Web hosting discussion

Actually it’s more :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

That’s why I use one.com for all my hosting.

My experience of custom control panels has been pretty dismal. Lots of bugs, often lacking features and frequently hard to understand. Then it becomes difficult to migrate away through compatibility issues. I suspect many web hosts adopt a custom control panel just to save money.

It’s not just the main control panel though that is a concern. You also have to think about the general client area. A while ago I had to help a client change the nameservers at GoDaddy, and it seemed like they made it deliberately complicated by design. They also make SSL a pain I gather.

Last year I had a client here in the UK, who had hosting with Strato in Germany and they had a really strange setup. They would only allow him to change the nameservers on a subdomain and I think we had to go through Nominet to sort it out. All of this took days going round in circles.

Hmmm. I spun the line that no one now charges extra for SSL certificates and my web provider said they use Rapid SSL, not your common or garden SSL. Have I been stung?

I don’t know much about RapidSSL, but I very much doubt you needed anything more than Let’s Encrypt, which is free. Personally I just won’t use a web host if they are not offering free SSL with easy install. My web host enables SSL by default as domains are added and it doesn’t cost me a penny more.

To put this in perspective I probably have a dozen or more domains on my main server and more on the server I use for clients. Would I really countenance spending £24 a year for each domain when this can be free? Not a chance.

Services like Let’s Encrypt offer encryption, however paid options generally offer some kind of monetary insurance. If a client wanted that level of cover for whatever reason I would expect them to pay for it separately. There are probably other things you can do like enabling HSTS preload and more secure headers that would be of greater use.

1 Like

Sorry to revive this thread again. Hostinger has been fumbling this past week with continuous 5xx errors and slow response from their support chat. I completely lost my patience and am currently on the market for a new Hosting Provider.
I checked out Bluehost, iBrave, and even took a peek at AWS in desperation.

EDIT: They’re blaming Cloudflare settings for the outage :thinking:

I used Cloudflare with reasonable success on various sites for maybe 5 years until I eventually concluded it was generally more hassle than it is worth.

The key problem is that when a glitch occurs you can find yourself in trouble trying to identify the source of the issue and Cloudflare can be pretty slow with support replies.

There were also the endless cache conflicts when making updates unless a site was very basic with no performance tweaks in the code or at a server level. The day I dumped Cloudflare and relied on solid hosting was actually a relief.

An added advantage is that without Cloudflare you know it is either your code or the web host. The web host cannot hide behind excuses and point the finger elsewhere.

Hosting mostly flat files and not using databases, makes the issue more about traffic, performance and stability of service, and support and consistency over time. :slight_smile:

On my list to check out more, is MyRoot.PW. In my experience they offer quality services at affordable prices, and have a good reputation in the community. (And also offer some nice design templates, IIRC.) Their control panel is, in my opinion, a refreshing and very nice alternative to cPanel and DirectAdmin.

I also have very good experiences with MyW. The servers offer great performance. It’s DirectAdmin ProPack with nice limits, LiteSpeed, CloudLinux etc. Also they include MailChannels for email (not a lot per day, though). Support is nice, usually responds withing hours. Located in Portugal, servers in Germany, USA and Singapore, IIRC. (My experience is with their reseller packages.)

Another promising alternative, is LimitlessHosting. I recently signed up for a small reseller package. It works quite well, and support was quick to fix an issue I had, responded within the hour.

If you want cPanel, one host that served me well in the past, is Jolt. It’s a bit pricier, but they offer chat support that responds in usually less than a minute, and performance is nice. Servers based in the UK.

There are other alternatives, but these are the ones that came to mind just now.

On my list of other providers I have used: Nameplanet, Netfirms, GoDaddy, HostGator, One.com and HostingMatters. I’d strongly recommend against GoDaddy at all costs. Nameplanet, Netfirms and HostGator was all OK, but value wise, I’d rather choose one of the above (for hosting). One.com is different, sort of nice in some aspect, but also limiting in some ways (technically). They also tend to rise the prices and change plans often. (I guess it also depends on how many clients to manage. I have some reseller accounts, but none of my clients actually login themselves.) :nerd_face:

A strategy for me recent years, has been to focus on having backups and the ability to move sites quickly if my affordable web hosting goes down/support is too slow.

I also host some flat file sites on Netlify and similar options. :smiley:

Edit: All the links above are plain links (removed the affiliate links after comment by @Flashman, I did ask indirectly by mentioning that I didn’t know if it was OK). :smiley:

I think we want to avoid affiliate links. It tends to encourage posts for the sake of financial incentive by the poster. We have a very low tolerance of spam here.

2 Likes

I agree with @Flashman here (I’m also a Mod). It will open a floodgate of affiliate links. You haven’t been the first.

If anything has taught us people here (and the internet in general) click on anything and everything :joy:.

Eg My post on this thread proves my point :crazy_face:

Yes, I got the point, and I agree, redacted the links. :slight_smile:
(I’m used to lurking in hosting forums, where attracting interesting offers from providers is part of the main purpose, and where the community are usually good are calling out scam, poor offers etc. The purpose and crowd of this forum is different.)

Yes, interesting how Discourse encourages clicking all kinds of links. To prevent domains from being turned into links, I sometimes surround the dot in backticks, writing it like this mydomain`.`com
:nerd_face:

I disabled Cloudflare last night and today experienced another timeout with three of my sites. Contacted Hostinger Support for a fifth time this week with the receipts of the outage and they finally admitted to issues with the server I was on. Currently being moved to another one and while getting this automated email today.

Think I should still consider another provider?

Sometimes web hosts have certain servers that are problematic, while others seem to run fine with few problems. I had this when I was with Kualo where the server would go through periods with daily downtime. At one point they offered to move me to a different server but I eventually decided to move entirely and never regretted it.

In your situation I guess you have to balance the possibility of further problems against the hassle of moving. I don’t like hearing that Hostinger tried shifting blame on to Cloudflare and only came clean after they were caught out. On that basis I would be inclined to move, but it’s your call.

1 Like

I don’t know Hostinger or their prices. I found that for my use, I’d rather use a cheaper host (moved from Jolt to MyW). Jolt response times for support was better, but for complex issues, smaller providers are often just as quick or quicker to fix things. And MyW hardware and software limits are even better.
But I have double sets of backups, and can move quickly if something happens. That’s why I also use Limitless and are checking out MyRoot.pw. (The latter has a different panel, which I personally like better than all the others.) I also run a few VPS’es for solutions requiring a bit more. :sweat_smile:

That is a lot of hosting. How many websites are you running?

Around 20 sites plus labs/testing/staging (doing lots of that at VPS’es).
(VPS’es are also used for backups, dev stuff and other non-hosting purposes.)
Not making much money on this, though. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
(It’s just a small side business. I’m helping out non-profits and other not-too-rich artists etc.)