

Ask HN: Web app hosting...fast, reliable, affordable vendors? - LanceJones

We're currently using Bluehost for our start-up, Page99Test.com. It's got a decent control panel for file management and links to phpMyAdmin, server-side plugins, etc. but our site performance (i.e., response times) seems pretty crappy to me.<p>We're on a shoestring budget... looking to keep hosting fees well below $100 per month.<p>Hoping the community here can share its recommendations and experiences.<p>Many thanks,
Lance Jones
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ericabiz
I ran a managed hosting company (dedicated servers and colo) for 6 years.

Because of that, I'm pretty picky about where I host.

I currently have my sites at ServInt on 2 VPSes (a Signature VPS for my
production sites and an Essential VPS for testing my new startup company.)

The primary VPS serves about 2,000 pageviews per day with no complaints.

My advice, having been in the industry for many years:

1) NEVER use shared hosting for a startup company. I would always budget and
start with a VPS...even a small one. Shared hosting is likely to fall over at
random times and it often fails at the worst times--when you launch a product
and get a ton of visitors, for instance.

Shared hosting is fine for things like small company blogs, etc. But not for a
scalable business.

2) Go managed, unless you want to wear a sysadmin hat as well as a developer
hat (hint: you probably don't.) I recommend letting the hosting company do
updates while you focus on writing code and testing.

3) DON'T cheap out! Hosting is not a place to save money. $50/month for a
managed VPS is completely reasonable and is well worth the extra $40 over
shared hosting if you need to scale. You do not want to have to move your
hosting when you're in the middle of a really good run with clients.

I picked ServInt because they have been in business since 1995 and they host
some pretty large sites. Their reviews are overwhelmingly good and their
prices are reasonable. Their support responds quickly. I recently put in a
ticket asking for server monitoring to be installed. I know this would have
taken 1 hour+ of my time (and I used to admin servers for a living!) They not
only responded to the ticket within a few minutes, but had monitoring
installed quickly.

I cannot stress enough that it is worth the extra money to go with a higher-
end hosting solution. Yes, inevitably there will be "But shared hosting works
for me!" replies. It works...until it doesn't. You get an Alexa top 10,000
site, and even with good caching, your site doesn't work so well with shared
hosting--then you have to scramble around and muck with switching providers
when you should be working with your new customers and working on your
product. That's why I don't even recommend starting with shared.

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davidw
Linode is popular. Heroku or Google's thing seem like popular choices as well,
depending on what platform/language you're using.

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LeBlanc
I am currently using a Linode right now and it is great. You get full root
access to your virtual server which is great. If don't have any server running
experience they have great documentation to help you get started. If you get
the 512MB plan for $20/mo you should be good to go until you get a whole ton
of users.

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jawns
I've used Dreamhost's $10/mo. shared hosting (one of the few shared hosting
providers with shell access) for the past four years, and I can confirm that
when it works, it works -- but there have been at least two outages during my
time with them that have lasted upwards of 24 hours.

Obviously, that's unacceptable for most businesses, but if you think your
business won't get sunk by that type of outage ... then I'd say Dreamhost
might work well for you. For me, it's handled occasional heavy bursts of
traffic without crashing, and I bet its resources are enough to handle most
startups' demands. Once you hit the point at which it can't keep up with your
demands, you should probably be able to afford something better -- assuming
you have a viable business model.

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iworkforthem
I was looking at a few reliable hosting options recently; here's a few options
you can consider too;

\- VPS; a few good men are Linode, Slicehost, ServInt.

\- Dedicated Server.

\- Cloud Computing with Amazon Cloud or Rackspace.

One of my consideration is not to overpay what I dun need. First I look at the
bandwidth I am using currently utilizing, do a rough estimate how much it will
cost on Amazon Cloud/Rackspace/VPS. Also consider yr long terms options, do
you want to go dedicated or in the cloud later on. Cause it can be quite
challenging to move the DB and files around later on.

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SHOwnsYou
Level 3 VPS at Hostgator is great for a startup and only around $40/month.

I've been using Hostgator for ~2 years and I can only imagine leaving if I
plan to run my own servers.

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secret
I'll second that. I've used HostGator in the past and they are very reliable
for the price.

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kingofspain
I gave Dreamhost a whirl a whirl based on a few suggestions off here and
though I've only been a customer for a month, I'm _very_ impressed so far. A
friend of mine is paying £100pm for a 'reseller' account that has less than I
pay $7pm for.

No idea how it scales with the "unlimited" bandwidth/disk space but it's more
than enough for me now.

This is a genuine response btw - I'm not gonna give you a referral code :)

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shadowz
I had a terrible experience years back (no longer with them now). If it works,
it works well, but when it's down, it goes down for almost 24 hours!

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andrewtbham
Amazon ec2 is extremely popular. I use it for my current client, and my side
project. I know lots of other startups use it. However, it is lacking in the
control panel department.

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shadowz
Check out the folks at Storm on Demand and Liquid Web. They fit your budget
range and provide fully managed hosting. I've very happy with them.

