Recommend me a Web Hosting Provider
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Hi Ron,
I suppose I did not answer that question very well.
I understand you were saying you prefer rack space, and I have nothing against them as host however I think there are that there are better choices out there. Primarily I agree with you is the way to set up a server redundantly with two data centers however my personal choice and a company that has never let me down is FireHost
all the best,
Thomas
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Thomas,
These guys look good! Is their service as good (or preferably better) than Rackspace? Are there areas where they fall short?
Always looking for good hosts!
Ron
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Hi Ron,
I apologize for not getting back to you earlier.
Great question.
I feel they are superior to rack space in every way shape and form.
Let's take the content delivery networks both companies offer with rack space you get Akamai's watered-down CDN.
With fire host you get edge cast's full power CDN a content delivery network that consistently ranks at the top when it comes to speed and the ability to do some pretty unique things.
Security fire host is hands-down the winner.
Smart options for people who care about uptime DynECT DNS at a very very low price.
Using Dyn assures you will have uptime all the time and the fact that they are the fastest DNS host as well makes it an easy decision.
The negatives cost you're going to be spending more money with fire host simply because you are getting more.
The page.ly scandal things were said about fire host the were are true I have added more about this below.
If this is a negative it would depend on the person however they do not offer a non-managed solution.
The way I feel is
Fire host in my opinion has no shortcomings in comparison to rack space for my use I want speed, security, support as good or better than rack space, knowledge that my company by host with will not come back and tell me sorry in the fine print we cannot do XY and Z because of that we are sorry. Which we both know does not help us,
having used rack space quite a bit I am confident you will be very happy with firehost
one of the things I could think of that people might want that fire host would not provide our
inexpensive non managed hosting
rack space as a high quality cloud and has the ability to offer rack space servers and rack space cloud and many more options but for right now the two differences would be fire host will only allow a fully managed solution so when you compare a firehost set up and a rack space set up I personally believe in managed hosting although I love hosting nobody wants to be told sorry we can't help you by any hosting provider if they ever have an issue. I have made it a rule of mine never to use unmanaged hosting except in extremely rare situations.
Currently fire host more of a we have built-in XY and Z this is speed and truly Ford Knox security
as I am sure you are aware of many managed WordPress hosting companies
fire host has been unfairly blamed for downtime that Pagely customers received when issues occurred firehouse was blamed by pagely for downtime when the truth is fire host was up & Pagely a company dedicated to manage WordPress hosting ran different hardware and software utilized specifically for WordPress this led to separate issues that meant pagely could be down BUT FireHost was never down. (FireHost is one of the best WordPress hosts ever especially because they allow you to run a system without a control panel)
if you go to Page.ly and now powered by look at their website you will see it says "press armor"
This also is reflected on the fire host website where they no longer list pagely as a partner because of the fact Pagely was not accurately showing people that there was a difference.
My suggestion to anybody with any questions is to speak to fire host who will show their perfect uptime record along with the fact that a company I've known for a long time called Dyn.com has partnered with fire host what makes this unique is because Dyn has a 12 year uptime record and when you're in the DNS business that is a huge deal. Meaning they have a higher uptime then anyone else in managed DNS at any price.
To put that type of trust and loyalty into a company takes a lot and the fact that my friends at Dyn have done this and fire host's openness of their uptime makes me assured that they have no issues.
The difference I can see from personal use is fire host is faster I know that it is hard to gauge because front-end code matters so much however running identical websites I've seen significant speed increases.
I know every company that touts a faster than the other guy independent test may be looked on with some question however I personally leave that these numbers are very accurate from my own use.
http://www.firehost.com/downloads/FireHost-cloud-performace-benchmarks
the downside that I could see is price to be honest not everyone cares that much about performance and security I know you know how important it is because of the small amount you've told me tells me you know quite a bit about what you know about hosting.
