Hosting Query?

[Clodbuster]

I'm currently on a shared server with my Magento platform but I am at the limits of its capacity. I've been quoted £45.00 (ex VAT) for a VPS server, 10GB disk space, 768MB RAM, 50GB bandwidth per month from my current provider. I have found these alternate options offering the same/similar specs but I don't know if they are the same

simpleservers.co.uk/magento-hosting?gclid=CMiAiY26tLsCFS3JtAodu3MA2A...£29.00
heartinternet.co.uk/vps...£38.00
tsohost.com/product/web-hosting...£20.00

What is "Cloud Hosting" - as far as I can read you pay for what traffic you receive?

 

[HostLoveUK]

Magento can be relatively resource hungry, what is the spec of your current VPS?

Cloud hosting is when numerous servers spin off each other to create a redundant platform and you will be assigned a proportion of space and RAM. Proper cloud hosting such as VMware is relatively expensive as it is a high availability and very reliable/redundant server.

Do you know what spec of server you require, does your website operate any other high intensity applications or features?



I hope this helps.

 

[ldjames]

£45/month strikes me as quite expensive for a server of that specification. That said, Magento is very resource-intensive and this is usually caused by the number of products and categories you have (as Google will crawl through them all constantly).

How many products and categories do you have?

 

[Alex - A2 Hosting]

I'm currently on a shared server with my Magento platform but I am at the limits of its capacity. I've been quoted £45.00 (ex VAT) for a VPS server, 10GB disk space, 768MB RAM, 50GB bandwidth per month from my current provider. I have found these alternate options offering the same/similar specs but I don't know if they are the same

*Links

What is "Cloud Hosting" - as far as I can read you pay for what traffic you receive?

Who is your current provider? That spec as you outlined above does seem rather expensive. Does it include SSD drives? cPanel license? Full server management etc? Which all of our SSD VPS packages include at a much lower rate. In all honesty for £45 + VAT per month you should be looking at a much higher spec than the one above at that price point.

 

[DigitalDaz]

As these other guys are saying, £45 is way over the odds, you can get a fully dedicated server with 32G RAM for that sort of money. How about: Xeon E3 1220v2, 8GB RAM, 2 x 1 TB HD, £30 a month. online.net

 

[Matthew : TekHive Hosting]

£45.00 (ex VAT) is pretty pricey for what your looking for, however be sure to do your research before you commit to a provider. They may be cheaper but with that can also come poor service.

 

[KM-Tiger]

They may be cheaper but with that can also come poor service.

Indeed the price differences here are surely neither here nor there to a viable business.

What matters more is whether the website is up and earning money, or if it's not, how quickly and how well will it be fixed.

 

[DigitalDaz]

Online.net do a business support package for £20 a month that give you a HP technician guaranteed intervention within 4 hours.

If that's not good enough look at high availability cloud solutions but choose a decent provider.

 

[Bart Simpson]

I'm currently on a shared server with my Magento platform but I am at the limits of its capacity. I've been quoted £45.00 (ex VAT) for a VPS server, 10GB disk space, 768MB RAM, 50GB bandwidth per month from my current provider. I have found these alternate options offering the same/similar specs but I don't know if they are the same

simpleservers.co.uk/magento-hosting?gclid=CMiAiY26tLsCFS3JtAodu3MA2A...£29.00
heartinternet.co.uk/vps...£38.00
tsohost.com/product/web-hosting...£20.00

What is "Cloud Hosting" - as far as I can read you pay for what traffic you receive?

Well, that price is quite high for what you are receiving. We (eUKhost.com) provide vps hosting with free 24x7 support at very affordable prices. Currently there are Christmas promotions going on too, you can check out our website for more info or PM me for the best quote.

 

[Clodbuster]

Thanks very much - I'll be looking around. How do I know how much Bandwidth I need?

 

[Alex - A2 Hosting]

Thanks very much - I'll be looking around. How do I know how much Bandwidth I need?

This would really depend on your current traffic and expected growth rate. Is your current provider cPanel based? If so you should find some general bandwidth stats in the left sidebar.

 

[HostLoveUK]

@Clodbuster I would be happy to look at options we have available for yourself.. If you know your requirements feel free to send me a DM, include your budget, and I will look for a solution for yourself.

The majority of suppliers will likely offer you unlimited bandwidth.

I hope this helps you.

 

[andygambles]

I'm currently on a shared server with my Magento platform but I am at the limits of its capacity. I've been quoted £45.00 (ex VAT) for a VPS server, 10GB disk space, 768MB RAM, 50GB bandwidth per month from my current provider. I have found these alternate options offering the same/similar specs but I don't know if they are the same

What capacity limits have you reached?

 

[Paul Norman]

I cannot comment on the actual prices, as they are for massively less spec than we use, but I can offer this tip.

Never, ever, skimp on your hosting. You need high levels of resiliance, you need excellent support (I insist on being able to phone a real person), and you need to be certain of performance levels. Obviously, the requirements do depend on your traffic aspirations, and the size of your data, but it is worth spending more to get more in this arena.

