hosting options

[adamuk18]

we are currently with names.co.uk - service at times lacking and very expensive renewing domains etc

Maybe now is the time for change.

We are currently seeing crazy page load times on our opencart setup. We are on a vps package at the moment.

Can anybody recommend an alternative? we would prefer to stick to a brand rather than a bedroom operation.

 

[Ian J]

Not being rude but have you looked at the other dozens of threads on the same subject here?

 

[arnydnxluk]

If you're on a VPS then Namesco should be able to identify the exact issue for you and tweak the configuration to improve load times.

Do you know what version of PHP you're on? I would recommend upgrading to PHP 7.x if you haven't already as you'll see huge performance gains and server load will be reduced.

I would recommend Freethought Internet in general but they don't offer fixed managed server prices and I suspect the price for management would be fairly high in comparison to most providers. Guru may be a good bet for managed servers with fixed price plans.

 

[arnydnxluk]

Not sure why you would put a live, shopping site on a VPS either, as a VPS is a step sideways, not an upgrade, however sadly, most shared hosting is setup so bad, that firms will push a VPS as an upgrade from shared, when in fact is only an upgrade is the shared servers are more crowded than a rush-hour train in China.

I don't see how you can say this without knowing the specs of the shared hosting account or the VPS. Let's say the typical shared hosting has access to use a single CPU thread, 512MB - 1GB memory and some fixed number of concurrent processes. A VPS in comparison may have shared access to 4, 6, 8, 12 or more threads, 4GB, 8GB, 12GB, 24GB or more RAM and open as many processes as it can handle. Naturally a VPS therefore can be an upgrade path when someone has outgrown the typical specs of a shared hosting account, right?

Why would you not put a live e-commerce site on a VPS? Shared hosting has limited performance and other potential issues due to the amount of accounts on a single server, dedicated servers lack the advantages of virtual servers such as live migration, easy disk snapshots, easy disaster recovery, etc. A virtual server of some sort is a good setup.

 

[adamuk18]

I have not read other threads although I will do now. interesting responses thanks.

I have asked the host the spec of what we are on and will post that here. long page load times and that was just testing with 1 user (site is not currently live to the public) I dread to think what will happen when we have multiple visitors browsing at the same time.

I have been with Namesco for the best part of 15 years and have been meaning to leave when the right time comes along. This seems to be it...

 

[adamuk18]

ok we currently have

2 vCores
1GB RAM
25ggb SSD storage

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Depending on the virtualisation technology used, that's quite low for RAM. 2GB would be more reasonable if you're running cPanel.

Not all virtualisation technologies are the same - in terms of performance, separation, reliability, and RAM requirement.

It may well be an issue with the configuration though.

Or they're simply cramming too many virtual servers on the same node (physical server), which wouldn't be surprising given you're using Namesco - a mass market US host.

We've mostly dealt with their shared hosting and it's very slow for that reason, with a lot of technical issues that shouldn't exist.

 

[adamuk18]

behind the scenes it uses plesk.

 

[adamuk18]

I am looking at several options tonight - Baring in mind going forward we will anticipate having around 10,000 visitors daily with perhaps 50 concurrent users at any 1 time.

would 8gb be overkill in your opinion? or would 4gb be ok?

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Do you currently have a Windows or Linux VPS?

I imagine you're not running Windows, and wouldn't recommend this unless you have a specific need for it. Windows has a higher RAM requirement, and due to that and licensing costs it typically is more expensive for the same performance.

Linux also is arguably a more natural home for PHP/MySQL driven open source platforms such as OpenCart.

The RAM requirement applies to Plesk as well - it can be expected to use a bit more RAM than cPanel. They're both full featured control panels that require more RAM for the VPS than if you weren't running them.

That's fairly high usage. 4GB of RAM should be okay. 8GB probably wouldn't be overkill if you want high performance. But normally we'd recommend 4GB in this case, and you can always upgrade if you need. That way you're not paying for more than you need.

I would start with 4GB over 2GB though.

I hope that helps,

Dan

 

[arnydnxluk]

ok we currently have

2 vCores
1GB RAM
25ggb SSD storage

These are really minimal specs - you can obtain these specs with shared hosting plans for about £10/month without the overhead of running your operating system, Plesk, etc.

