicate site on another. I will update both sites manually quite regularly. So I am hoping if "Hosting Company A" messes up, then I can quickly change the name servers and switch to "Hosting Company B". Is this plan bad?

If you don't want to spend a fortune but want to be able to recover reasonable quickly but don't need true fault tolerance, why don't you set up automated nightly backups of your whole account from your cpanel to another host. And if your site goes down all you need to do is restore the back up on your secondary server.

It is a long time since I have operated as a 'end user' on cpanel, and will depend on hosts if they have 'enabled' all the tools you need, however a good 'trick' is to pay for a reseller account where you get WHM access then you have full control over the tools.

Although if your site is that important to you, I would seriously think about NOT using a shared host and used a Virtual Server or two.

This a is simple but effective backup strategy. More of what we would term a DR (Disaster Recovery) Strategy, rather than Fault Tolerance (which is more about availability in real time rather than to recover in an hour or two technically + DNS propagation time)

 

[Optegris]

I see. No mention of this on their site. Mind if I was looking for complete stability I wouldn't be hosting on a server that offers unlimited everything for the same price as a pizza each month but I digress...

 

[Alan]

I see. No mention of this on their site. Mind if I was looking for complete stability I wouldn't be hosting on a server that offers unlimited everything for the same price as a pizza each month but I digress...

lol unlimited everything except the things they don't mention, such as processor time, inodes, memory etc because of course all servers are naturally unlimited

 

[webhostuk]

We have our sister company Webhost US offering hosting on US server. Incase you require any help feel free to contact us.

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

Shockingly Media Temple do not have automated backup on their shared hosting even on £20 a month.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

Yeah, I have both those features as part of my Bluehost $4.95 a month package.

BlueHost has failover? You sure that isn't clever marketing? Their founder created www.BetterLinux.com after selling BlueHost as a way of cramming more sites on 1 server (the tech was developed while he was at BH). It does not support hardware failover.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

We have our sister company Webhost US offering hosting on US server. Incase you require any help feel free to contact us.

You never clarified in a previous thread why you're a director of 92 (seemingly non or barely trading companies)? Huge red flag if I was doing thorough due diligence.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

Shockingly Media Temple do not have automated backup on their shared hosting even on £20 a month.

What do you mean by automated backups? What exactly do you require?

 

[mariuszc]

I am using Webhost US and I can honestly recommend!

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

I spoke to Media Temple a few times. Some people rave on about them. They have some horrifying reviews about their grid and some good reviews.

I was going to consider their VPS. However, my experience with them: in short one of the sneakiest companies/sales guys who would not answer your questions straight. I should have recorded the calls so you could hear it.

Here is a classic example: VPS hosting $50 a month. You cannot do a backup and download it. If you backup to your own VPS it defeats the whole point of backup. So you are forced to backup to their servers, which is an additional $20 a month. I think it includes 5 backups or something. Very sneaky. They would only admit to it when I forced them to a point where they had to agree that there the backup options were limited. They will argue that their servers never go down so you don't have to worry about backup, that was the argument of one MT sales guy...right...

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

I spoke to Media Temple a few times. Some people rave on about them. They have some horrifying reviews about their grid and some good reviews.

I was going to consider their VPS. However, my experience with them: in short one of the sneakiest companies/sales guys who would not answer your questions straight. I should have recorded the calls so you could hear it.

Here is a classic example: VPS hosting $50 a month. You cannot do a backup and download it. If you backup to your own VPS it defeats the whole point of backup. So you are forced to backup to their servers, which is an additional $20 a month. I think it includes 5 backups or something. Very sneaky. They would only admit to it when I forced them to a point where they had to agree that there the backup options were limited. They will argue that their servers never go down so you don't have to worry about backup, that was the argument of one MT sales guy...right...

Sadly, the industry is rife with tactics like this. There's a few honest providers out there that don't hammer you with hidden fees or nasty sales tactics (us, VidaHost, HTTPme, etc) but they can be few and far between. I wish it was different as it gives the industry a bad name.