The other differences would be you would have to use a different company for your e-mail as fire host does not provide the service. I believe that this is not an issue for many people. If they are currently happy with their e-mail host use them if not find another and to be honest rack space is one of the best e-mail hosting companies out there in my opinion for hosted exchange as well as their own rack space e-mail.
I use a combination of many different e-mail hosting companies to see which is going to be the best.
So far I've had very good luck with rack space, Peer1 exchange, Google apps has become maybe the best of both worlds however I am interested in what they're going to morph into.
Then of course using a high quality third-party support/migration team with Microsoft's exchange 365 is a very cost-effective method for a high quality answer to those who do not want to move off of hosted exchange.
Intermedia and many others are always there to meet the need as well. Although I cannot speak for anyone other than intermedia feel intermedia is an outstanding one-stop shop for e-mail.
I should say this currently my plastics companies main e-mail is being hosted on liquid webs dedicated exchange 2007 this is becoming dated and because it's base price is just shy of $1000 a month. It is also something we are changing by hiring a company that will do all the support for Microsoft exchange however we are hosting this on its own cloud set up with fire host just to let you know how highly I personally feel towards them.
The reason for this is e-mail is extremely important and also extremely easy to break into. However having had service with fire host for over 3 years and never experiencing a minute of downtime I feel very comfortable in the move.
Sorry to go on so long about all this but as somebody with multiple is in over 40 hosting accounts with different hosting companies I can tell you there are some differences between them which I'm sure you know.
My best advice is called the support line at 2 AM then tell them wrong number just to see how quickly they pick up.
Also call them go over your specific issues with them and how they would address them I am certain you will be happy with the person you are connected to giving you a complete knowledgeable answer.
Better yet try them out with a dummy site called out issues that you've had in the past with other companies see how they address it.
These are the types of things I've done to reach my conclusion of who's the best web host available right now and my answer to everyone is fire host.
Now if were talking managed WordPress solutions.
Zippykid, WPengine, web synthesis, presslabs, Pagely & get flywheel
the get flywheel host is one I must state I do not have much confidence in as far as their ability to have a truly secure network. Therefore I have used my closed beta and I can tell you I will look at them again in another 6 months however as of right now I could not give an honest recommendation to anyone that they use them simply because they do things like this for example. Make one password and username for login, SFTP, and database this is something that is intended to be shared with your developer similar To the Way, Zippy kid allows people to set up a website the difference being ZippyKid does all the security the right way. Making it a safe and effective place to host WordPress sites.
I wish that Pagely had a better set up however unlike Vid at Zippy kid they do not believe in putting as much into their infrastructure that's what led to this issue in my opinion and I think the guise of fire host can do the best job of explaining it.
I hope I was able to answer your question and I am sorry if I did not have more negatives. I will try to think of some I know it is strange but I'm sure you understand once you get the perfect hosting company for what you're doing and they prove to you that there no joke you take that to heart.
Another huge plus for fire host is they are one of the very few managed hosting companies or non managed hosting companies I will allow you in the setup to pick between Apache (great but has been eclipsed by better software) Nginx (the future in my opinion so much faster than anything else out there) Light-speed (everything you can do on Apache if you need an exact replica that is 9 times faster and more secure.) Apache tomcat (for you those who want that service) & Microsoft IIS
I understand many hosting companies will allow you to run Nginx but unfortunately they will not support it. Which in my opinion leaves people with a big problem. You never want your host to tell you I'm sorry but that part of your plan is not covered by us.
Please don't look at this as an attack on rack space it is not in any way shape or form in fact I feel rack space is one of the better hosting companies on the planet. However in my opinion and from what I've learned firsthand use there are better hosting companies the best I've come across yet is fire host. I'm willing to stake my name on it and honestly that's something I don't do very often.
Ron if you'd like to speak more about it I would be more than happy to chat with you please fill free to private message me or reach out to me via e-mail which is available on my profile.
Respectfully,
Thomas Zickell
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Ron,
private message me about some of your guest blogging as I would be interested.
I myself have patents please fill free to take a look Google me.
