Hosting in Ireland Hots UP

Sponge Bob

Digiweb have launched some fairly nice hosting plans linked below

http://hosting.digiweb.ie/hosting/

Thankfully you need not bother with windows 2003 and sql server 2003 , so here are the centos/my sql postgre sql options

http://hosting.digiweb.ie/hosting/starter/linux/ €99 year

http://hosting.digiweb.ie/hosting/ecommerce/linux/ €199 year

http://hosting.digiweb.ie/hosting/enterprise/linux/ €299 year

centos is the free version of red hat enterprise linux by the way . I take it that centos iso downloads will be excluded henceforth from the Digiweb traffic monitoring system because they are big and there are so many releases of centos out there for the development community ...eh lads

Blaster99

Not a criticism of Digiweb, but what's so special about those hosting plans? Every Dick & Joe has something similar.

It would be nice to see more players in dedicated hosting to bring down costs there.

regi

Hey Blaster99,

I work for the Hosting group within Digiweb, and I can say that its coming soon. In a nutshell, we're working hard to provide a wide range of hosting and other products that can be tied together with a single bill, and each one will be available when its fully ready.

Large scale dedicated hosting and co-location is coming shortly too, and we're definately going to bring some competition there

Sponge Bob

and it may even be time to open the web hosting forum

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=160

again. I'll mod it if you want .....absolutely utterly ruthlessly in other words

regi

Oh God.

I'm not sure if we want to reopen that particular party.

Sponge Bob

if there was a sticky at the top in that particular forum listing

1. who was currently banned
2. and their transgressions ...
3. and who they work for or
4. who they pimp shamelessly .

and a policy of deleting all positive or non negative mentions of any company with a current ban in place be it week , month or permanent and then they might behave

oh and nobody allowed to post with less than 100 posts and a sponsor either , a bit like the soccer requests board which postdated the establishment of the web hosting board.

Blaster99

regi (or Sponge Bob), keep us posted on dedicated hosting.

Seeing as the internet is a fairly global affair, it generally makes no real odds where one hosts so a bitch fight between Irish providers seems pretty pointless in the greater scheme of things. I would have thought that ISP's would have more to gain in that respect as they're dealing with a captive audience.

Asok

I don't think we are at a stage where it makes no real odds where one hosts as latency and sheer round trip time will still affect a sites performance. I think hosting your content in the country of your target audience it still the best way to avoid such a performance slump.


Maybe this would be better off in Webmaster / Flash?

Sponge Bob

Ireland has very competitive (internationally) hosting too, the big turnoff was all the bickering a few years back. Nowadays every ms shaved off hops matter to voip and gamers and others. Therefore an inex connection / irish host does make a difference.

It doe not matter so much with a website only .

If the sector _behaved_ in public it would engender confidence . Confidence drives business.

Everybody happy, right !

Blaster99

Definitely, inventing aliases on a forum to try to boost their reputation is not a clever thing. That would turn me off a company in a major way.

I was shopping for dedicated hosting a while back and ended up in the States. It's significantly cheaper than the local guys and there was no setup and no minimum contract. I also looked in UK/Europe and it's a bit cheaper there, but not as big a difference. A few of the co-location deals were a good bit better in the UK but I don't think it's feasible to stick equipment in another country.

As for the pings, there's not much point in making a site for the Irish market so it should probably not be hosted here. When it comes to all this lark about latency for web sites, about 99% of all useful web sites are in the States and we all use them without moaning about it. Gaming, VoIP, different story of course, even though a lot of people use UK servers without much difficulty.

I incidently have a shared hosting package in Ireland as well, and it's very competitive.

watty

Sponge Bob wrote:

if there was a sticky at the top in that particular forum listing

1. who was currently banned
2. and their transgressions ...
3. and who they work for or
4. who they pimp shamelessly .

and a policy of deleting all positive or non negative mentions of any company with a current ban in place be it week , month or permanent and then they might behave

oh and nobody allowed to post with less than 100 posts and a sponsor either , a bit like the soccer requests board which postdated the establishment of the web hosting board.

