Compare Dedicated Server Companies/File Hosting Services
Apr 11, 2008
I own a semi-popular downloads website which I host on one server while the actual files/downloads are hosted on another server. This downloads server is very low-end ( AMD Sempron 3000, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB HD, CentOS with lighttpd, no control panel, etc.) and is connected via a 100Mbit shared line with a 3300GB bandwidth limit. Originally, I had it on a 10Mbit dedicated unmetered line but I hoped that by upgrading to the 100Mbit, I'd get better burst speeds, faster transfers/downloads, and a bit more bandwidth in general. Well, this doesn't seem to be the case so I'm looking for a new server or file hosting service hopefully on a better and faster network.
Right now, I'm considering the following companies/services:
* Profithost.net - Decent Dedicated server with nice bandwidth
* Redhostservers.com - OK Dedicated server with awesome bandwidth
* Server4you.com - Great Dedicated server with good bandwidth
* File-services.com - Decently priced pure file hosting with OK features
* MegaUpload Business account with Hotlink Quota - Decently priced pure file hosting with nice features
I'm in the middle of moving a bunch of sites from one hosting company to another. For most of the sites, I downloaded the files via FTP from the original server to my local hard drive. Then I uploaded them from my hard drive to the new hosting company/server.
It seems like many of the files -- especially swf files and some image files -- were corrupted. I'm thinking something weird happened with the extensions but I'm not sure.
All extensions LOOK ok but I'm wondering if either my computer or the server is hiding an extra extension. Somewhere today, I saw a file go by called index.swf.fla, which makes no sense at all. And yet, on both the server and my computer, it just says index.swf which is what it should say.
One of my Clients asked me about what kind of server would be great and can handle File hosting website like Rapidshare, Megaupload and Adrive?
He just wants to start it here in Arab market Specially [Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE] in hope to do something special with good service.
He will give the visitors two options:-
Free uploading max: 100 MB per file.
Premium uploading max: 1000 MB per file.
Also he asked which kind of file uploading script can handle this. with high fast upload/download speed
About the budget for the first 3 months he want to pay max 250/m after this, if everything is okay he can pay up to 500~1000$ per month. Nop By the way... most of the
Arab market still looking for Rapidshare & 4shared alternatives. As well as they need website in Arabic language with easy steps to use.
Server should come with cPanel/WHM High Premium Bandwidth.... [Most Important] Managed will be wonderful but unmanaged is ok.
Currently I am hosting my web site myself on my PC at home (Jboss+ mysql). Using a dedicated server with the highest spec can cost me a fortune knowing that I've just started my online recruitment business.
Should I just hire good hosting services to do things more professionally or should I keep hosting myself and learn how avoid many downtimes
While every decent host claims 99.99% uptime, its amazing why most rather almost all hosting companies fail to display the related statistics from independent source on their sites.
I recently switched over to a VPS from shared. My shared account is still active. Is there a command I can use to test the speed for each and compare? I'm curious to see if there's any difference.
Google App Engine offers free quotas of 1 GB outbound traffic per day and 6.5 CPU-hours (based on a 1.2 GHz Intel x86 processor) per day.
How do those free quotas compare to web hosting plans? For example, the traffic supported by the free quotas -- is that generally higher or less than the traffic supported by a typical $5/mo shared hosting account?
Above the free quotas, Google charges $0.12 per GB outgoing traffic, $0.10 per GB incoming traffic, $0.10 per CPU-hour, $0.15 per GB storage per month.
How do those numbers translate to normal web hosting plans? For example, the traffic that can be supported by a $40/mo VPS plan and $200/mo dedicated server plan, what would they cost on Google App Engine?
I know it depends on a lot of factors, but if anyone has any ballpark estimates or experiences they're willing to share I'd really appreciate it.
I'm trying to decide between App Engine and standard web hosting for a DB-backed Python site. The site will start small, but if the traffic grows I want to see which would be a better option long term.
I am in the process of looking for a new hosting company that has good ddos solutions.
My current server is:
Code: Intel Dual - Quad-Core Xeon E5320 / 1.86GHz - 8MB cache 2 x 143GB SAS 15k RPM drives - 3ware RAID1 - 8GB ram the new one that Burstnet is offering me is
So that new server that burstnet is offering me with my LiteSpeed webserver and a good software firewall and it all optimised, do you feel I will be in good hands, and a good set-up to withstand a heavy or a good ddos attack?
I own a IT/Computer related blog site & community right now. I have plans to contact the top 25-50 hosting companies posing as a potential new client. I plan ask questions similar to the following and publish it on my blog. (This project will be geared towards shared hosting only, on low to mid sized budgets.
1.) What are the exact specs of the shared servers you are using? Smp, Uni processors? What are the manufactures of this hardware?
2.) How many clients are added to a server before it's considered 'Full'? If your company doesn't use this method, then what is the average I/O, CPU, & Memory usage on a full server in the opinion of your company for shared hosting?
3.) What is your mass email policy? Emails per hour?