 

[Woodham90]

@Clodbuster - Problem with cloud servers is that the vital information such as the amount of people sharing your resource is hard to get and is never advertised. Cloud can be a great resilient way of having a server. Although, if it is performance you are after which you know exactly what you are getting for your money then i would go for a dedicated server of your own for the price your paying you can get a decent spec server for that much.

 

[Clodbuster]

What capacity limits have you reached?

Don't know - I'm being told my database is too big.

 

[HostLoveUK]

@Clodbuster what specification is your current VPS?

 

[mzone]

Don't know - I'm being told my database is too big.

What your database size is?
How much bandwidth have you used last month?

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

As these other guys are saying, £45 is way over the odds, you can get a fully dedicated server with 32G RAM for that sort of money. How about: Xeon E3 1220v2, 8GB RAM, 2 x 1 TB HD, £30 a month. online.net

That's going to be a piece of junk hardware in a piece of junk datacentre at that price point.

Not good for a valuable e-commerce site where it has to be online at all times.

Matt

 

[Alex - A2 Hosting]

Don't know - I'm being told my database is too big.

Ask them to provide you with your exact resource usage. If you have been quoted that

As these other guys are saying, £45 is way over the odds, you can get a fully dedicated server with 32G RAM for that sort of money. How about: Xeon E3 1220v2, 8GB RAM, 2 x 1 TB HD, £30 a month. online.net

£30 per month for that spec? Wow. Sorry but +1 to Matt's comment, not sure any reputable business would offer that server at that price point as essentially there is no profit in that! If you want reliability for your money, a dedicated server at £30 is an instant red flag. Let alone those specs!

 

[SolutionLab]

Two points :

One, cloud hosting can mean many things in practice and some of it is rubbish. If you want cloud hosting go for established companies like Amazon Web Services. They can be quite expensive but they do a great job, we include them in our website design packages and we're very happy with them because they offer what cloud hosting is supposed to offer : great performance and flexible costs. The gent quoting you £45 is probably selling you his/her own servers and that can be a disaster. Try Siteground also, they're cheaper than Amazon Web Services and it's done properly if not ideal.


That said, do you really need cloud hosting ? We offer it to differentiate ourselves and because it means zero hosting problems for our clients but it can be an overkill. 1&1 offers a lot of cheap hosting and if you get the package that has CloudFlare added you won't notice any problems except if you really need resources.

 

[Clodbuster]

@Clodbuster what specification is your current VPS?

I have no idea - when my website was built I was simply advised by the developer that this was adequate and accepted his word. 'Till now it has been OK. I've asked but not received a reply yet.

That said, do you really need cloud hosting ?

No sport I don't really, I simply don't know anything about it but if it is suitable why not find out about it. It was only when I began looking for alternatives that I saw it offered.

 

[SolutionLab]

I have no idea - when my website was built I was simply advised by the developer that this was adequate and accepted his word. 'Till now it has been OK. I've asked but not received a reply yet.

No sport I don't really, I simply don't know anything about it but if it is suitable why not find out about it. It was only when I began looking for alternatives that I saw it offered.

Regarding the developer, the plain truth is that many in our profession who go freelance bundle their services with some very poor hosting because the problems show up long after the money has been exchanged even though it's just a few percentage points off the profit margin. Also, reagding your current developer, dig up whatever contracts you have with him/her - he/she will be losing some money off annual hosting renewal if you leave and you never know with some people.

Anyway, by all means try 1&1 or Siteground as low cost hosting that still gets the job done. With 1&1, if money isn't very tight, try the CloudFlare option and the same holds for Siteground. It doesn't make it cloud hosting but it does make it faster and less resource demanding. Call center people for both comapnies are Indian but they've improved a lot in the past few years and we didn't have any issues with their support so far.

 

[HostLoveUK]

In order to avoid any resource limitations or Magento eating up all available resources on a VPS I would suggest you getting your own dedicated server. Would you consider this an option? If so, are you familiar with operating a server such as via Plesk?

 

[Alex - A2 Hosting]

@Easyspace. Why would you recommend a dedicated server when from the sounds of it he has just outgrown the shared environment and has been quoted by the same company a low spec VPS? I am sure it would be better if he spent his money on a decent spec (and priced) VPS and then upgrade as he needs to.

With the information in this thread it does seem that a dedicated server is a little overkill.

 

[ryedale]

I run a web design company offering hosting to around 250 clients and I've been through my fair share of VPS and dedicated servers over the years with several different companies!. Spend as much time as you can reading reviews on the quality of support that a company offers as it can make all the difference and it's hard to move again once you've got set up somewhere

Try and find someone whose support is UK based and available to discuss issues over the phone 24/7. Even if costs more, you'll wish you'd spent the money when you've just been explaining an issue for the 5th time to a foreign call centre and your server has been down for 4 hours

I was using a cloud based set up with a UK company and I had several clients using database intensive applications like Magento but I found I was encountering continual issues with Disk IO wait times as the storage devices simply couldn't keep up at peak times so I had to switch solutions in the end (not fun with 250 sites and various DNS records all over the place!)