Sincerely,
Thomas Zickell
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Hi Dana,
May I ask approximately what you are looking to spend?
If you give me a good idea of what you need to host and what you're looking to spend I can tell you from using many hosting companies what my opinion would be.
I know firsthand if you want to save money running an Nginx set up verse Apache will save you a great deal of money because you will not need as much RAM to do the same thing as you would if you are using Apache
While I will never advocate anyone using dream host they do have a decent page on the differences between running Apache and Nginx this is primarily true across the board and I would recommend single hop or an SSD VPS via liquid Web you can get away with using such a small amount of RAM that your cost would be extremely low
Only Nginx can run SPDY something anyone with an e-commerce website should care about hosting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Web_Server_Performance_Comparison
http://www.webpronews.com/nginx-virtual-host-configuration-migrating-from-apache-2012-03
This is interesting out Apache2 verse Nginx however keep in mind that if you run a varnish server on top of Nginx not only will you beat Apache2 everywhere you will save an immense amount of RAM.
http://systemsarchitect.net/apache2-vs-nginx-for-php-application/
I would recommend liquid Web SSD Nginx for $50 a month that is a steal when you're considering a managed solution and full VPS
If you call liquid Web and ask them to set up a solution exactly as you wish they will do it. As will most of the providers I have listed above. However at $50 a month managed I don't think there are many other deals
https://www.liquidweb.com/managed-vps-hosting/
A small Orange is a fantastic hosting company that just recently added telephone support which is a big plus for me. My brother hosts with them and he has had no downtime in the past two years. Running a VPS with Nginx completely managed for very little money under $50 a month with SSD drives take a look at their VPS offerings there cloud VPS which is extremely fast and very well priced maybe the best solution take a look at what you can get if you go to $30 you can run two Cores
http://asmallorange.com/hosting/cloud/
you may also want to look in http://moz.com/perks#all
You will find this offer however I have never used site ground but I do trust Moz their use of cloud flair is not really something I would treasure or consider a content delivery network however it will speed up your site.
3 months FREE Hosting
SiteGround's hosting make websites faster for better SEO, free CDN and unique caching technology to double or triple website performance.
Another solution that you can talk price with them directly about is
If you wish to manage your own VPS or use a shared solution here are some alternatives
I would look into Linode for a low-cost VPS
https://library.linode.com/web-servers/nginx
In fact you could run a very low cost VPS on digital ocean in fact digital ocean is so inexpensive that this is the cost of a full VPS
1 VPS 512MB RAM, 20GB SSD Disk, and 1TB Transfer for $5/mo! https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing
So you know they were found to be faster than Amazon when compared head-to-head by a company called getflywheel.com
Although Amazon is never a bad option however support is lacking.
For good support and inexpensive pricing liquid Web
A2Hosting
http://www.a2hosting.com/nginx-hosting
or
As far as people being concerned about having to write 301 redirects and writing them in Nginx I have found this tool to be perfect
Please feel free to private message me or e-mail me as you have been very helpful to me in the past I would very much like to help you if I can in the situation.
Sincerely,
Thomas
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Hi Jesse,
I wanted to update this for 2 reasons the 1st one is for host is going to have a data center in Toronto. I hope you have had good luck with your choice.
The other thing I wanted to tell you is after reading this a 2nd time you seem to care quite a bit about data centers in Canada while I did not believe it is as much a factor to each their own.
A extremely high uptime host is http://iweb.com/cloud/servers
they have the 2nd highest amount of data centers in Canada and are only in Canada. With better uptime than Peer 1.
However I do not believe they are better hosting company and firehost when you use a content delivery network it creates a point of presence the fact that there are points of presence in every major city in Canada using edge cast will give you the same effect as a data center. However I did want to update you.
I would still stay with fire host if you have chosen them. Regardless if you do want Canada firehost will have a data set or their in January after that I would go iWeb or Peer 1
however I'm hoping all of your issues of been taken care of by now.
Respectfully,
Thomas
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