And a "Promote yourself in this thread to get banned stupidity filter" like tCN?

watty

Blaster99 wrote:

As for the pings, there's not much point in making a site for the Irish market so it should probably not be hosted here.

What about online pizza ordering etc?

Dundalk Daily

Yes Digiwebs seem to offer some good deals but is it not much much cheaper to host abroad. I was looking at this company www.ixwebhosting.com, they offer unlimited space, 2000 gb transfer and unlimited sub domains, all for $13 per month. Can anyone advise about hosting abroad. Company seem to get alot of good reviews accross the industry.

phil

There are plenty of reasons to host in Ireland and depending on your situation that may or may not appeal to you. If you're aware of the differences between all the providers only you can make the choice whether one is superior over the other. Different features make offers attractive to different people.

Always investigate the process thoroughly and decide what's right for you.

For me I've had and bought co-lo (both personally and commercially) both in the States and Ireland. In-hours business support, management, access to the site and ease of communication are generally reasons I've stayed in Ireland previously. Sometimes there's more to life than a few quid a month.

That said, if you look at the bargain basement stuff in the States, in a lot of cases you get what you pay for.

Be aware of what's out there in the market, make an informed decision and you'll nearly always make the right one. You can get stung with new products or a dodgy takeoveres, staff reshuffle, one-off incident etc. but if a company / product has a good reputation and they communicate well with you that's always a good start.

Sponge Bob

for a dead simple few pages/ low graphics / no database or small database website its impossible to beat the US prices and it does not matter that its so far away either.

once its complex / high availability / low latency a requirement with an oracle back end and maybe complex maintenance 2 or three times a year its best off as near as possible

Akula

That digiweb offer is by far the best price I've seen from an Irish host to date. Regi... any chance on more info of the specifics of your offer? Details on what control panel you offer etc? Also any chance of reseller accounts so you can give your individual sites their own control panels etc..

phil

I've said it before and I'll say it again it depends on what you need.

If you're not support heavy at all, you can essentially host whereever you find a reasonably reliable provider at the rock bottom price. Start needing help by email or on the phone and location, response times, speaking the language etc. start becoming a factor.

If you know that you can pick up a phone and ring a local number to get through to someone who can help you, that can mean more to people. Remembering also that traditionally "hosting" also means mail hosting which brings it's own complications.

Also, I work through SSH connections, so every bit of latency counts .. but I realise I'm an exception

It's a case-by-case thing IMHO. Depending on the nature of what you need combined with what you know, the location can vary as much as you want.

Blaster99

Sponge Bob wrote:

for a dead simple few pages/ low graphics / no database or small database website its impossible to beat the US prices and it does not matter that its so far away either.

once its complex / high availability / low latency a requirement with an oracle back end and maybe complex maintenance 2 or three times a year its best off as near as possible

I run a complex clustered high availability service with a database backend. I've had it hosted in Ireland and it's now hosted in USA. Why do I need to be near it? I rent the equipment so if something fails I just need to lift the phone to get it sorted. So long as the people at the other end can speak English and offer a reasonable SLA and a reasonable amount of bandwidth, I don't really care. If I need to visit the site, something is seriously wrong somewhere. I've dealt with all problems including equipment failure remotely so far, and that includes the Irish setup.

Akula wrote:

That digiweb offer is by far the best price I've seen from an Irish host to date.

I'm pretty sure the Irish host I use for shared hosting is cheaper and there are obviously lots of international ones that are cheaper. I'm definitely paying less but maybe the specs are lower, I can't remember. But anything around €100 a year is alright for a basic site with a database.

phil

Blaster99 wrote:

I run a complex clustered high availability service with a database backend. I've had it hosted in Ireland and it's now hosted in USA. Why do I need to be near it?

You don't. If this works for you, then you've answered your own question.

