This post is the result of a frustrating 2 week search for a decent dedicated server provider in Europe.
My conclusion is: there isn't one. At least not without paying a heavy price, often double or triple of what you'd pay with a US provider. And even at that price, you often get a service that is far far bellow the quality of service you receive with many US providers.
I simply can't believe that things that are considered rather normal and expected in the US require you to pay a premium price with many EU hosting providers. I'll list just a few:
99% Network SLA
Seriously? 99%? Most providers I see in the US have at least 99.9% if not 100%. Running a good network is essential for every hosting provider. Do they distrust their networks or are they simply incapable of managing a stable reliable network for their clients?
Hardware Replacement SLA
This is a good one. Many hosts I found either have none, or they have insanely horribly... horrible ones! One example: 8 hours within office time. So what if your server goes down on Friday night? You'll be doomed until Monday, and even then it can take them all day to fix it as far as their SLA is concerned.
Others require you to pay a premium price to get a better SLA. I saw one host that wants something in the area of 150 euros for a 2 hour hardware replacement SLA. I could get another server for that.
Support
This is really a gem. Trying to find any sort of fully managed provider is nothing short of impossible. Many advertise it, but if you contact them and ask specific questions the answer is mostly "Huh? You want what installed / configured?". I did manage to find some German ones that provided decent answers, but they were German only.
Price
Last but not least, I simply cannot believe the price difference I see when comparing US to EU providers. I usually find the following combinations:
- Cheap server, expensive addons, expensive SLA options
- Expensive server, cheap addons, expensive SLA options
- Cheap server, expensive addons, horrible SLA with insane price to upgrade to a better SLA
I don't understand how the EU providers expect to receive double or triple of what you pay in the US for perhaps half or one third of service.
Reading LeaseWeb support horror stories and lately a lot of Ecatel ones too I really do wonder how those companies plan to operate in several years. I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for their larger clients they would seriously reconsider the way they operate.
I have been in the hosting market for roughly 6 years now. Started from shared to VPS to dedicated. All those 6 years, the service has improved with most companies I've had business with and service expectations have also risen quite high.
However, here in Euroland it seems providers live in some sort of relaxed state where after work hours, things are not really their problem anymore until next day.
So tell me, what am I missing here? Am I nuts, or is it really such a big difference? Why is there such a big difference and what do you think will happen in the future with many big European hosting providers?
And please don't take this personal if you live in Europe. I live in Europe myself and I really tried to find a service acceptable both in price and features, but so far this didn't work out at all.
I'm the proprietor of a high-bandwidth site, and obviously, it's important to me to get the cheapest bandwidth possible. I've looked around, and it seems like European web hosts provide cheaper prices than North American hosts.
However, most of my users are in North America. Will a server in Europe be able to deliver the full available bandwidth to users in the US? If not, how much of it should I expect?
I am writing a low memory/cpu/bandwidth CMS php/mysql program to be open source.
In the process I want to make it as safe as possible but I realize that shared hosting and some vps systems can make intial security ideas not viable. So I would like to ask you about your usual system setups and how hard it is for the users to do certain things.
I assume you do not allow shell for shared, but maybe vps. Do you allow a customer to easily password protect a directory? What about mod_rewrite as a option for them?
As far as httpd.conf changes such as wildcard characters before domain names, is that something that would not be an issue for you in 'normal' environments? And of course alias folders too.
What about the ability for the client to add a non-html folder to use? In other words client's html folder is /var/www/client1/htdocs and ability to add /var/www/client1/newfolder
Most of this is basic stuff, but I remember in the old days that shared hosts seldom allowed things like this.
It is not so much the program will need it, but there are some extras I can program in for them if these is a normal access or requestable items. And as far as securing the program I would instruct them where to put many things that protect configs and uploaded images and such.
I represent a small company ~10 users, that has a domain name registered with a company like godaddy. The domain is not hosted as yet.
I would like to find a good service provider that can provide us with email hosting, i.e. we would like to get 5 email accounts with 5GB or more, larger the better.
The users will be accessing the email through Outlook and if possible through webmail.
Over time, we would like to host the website and build a site as well but that is not an immediate need
Finally, the hosting company should have good customer service.
After my days and days of research, even here on WHT, I'm still not sure which is my best choice for a shared hosting provider for my needs. I am NOT looking for the cheapest. I want the best and will pay for it. I'm a tech consultant (obviously not in the website arena) and will be hosting at least 3 sites (personal and business). Here is what I am looking for:
(I registered my domain names with Dotster and in 3 days I still can't get anyone to answer the phone and the live chat has been a 15-20 minute wait just for an answer on their hosting plans, so round the clock support is important!)