So, it's not surprising your website isn't loading quickly.

However before you look at throwing more resources at your website, I would look into these options:

• Upgrade to PHP 7 if you haven't already
• Ensure PHP's opcache is enabled
• Use page caching where possible

These improvements will help massively and compliment any resource upgrades.

I am looking at several options tonight - Baring in mind going forward we will anticipate having around 10,000 visitors daily with perhaps 50 concurrent users at any 1 time.

would 8gb be overkill in your opinion? or would 4gb be ok?

The important thing here is how you define "50 concurrent users", I am guessing you mean 50 people browsing the website at one time, which in reality might perhaps mean 10 concurrent page hits (PHP requests) per second.

To work out how much memory you need to serve this many users, you need to know how much memory each request uses on average - this varies between different websites. Let's say each request uses 50MB of memory while being processed, which is a typical amount, therefore for 10 concurrent page requests you would need 500MB memory. Then you need memory for MySQL - this would depend on the size and storage engine of your database so it's impossible to say, but let's call it 1GB - this should be plenty from what we know about your website so far. Then finally leave some overhead for the operating system and spikes, you might want a total of 2GB RAM bare minimum to run the website.

In terms of CPU, for a low number of concurrent requests, 1 modern CPU thread should realistically be enough.

I would therefore say, at a guess, that 4GB RAM would be absolutely fine for your website, even if the server is running a bloaty control panel too.

To give an idea I run a website handling 1,000,000 PHP requests per day (about 12/seconds on average, more at peak time) and a current average of 403 database queries per second (write heavy) on a standard 8GB (4 vCPU) DigitalOcean droplet with plenty of room for growth.

What's your budget for the new server?

 

[webhostuk]

If its dedicated server 4 GB ( not VPS) should do the trick, that's my personal view.
VPS resources can be unpredictable at times as its still a shared resources server.

 

[arnydnxluk]

If its dedicated server 4 GB ( not VPS) should do the trick, that's my personal view.
VPS resources can be unpredictable at times as its still a shared resources server.

The resources should not be unpredictable with a good provider. I have no problem consuming the promised resources with providers such as DigitalOcean, Google or Linode. If you're having issues then this should be raised with the provider so that you can be moved to a different node or an abuser can be suspended, although the customer should not have to raise such issues.

It's not as though the OP's website is going to be super heavy on IO or CPU usage either, which are the shared resources which have typically been an issue with virtualisation in the past.

These days the hardware is so good (with cloud providers using arrays of NVMe SSD's in storage for example) that anything but the most heavy IO/CPU workloads should be virtualised in my opinion.

 

[jazperson]

If you want to change your hosting, try Jolt Hosting's VPS package. Their support is very friendly and they are affordable. You should also consider tweaking and optimizing your website. Having a lot of plugins and big sized images can slow down your page loading.
If you want to change your hosting, try Jolt Hosting's VPS package. Their support is very friendly and they are affordable. You should also consider tweaking and optimizing your website. Having a lot of plugins and big sized images can slow down your page loading.

 

[GURUCLOUD]

RAM is RAM generally and if you're buying a VPS with xGB of RAM you should be allocated it, 'overselling' this is a bad idea in so many ways..

Thanks for the recommendation, do let us know if you have any questions!

 

[Ian J]

i think you must shift to iweb

Why?

 

[Breffni Potter]

The big popular brands for VPS products are over-subscribed and generally slow. Either find a partner company where you give the user load count and they will deliver a monitored solution that will always hit certain speed benchmarks OR look at AWS, Azure, OVH for hosting your own assets directly.

Very few resellers have their own tin in a data centre anymore and those who do are either over-priced or over-subscribed with users and apps.

 

[adamuk18]

many thanks for all of your help. I ended up going with a member from this forum and 4gb and the site is running alot better than it was. Should have moved from namesco a long long time ago. Glad I made the jump.

 

[Paralabs]

In fact, "now finding a normal hosting is a problem!"

Because expensive does not mean quality at all,
and cheap does not mean that you will regret.