4.) Where is the physical location of your companies shared servers in regards to country, city, and state?
5.) Are you a Reseller? If so, with whom do you resell for?
6.) Physical location of Technical Support?
7.) What is the average wait time for a Technical Support ticket submission during server peek hours for your company?
8.) Do you currently have a link of client testimonials that includes URL's to the clients website?
Do you think publishing this information to be public for each host would be illegal, imoral, or disrespectful in anyway? If not, does anyone have any other suggestions as far as questions that are usually not disclosed on hosts website in regards to shared hosting?
I still have some NT 4s and Windows 2000 servers out there. My main issues are these are very very old clients who will not want to move, either their programmers had long disappeared or they just had an attachment to their old servers.
Now what should I do with these? Or rather what do you guys facing similar issues deal with this? Migrate these old contented clients and risk breaking something or just leave it as it is?
I would like to discuss over new companies which have just put there steps towards hosting business.
I know many of the people here and everywhere believe that only established companies with a nice price tag of almost around $5 per month for smallest web hosting plan can give you best support and uptime. No doubt they can give you nice uptime but what about the support... leaving some companies all other big and established once do not offer you what you should actually get.
Companies with a huge customer base receives a large number of hosting support requests from there customers daily which they can not fulfill on time. Thus resulting in delay and some times inconvenience to the customer.
Where as on other hand new companies or mid level companies that just arrived or been in industry for a few couple of months is much better then them. A solid reason to support this is if they want to be in this industry they will surely provide all the best of support and uptime and industry leading softwares and products to there client for the very low price as compared to other big ones.
Now the point to be noted is the people only don't believe new companies just because they are new... I don't understand the reason why people have a mentality of treating OLD IS GOLD....
When new companies just to establish them selves in this market are offering tons of services for a much lesser price to what other big ones do then why do people think they are going to fall down... They too have there business plans setup or else they won't advertise it different forums and waste there precious time in which they could have done many other jobs....
I know this is a never ending topic but you surely need to broaden your thinking and start thinking about this second phase of hosting industry...
With my article I surely can't mentality of too many people but surely can start a step ahead of others to let people think on this....
Hope I can scratch some great minds with my writting and they can comment some great ideas and pros and cons...
2 Hosting Companies: One in California and One in NYC..
If they have exactly the same plan ( Same servers ) at the same price and I lived In NYC would it be better ( Faster ) for my site/forum to choose the NYC host?
What I need to know is it beter to pick a host who i live closer to?
i want to build a fileshering web site, i know from the start that trafic to my site will be high becouse it is not a regular file host site and i belive that i will have a lot of downloads as service will be mostly free of charge.
from what i understand i will need massive servers or at least good servers with high data transfer speed , reliable up time , very big storage space and massive bandwith.
i understand that budget should be high for this and i am not cutting on budget, i thought on first starting low and then upgrading but the low point of this poject will still need to have the best i can find both in speed ,storage and bandwith.
can you reccomend what service or way i can use for this project?
what servers rapidshare use? megaupload? i know i am still at start but i want a clean start.
We are a hosting company with about 10000 customer domains. We are looking for a good spamfilter gateway and found Spamtitan.
Do you think SpamTitan would work well with so many customer domains? How many servers do you recommend for this amount?
I realized that in the admin area a lot is done with domain dropdown elements to choose the domainname. This is for sure not the best solution with this amount of domains.
Our plan is, that customers don't have access to ST but only get the quarantine report mail. Will there be a resource problem in creating this report once a day for about 50000 mail addresses?
Are there any other hosting companies which are using ST?
could any one has for example 3 hosting accounts each one in a ddifferent hosting company , could it be possible to put all Name Servers of 3 different hosting sites under one domain name ?
Are there any recommendation on good hosting companies which can provide good support, excellent uptime, >50GB space, >1GB mySQL/MSSQL database space and supports ASP.NET 2.0 and AJAX with a resonable price?
The Web hosting industry embraced the benefits of outsourcing to maximize the profits.
Web hosting being a competitive business, it is imperative that any and every benefit that comes on the way is picked and used to its maximum. There are many companies which provide support for hosting companies.
Outsourcing support saves the Web hosting company a lot of money and time. Web hosting companies can focus on selling hosting plans while the outsourced support for the Web host can provide quality support to the customers and manage servers 24/7. The Web hosting company does not need to hire many experts who will check the overall quality of delivery to their existing customers and technical experts for managing/monitoring the server. Top outsourcing companies that provide support for Web hosts have an internal QA team that takes care of the quality.
In Web hosting industry it is critical that the servers are up and running all the time. It is expensive to have technical support staff on a 24/7 basis, add to it the cost of buying the software to help you manage and monitor the servers. Most of the companies that provide outsourced support for hosting companies have a complete setup needed for 24 X 7 support to customers like having 24/7 phone support, managing and monitoring servers and helpdesk support system. These things in mere infrastructure will increase costs of a web host, add to this the time needed to manage this setup and people. Hence outsourcing your hosting support is a smarter way.
what percentage of clients are interested in buying dedicated web hosting plans instead of shared ones? I surprised why some people prefer dedicated services with such expensive prices!