If you get a Linux VPS with WHM/Cpanel, I really recommend having a look at a company called configserver (you'll have to Google it as I can't post links yet!) They do an optimisation service for new server set ups and their exploit scanner and AV service have saved clients from numerous exploits

 

[Alex - A2 Hosting]

Iand it's hard to move again once you've got set up somewhere

Not really. We make migrations and transfers rather easy as do many hosting providers. Simply provide us with your cPanel log in details and we perform the migration . The only step required from the client is updating their nameservers to point to our servers.

That being said, of course do you research as once you are set up someone you don't really want to have to go do another migration.

Try and find someone whose support is UK based and available to discuss issues over the phone 24/7. Even if costs more, you'll wish you'd spent the money when you've just been explaining an issue for the 5th time to a foreign call centre and your server has been down for 4 hours

Support over the phone is not the best idea. Servers go down for a reason, things crash for a reason. Over the phone it is hard for the technician to properly troubleshoot the issues and resolve the issue. We have found our help desk (covered 24 / 7) is much better for this as it keeps everything recorded and enables our techs to really look into the issue indepth to ensure they don't occur again.

 

[ryedale]

Having phone support is important if as is the case with a lot of providers, a ticket goes unanswered for an hour or more and you have a mission critical need for the server to be attended to. I fully agree that it's good to document stuff on a ticket, but for peace of mind, sometimes, it is a lot quicker to get help via the phone

Especially if also, you are off site and don't have access to a pc to raise a ticket but you've had alerts that there is a server issue

'The only step required from the client is updating their nameservers to point to our servers.'

And that's the fun part if you have a lot of clients on the server who manage their own DNS, getting them to a.do it and b. do it correctly can take a long time

If you only have your own site on the server or you manage all the DNS for your clients, then obviously, it's not so bad to move stuff again

 

[KM-Tiger]

If so, are you familiar with operating a server such as via Plesk?

I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

 

[DigitalDaz]

That's going to be a piece of junk hardware in a piece of junk datacentre at that price point.

Not good for a valuable e-commerce site where it has to be online at all times.

Matt

What hope have people got when people make statements like this.

The server is a Hewlett Packard. Since when did HP become junk?

Seems to me that most people in this thread offering advice also want to sell the OP something too. The OP may well be advised to visit forums like Web Hosting Talk where he will be able to find long term reviews of different providers and get some advice from others actually using the services rather than selling them.

 

[HostLoveUK]

I was simply offering up the option of a dedicated server as for £45 pm for a VPS with 10GB disk space and 768MB RAM is relatively expensive. It is down to personal preference and I suggest when you have decided what type of server and spec you require, you have a look around for excellent: server reviews, SLAs and reliable technical support.

 

[Clodbuster]

Thanks very much all, my current provider has come back with a solution I can accept (perhaps they've been reading this thread) and I'd rather stay with the devil I know and am happy with. I certainly know more about the ins and outs of hosting now.

Much obliged and have a wonderful festive season and a great 2014 to you all.

 

[HostLoveUK]

@Clodbuster I am glad you have found a solution that you are happy with! Same to yourself and I wish you all the best for 2014.

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

What hope have people got when people make statements like this.

The server is a Hewlett Packard. Since when did HP become junk?

Seems to me that most people in this thread offering advice also want to sell the OP something too. The OP may well be advised to visit forums like Web Hosting Talk where he will be able to find long term reviews of different providers and get some advice from others actually using the services rather than selling them.

A HP rack server? So a ProLiant? You can see what new HP servers cost at www.hp.co.uk. For something to cost that little, you're looking at a Gen5 or Gen6 server. So potentially up to 5 years old.

On top of that, power is not free. Real estate is not free. Bandwidth is not free. Build in redundancy to all of these and you have significant overheads.

So I'd flip your statement back to you and say what hope is there for people that put importance behind uptime, security and stability when bottom of the barrel providers push out antique hardware in garden shed datacentres. This may be fine for your university project. It isn't fine for an e-commerce site.

My username is 'mdrussell' on WHT. Do look me and my experience up.

Matt

 

[DigitalDaz]

Check out the antique hardware in the garden shed:

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

Check out the antique hardware in the garden shed:

Check out what happens when your business model is screwed up and unsustainable at http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?7405-Turnover-on-dedicated-servers

 

[DigitalDaz]

As I type this, I'm copying files to a new OVH server that I just got, E1245-v2, 32GB RAM, 2x120GB SSD in hardware RAID on a gig pipe, yes, I'll have one of those for less than £50 a month. It will only run a few web sites whuch will be backed up to an online.net SAN and if anything goes wrong I'll have the sites back up and running within an hour on one of their boxes. I may be lucky but I've been using OVH since 2008 and haven't had a real disaster yet though the disaster is planned for.