24/7 support that is quick to respond Reliability and high % of uptime Great sitebuilder tools A company that doesn't oversell with UNLIMITED and cheap plans A company that has high ratings in customer satisfaction Ability to purchase my hosting plan online using Paypal is a plus
I've read about lots of nightmares here and I'd really like to avoid them. Until I started doing my research, I had NO IDEA how many hosting providers there are! I expected to make some comparisons and be able to make an informed decision,
I have a client who wants to build a subscription online training site. This site will be hosting proprietary videos that need to be streamed (vs. downloaded).
Can anyone recommend a reliable hosting provider that:
- Supports ecommerce - Supports streamed Flash video - Provides a way to control user's access to videos (only access what they've purchased)
Hello guys! I am looking for a reliable hosting provider! I mean the most important thing for me know is to be sure that my future hosting company will manage to protect my websites against DDoS attacks fully! What hosting company according to your opinion can be considered as the most stable hosting solution against DDoS attacs?
I am posting here my experience with Theplanet and also looking to gain insights into unethical practices by hosting providers who are turning into practices of utility and credicard companies. I have been a loyal customer of Serverbeach for 4 years, I have been a loyal customer of Theplanet for more than a year .. I outsource my server administration to admins who setup , configure and manage my servers. Recently Theplanet disconnected our server as our credit card on file expired which I beleive is the right thing to do .. What ticks me off is the fact that they are charging a reconnect fee - FOR WHAT - to click a button? Just Ridiculous. THese dedicated companies are following the path of utility companies and credit card companies which slap various fees on their customers and milking customers .. sure a reconnect fee is understood if the account is not in good standing and such incidents are common on the account . What surprises me is this is the first time in 1+ year and they refuse to waive the fee , it is not the question of fee but the ethics and practices is what I am concerned about. NOw a reconnect fee , what next ? a server restart fee ? which direction are these hosting companies moving towards?
Well I explained the situation and that email is not always the best communication a phone call could have helped. Who would not agree that that single email might have stuck in a junk folder? THey had my full contact information if only they are genuine , they would call and understand what is the issue , have at risk management practices in place so their sales rep could contact me right after 3 days of non payment. But NO they rather wanted me to contact them as they take it for granted that I have been their customer for more than a year and It is not easy for me to move out to a different provider I would not have any option but to pay considering the time and effort involved in migrating to other hosting provider.
ThePlanet - Sorry but on the ethics issue I would not mind spending 100 x the reconnect fee to move to other provider who understands customers.
I am reaching out to all the individuals who sign up with these companies and respond to this post any such experiences.. HIdden fees charged by these companies ? Have you noticed how credit card companies change their billing cycles and you received the bill only to know you missed the payment due date .. ..
That said please let me know which is the best dedicated server company which I can sign up with which does not enforce hidden fees such as these and is ethical and understands and listens to customers.
My company is about to start a project and need about 100 servers within 3 months. I am looking for a list of afordable and reliable unamanaged server providers from Europe. Can you suggest some? Which datacenter should I contact for such a project?
This review is based on my subjective experience with this service provider. Please take into consideration that each customer experience is unique in nature and can be heavily influenced by circumstances and cultural differences. My reviews are more prone to usability aspects rather than mips and milliseconds.
This review has not been financially influenced by the provider in question.
SOFTLAYER from the European perspective
Background:
I work for a value-added reseller hosting company in the Northern Europe and take care of server provisioning, offer request and service definition for our company needs.
We have used this company for the business hosting needs for over a year - we do yearly offer rounds and move our services should the need arise. Currently we are not hosting with Softlayer.
Experience is based on one dedicated server AMD Opteron 1216 with 4GB, 2x500GB RAID1 and Plesk 100 - location Dallas and Washinton DC facility. Reviewed services; control panel, private networking, help desk, sales support
Overview:
Softlayer has been in business for a while. They offer wide range of servers from single processor multicore to quad processor multicore servers. They have 3 different facilities in U.S; Seattle, Dallas and Washington DC. There are no Softlayer facilities available in Europe, but they do offer services to European customers as well. ( which is not the case with all the U.S based providers ) They offer fully automated services, an integrated control panel, developer API and wide range of software solutions for their server range plus number of other services that we have no experience with.
Privacy Policy:
Standard privacy policy with one side note; Softlayer follows the EU privacy protection laws and participates in the EU Safe Harbor program. This is more important for us Europeans; we are obliged to treat customer data in a specific way. (It's a long story, I'm going to spare you from the details)
Contract terms:
Monthly contract with server cancellation, at the latest 3 days prior the monthly anniversary. The cancellation can be done with the customer control panel. No questions asked - you do get a sales rep email and confirmation enquiry surely, for your own protection.