Don't let people dictate to you what works for you. HA stuff is in a different league than most people understand or know how to operate in the first place. What you're looking for there more than anything else is redundancy, not support. The comfort factor you want to feel is that the data centre will always have power and network connectivity.

Again, different situations, different priorities.

Might I add in again that it depends on the individuals situation .. there is no "one fits all" solution to this argument.

Phil.

Dundalk Daily

What exactly should someone look for with their hosting company, apart from price and customer service. Are the main things to look for space, bandwidth, subdomains. Im talking about a site which will be the online version of a magazine.

watty

You don't need anything special at all for that. Except good content and a real good web page designer that isn't carried away with "cool" and Flash animations and giant images that need fast broadband.

Dundalk Daily

Watty I understand what you are saying re the design but in terms of hosting such a product what should one be looking for when researching hosting.

Blaster99

You need to estimate the traffic volume and how much space you need or you can just go for a basic package and see how things go.

The established guys in Ireland are Hosting 365 and Blacknight. I think they're about the same for shared hosting. I could be wrong (and I don't want to start another hosting war), but I think Hosting 365 has the best peering and network connectivity which will improve latency etc. That basic Digiweb hosting service looks good too but I guess they're an unknown quantity at this point. The thing is that it's not the end of the world to get it wrong as it's easy to move.

flamegrill

Blaster99

Hosting365, Digiweb and Blacknight are all peered at INEX and all have multiple carriers to the internet, this is a fact.

None of them will be beaten for performance by any other hosting company in Ireland in terms of network latency, download speeds and overall ping times.

Just thought I'd mention this fact.

Paul

Blaster99

No bother. Is that also true for a user in the UK or Europe?

flamegrill

We'd have equal reach IMO into europe aswell. We've 2 carriers with a presence at LINX and AMS-IX which are the two largest internet exchanges in europe.

It'd be a hard one to guage, but blacknight for example have 10ms pings into UK ISPs which is pretty damned good.

watty

Dundalk Daily wrote:

Watty I understand what you are saying re the design but in terms of hosting such a product what should one be looking for when researching hosting.

You need an estimate of page views and convert that to Gbyte traffic per month and also how many simultanous connects set bandwidth. Both of those are only an issue for a VERY popular site. I have a site that was getting 2K hits a day and I was nowhere near traffic limit on a basic package, nor any complaints of slowness (bandwidth).

Monthly traffic allowance and bandwidth are related but not the same thing. Most companies are coy on actual bandwidth for a shared virtual host. (Maybe some don't know )

Just get an absolute basic package. You can usually upgrade within minutes if needed.

steve-hosting36

That's good advice watty.

Most providers do 'starter' plans from as little as €39.95 a year (like us) and the upgrade to the 'bigger' versions is a single click. You can review your needs as you see your traffic requirements grow.

Irish hosting is extremely competetive at this stage, we've been in the market 5 years this year now, and pricing is roughly the same here, like for like, for shared and dedicated hosting, as other major markets. With our own datacentre, infrastructure, networks and peering into most European exchanges, there is no reason to want to host outside Ireland.

Best advice is true of any product or service, shop around, compare prices and specs, factor in reputation, how long the provider is established and then, if the site is important to your business, visit their offices / datacentre and see for yourself the company's commitment and investment.

HTH, Stephen

Blaster99

Assuming Hosting365's web site is up to date, I'm paying less than half for my dedicated servers in the US. I did research this area thoroughly and Ireland's only hope was if I were going for co-location, but it would end up costing about as much as the Americans with a lot more work for me and less flexibility.

On co-location, H365 and Blacknight were about the same on price. I found some significantly cheaper co-location deals in Europe but I can't see how co-location could work in another country.

steve-hosting36

Less than half of 60 euro?

Blaster99

I could give you some feedback based on my research, but I'm sure Google works in H365 as well. In case that isn't obvious, I'm not using 2.4 GHz Celerons with 256MB of RAM.