I hope someone who sells both type of services can answer my question. For example he/she tells me that his sold dedicated services are %20 and sold shared plans %70, and sold VPS....
I have a reseller account with over 100 websites I am hosting. They all have databases or ssl or ecommerce etc so they are pretty intense. I really want to switch hotsing companies.
Changing hosting companies is pain, let's admit it. You don't know what you're getting until you get it. Yes, it's like blind date.
The hosting company is talked up and fake reviews are posted in hopes of getting an affiliate commission. Some "companies" are actually Uncle George with a reseller account acting like he has a staff of 20 people.
So recently I was looking to 'downsize' after having a dedicated server for 20 months. There's was a hiccup with the hosting company. The email file permissions was constantly getting changed. It was a mystery because everytime tech support fixed it; the next day, it would happen again!
The operations manager was in contact by telephone and even gave me his cell phone number. I was also in telephone contact with Tech Support constantly until they have found the culprit - an old, invalid Cpanel Skin.
After the ordeal, I praise the team and company. But a week later, Omaha Steaks should up at my doorstep. Wow!
Well, now it's a year later and I need to downsize.
I looked at BlueHost, HostGater, Ixhosting, HostingExcellence and others... I could NOT believe what they offered for the money. I looked and looked.. and was excited that I could downgrade from a dedicated server and save $150 a month!
Finally, I decided to try BlueHost reluctantly.. as a test. But I tried to sign up for 30 minutes and the site was down. Uh-oh....
My gut - This is a wake up call.
Stick with what's WORKING.
I immediately emailed the Operations Mgr that hosts my dedicated server. Told him what I wanted. I needed a reseller account with additional IPs. He directed me to exactly what I needed and then asked if we could work something out on my current server. But with my sites slacking off, I just settled on a Reseller account.
They transferred everything and the site got a Internal Error (500).. err.. but don't worry - Tech Support found the .htaccess file was using suexec on the old server. So they commented it out and the sites appeared.
The POINT IS: Stick with WHO you know and What's WORKING. Yes, the current host may be a few nickels more than the Popular Hosting companies advertising in the magazines.. but they do NOT beat the support I've received over the last 20 months.
Final Review: I cannot praise HostDime enough. They are awesome. Mike K. is fantastic. I will keep my account there and it will run into the 3 third year in a few months.
www.HostDime.com is a REAL company, charging very reasonable rates, and you get the best support ever. They guys & gals won't give up until they solve the problem. If you're considering moving hosts, try them.
My Experience with Ultrahosting.com Dedicated Services STAY AWAY FROM IT!
I had 3-month experience with ultrahosting.com and I want to share this experience.
if you may have seen the prices are really nice, .. as I thought at glance.
I've ordered my windows dedicated server with Helm control panel.
after 3/4 days I called them and they told me that there is problem with Credit Card or something else... but everything was correct, they told me call them and I called and they told me they'll send me the information .. but after 24hours still nothing! .. I called them again and they told me that they are still waiting for the Helm license request!.
after 5 days (I think) I had the server but I found that the Helm license is only for 100 domains! they told me that the Helm license which is in the order form is for 100 domain (but nothing was written), and if I want Helm unlimited license I've to pay 60$(the helm license in it's web site is 50$ if you purchase directly from Helm )..
ANYWAY YOU SAW OUR PROBLEM AT THE FIRST! ..
NOW .. after 3month .. after having lots of support problem and license and .. I woke up at the morning and I've got an email with the subject of "your service has been terminated"! ..
TERMINATED! What? .. they told me that we did the ARP Poisoning on their network! and everything is finished !! chating with live sales doesn't helped me so I called the support, but the fun is that the support staff couldn't talk well English (I was wiered!!) and he told me that I've to send email again .. still no response for the email ..my offer is that stay away from ultrahosting .. I decided to start again with Iweb .. but it's really kinda starting again .. cause I'll for sure lose all of my customers who was on the ultrahosting's servers.
they are new to dedicated even thought they are in co-operate with Momentum, they had no help desk in more than 2-month I was sending request to them asking for a help desk. as an experience : we should never work with the guys how has no experience! .. I hope that Iweb can help me. it's better to spend a little (30$) more with Iweb instead of having trouble like this!..
is there a way that i can have a web server that runs windows server 2003 and be able to have file hosting on it...so people can upload files to it and be able to access it without having to have a domain name?
Do website builders generally go with shared hosting or dedicated server? I mean, if they work on several websites would they get a dedicated server instead of shared? From what I understand through reading shared hosting is basically if you only have one website. So one with multiple websites would go with a dedicated server?
I am currently working on a File hosting site like sendspace, megaupload (Not that big, only a small site for college students use it). I am wondering which hosting company out there take high disk space and unlimited brandwidth.