Installation
The server provisioning was really fast - in a few hours we had fully functioning server available with the specs as ordered and tested. This was a great service, we've had experiences with 10 day provisioning times.
Control Panel ( Customer Portal):
Softlayer customer portal is a comprehensive one. You can handle everything related to your server with a click of a button; reboots, OS reloads, reconfigurations, support requests and sales orders. One of the notable features was the ability to test firewall settings with external scanning provided by SL; easily done with a novice understandable report and suggestions.
You can give different access rights, access levels to users and share the control panel with the system administrators and support people. Overall usability of the control panel is good, navigation is simple, the screen is calm and there are no distractive elements. Softlayer has done a rather good job in handling comprehensive set of features in customer control panel.
For a beginner, the control panel can be a bit overwhelming though - it has been designed for the professional administrators with tens/hundreads of servers and whilst supporting this purpose well, a novice user would feel more confident with more narrow set of features. My preference for the novice user would be the server-centric usability focus; choose the server you manage and then the tasks related to that specific server. Help could be more easily available; there is a comprehensive knowledge base, but task oriented help is not necessarily available where the task is at the control panel.
Out of 10 points, Softlayer deservers 8,5 to the customer portal
Private Network
This is one of the brand marks of the Softlayer. They offer an excellent private network with PPTP & SSL access. The bandwidth is unlimited between you and your servers and even between your servers. You can truly shut down the external traffic to your server and still manage it from the background. The access is granted using PPTP (1 user) or SSL browser access with (Java plugin?). I used the PPTP, so the experience with SSL is limited.
This feature is free, which is exceptional. The true value comes when you have several servers with Softlayer and you interchange data between server. For single server owner this is of a less benefit, but surely a secure feature to access your server. The setup for private networking is seamless, easy to understand for a novice and wins my vote hands down
Out of 10 points, Softlayer deserves 9 for their private networking.
Network
Softlayer network is well connected, a connection to Northern Europe is around 80 - 100 ms from the WDC data center, it is barely noticeable for standard web user. During the year with SL, we did not experience any problems with their network connections. Some minor issues with private networking side ( nothing to do with SL )
Out of 10 points, Softlayer deserves 8 for their network connections to Europe
Help desk
Support ticket system; the response times are adequate, but you can sense that there is a night in the U.S and day in Europe. The response time improves at our night time and the tone tends to get more cheerful in the evenings. The responses were always professional though, and we never had a problem that wasn't resolved in a matter of an hour. The hardware was replaced and problems solved efficiently.
Out of 10 points, Softlayer deserves 8 for their helpdesk (If I were in U.S, I might give a 9)
Sales
Like with any service provider contact their sales before ordering; you might get lucky and get unlisted offers and pricing for your server. Softlayer has a good sales staff, but the service level is not consistent . If you are lucky, you might get a sales person not the "I just working here" - type. Their sales people are cheerful, genuine problem solvers and would like to find you the best alternative - the "I just work here" will read their price list and give you exactly what you asked; ie. they might have a great offer on AMD opteron 1216, but you asked for 1212. You'll get what you asked for - not the great offer available. Reason being, "you never asked".
Out of 10 points, I give 8 for the Softlayer sales.
Server pricing
Softlayer is not cheap and not even competitive always. The have a new outlet for bargain servers, but their pricing seems to start with USD119 what ever the case or name of the bargain is. Before signing-up with them, you should always do your own shopping around.
Out of 10 points, I give 7 for the Softlayer pricing
Conclusion
I would suggest Softlayer to any business owner with some experience and with several dedicated servers. For the novice user, with some reservations - maybe a smaller hosting provider would be better to start with. Their technical service is professional, coherent and they certainly know what they are doing.
Softlayer has an impressive service offering, especially with their private networking, but you need to be prepared to pay for it as well.
We use Tailormadeservers.com in the US and are looking for a similar flexible provider in the UK / Europe. Basically looking for a reliable provider who allows you to pay down the price of the server and also allows you to pay for RAM / RAID upgrade with one setup fee.
We are looking for an affordable yet reliable colocation in northern Europe. We only need 1 or 2 U at this point and would be willing to lease the servers if the price was right. We are not dumb and are willing to spend money on reliable service but we do not need a full rack or anything like that as our European business is small (only 2 servers right now with the need for a 3rd) and we do not have any aggressive strategy to grow this.
We would be interested in any deals in terms of providing space or routing services in the US in exchange for some in Europe as we are looking to form a strong partnership with a host on the grow.
I currently have 3 powerfull server (each with 8 processors and 12 GB of RAM) at Softlayer.
I'm extremely happy with their server but since my business is now 99% located in Europe i need to change to an European provider.
My softlayer server ping from Italy is 180 ms while an european server pings at 30-50 ms...
Softayer has a great administration pannel that let me do almost everything: Reboot, Manage dns, manage Load Balancer etc..and their hardware offer is defintely wide. Maybe the only thing missing at softlayer is pre-paid discount.
In my reasearch i didn't find any european provider who seem to offer a quality closer to Softlayer. Main problems are:
- lack of specific hardware In their public price-list they don't even have 8 processors servers and load balancer.
- Extremely high Bandwidth price. For example check the most famous italian provider prices: www.aruba.it 5000 GB/month = 1000€ + IVA The same at softlayer (and at any other american provider) costs 300 €!
if there are european providers who offer high performances server for good prices like softlayer?
If there are not can you please tell me if i will have more or less the same performance with 2 PHP/HTTP servers each with 4 processors (served by a load balancer) instead of 1 server with 8 processors.
I know there are many topics asking about European hosting companies but I need some specifics.
First of all I'm going to buy a reseller account but I will only use it for my own websites. I won't sell so I don't need end user support.
I would like the company to be at least 2 years old and very large. For example Hostgator has 7000 servers but it's in Texas and not Europe(though I will get reseller account from them if I can't find a host I like in Europe).
They also should have good support and should be trustworthy.
My budget is between 20-30$. Right now I don't have any high traffic websites but I would like to be able to upgrade in the future when I have.
I also have a question. If I get a host which has Fantastico, are the programs I can install the same on every host? For example Hostgator has programs like Zencart,Cubecart,osCommerce. Are they included in every host that has Fantastico?
Linux or Windows doesn't matter.
Country doesn't matter much but I would prefer UK for English language support.
I am trying to test a website and see 'exactly' what a person viewing from Germany sees. We have implemented some programming that looks at the clients IP address and then changes the content based on the region of the world they are located in.
In order to fully test it, I need to access the site via a proxy server in Europe (preferably Germany), so that the IP address will show up as originating from Europe.
I have used proxify.net here in the states, but I have not been able to find one based in Germany. The site has some flash on it, so it will also need to support flash. The one proxy I found bombed on the flash.
I'm looking for a host located in UK that can accept/support vpn/tunnel connections to the VPS - creation and access to vps' /dev/net/tun (TAP/TUN device) for use with tunneling services like vtun.
I am currently a customer of webhosting.uk.com, they look very good host but unfortunately they dont accept or support vpn on their VPS plans.
The bigger the list of hosts supporting vpn, the best.
Maybe hosts of other european countries too, if connection speed is acceptable.
We are developing a new web site that will be collecting private information (no credit cards - only names, phones, email addresses and potentialy addresses etc).
Our company will be based in the EU and the target audience will largely be located in the EU.
We were thinking of using some of the very respected US companies like theplanet or softlayer that have very good prices for a quality service instead of the more expensive and less flexible EU based solutions.
But I was wondering whether this would violate the EU privaxy regulations (not sure if softlayer or theplanet are part of the US Safe Harbor) or whether there would be a way to cover ourselves (e.g. special contractual binds with the provider (which i am hoping would be part of their standard SLA/T&C) or by mentioning in the Terms & conditions of our site that data will be stored in the US.
I've been developing a small 2D MMORPG lately. I bought a VPS to run the server on a few days ago and sadly it doesn't work so well. Sometimes the loads go pretty high (afaik not caused by me) and MySQL freezes, causing the server to just wait for MySQL to unlock, hanging all the players around on the map. Not a good thing.
Anyway, the game is very small scale, and I'm not planning to have more than maybe 30-50 players online. It does not suck up much CPU, I had ~10 guys online and loads stayed down at 0.00 on the VPS box.
Problem with getting a dedicated is our very low budget. As I'm still underage and living at home hammering my pc and don't have any real incomes, we're talking numbers like $ 30 - $ 50 USD per month - it's really hard to find for that price in Europe.
Requirements: Monthly payment, $ 30 - $ 50 / month, no setup (or very small setup, like $ 20) 10Mbit/s or faster connection, 100GB traffic should do 500MHz CPU is all cool 512MB or more RAM 5GB diskspace is enough Has to be in Europe due to ping times (< 100ms) Linux, Debian 4.0 prefered
If anyone knows where I could get something like this for a low price, $ 30 to $ 50 USD, it'd be great.
