Problem with Dreamhost - loooking for better host.

cianclarke

Been having serious problems with Dreamhost the past few months, I'd estimate uptime runs at about 85% which is awful. I've contacted them several times asking what can they do for me to improve their service, saying I'd have to move host. My last email has gone unanswered!

I really don't want to have to go through the hassle of switching the whole lot - i've got mysql databases, mail accounts, mailboxes. loads of stuff to consider.
Still - It seems it's time to switch. Can anybody recommend somebody decent? I've been looking around review sites, and the one that seems to come out on top for me at the moment is globalwebbrands.com.

I've also been offered hosting from a friend who has his own box, that's also an option.


What I need is:
Unlimited domain hosting, unlimited sub-ftp users, unlimited mysql, unlimited mail, and around 2gb of storage. Monthly traffic, I'm not sure - maybe 5gb a month?
The last essential is some sort of decent web control panel with one click installs like what fantastico offers, maybe something that has the WHM control panel thingy would be nice.


Dreamhost were offering all this and loads loads better for $120 a year - so I'd be looking around the same price category.

Any advice would be great, thanks.

Serbian

There are the usual Irish Options, Hosting365 and Blacknight. Neither of them offer unlimited domains, and probably don't offer unlimited mail and MySQL for the price you are looking at. They do offer much better uptimes though.

For the same price, you could host with Media Temple in the US. They just launched their much hyped Grid Hosting, but they had some teething problems with it. They offer a decent features on the account (copy and pasted from the site): 100 GBs of premium storage, 1 TB of short-path bandwidth, Host up to 100 individual sites, 1000 email accounts.

Sposs

Do you think the issues you are having is because most hosts who offered unlimited space etc tend to be crap?

You should look around the irish hosting market, for a company you can ring if your having issues and who don't use the hosting buzzword of "unlimited".

mneylon

Sposs wrote:

You should look around the irish hosting market, for a company you can ring if your having issues and who don't use the hosting buzzword of "unlimited".

Oh dear I find myself actually agreeing with you Aidan

Sposs

Careful Now.

Rollo Tamasi

I use EuroVPS myself. They have a good package and are fairly cheap for what you get but their support wouldn't even be a tenth as good as what you would get from an Irish host, in particular the type of service i get from Blacknight.

A small orange / host dime might be worth a look if you're going to go fishing about for another US host. A few friends host with both those guys and I have heard good things about them. I prefer to host in Europe myself for support, currency and ping reasons.

cianclarke

Sposs wrote:

Do you think the issues you are having is because most hosts who offered unlimited space etc tend to be crap?

You should look around the irish hosting market, for a company you can ring if your having issues and who don't use the hosting buzzword of "unlimited".

You have a very good point there - unlimited is a bit misleading.

What I really need, for now, is to be able to host ~30 domains, 30 ftp users. Maybe I'll check out blacknight, had good experiences with domain registration, except for that time they lost my fax in their bundle.
Maybe hosting365...

Edit: Hosting 365 are only giving me 5 mysql databases for that price, and Blacknight's control panel just doesn't cut it. Looks like I'll be going abroad...

Host gator looks good, but has that "dreamhost fell", media temple looks good but I'm not sure I want to dabble in a technology I don't understand - also a little pricey for what they're giving.

Host gator or globalwebbrands.com looks best - anybody any experience with either?

mneylon

cianclarke wrote:

Blacknight's control panel just doesn't cut it.

Out of interest, what do you feel it is missing?

kjt

Try midphase, great company!

My linky

cianclarke

blacknight wrote:

Out of interest, what do you feel it is missing?

I just found the layout quite poor - not what I need when I want to do menial tasks quickly, and get to know my way around.

Also, I went in and looked for some way of fast-installing things like joomla, gallery - and couldn't find it easily. This put me off quite a bit. Just seems a bit lacking compared to what I've been using.
Maybe if you offfered WHM - I've used this before and liked it...

cianclarke

Does anybody know if there is an easy way to monitor the uptime of your website over say a one month period and get an uptime %?
I wouldn't trust dreamhost's statistics - they're way off. I want to know how often my site actually ends up down.

Thanks

misterq

there are lots of of site monitoring services out there:

One that has been around for donkeys years is:
http://www.internetseer.com/

I'm actually just playing around with a new one I found here also:
http://site24x7.com

I can't vouch for it's reliability yet though as I only signed up a few hours ago.

tomED

cianclarke wrote:

I just found the layout quite poor - not what I need when I want to do menial tasks quickly, and get to know my way around.

Also, I went in and looked for some way of fast-installing things like joomla, gallery - and couldn't find it easily. This put me off quite a bit. Just seems a bit lacking compared to what I've been using.
Maybe if you offfered WHM - I've used this before and liked it...

Are you referring to DirectAdmin?

I find DirectAdmin to be one of the better control panels out there.
There are different layouts you can choose from so that the controls available to you in a manner that suits either newbs or more advanced users.

I personally don't like Cpanel - which from memory I think it what Hosting365 use. Correct me if I'm wrong.

But back to OP - I strongly suggest keeping your hosting in Ireland for numerous reasons.

If I was to choose from the available hosting companies in Ireland, I would have to choose Blacknight - if you want a reason why - Support and their willingness to try the latest and greatest applications available to us.

It helps me sleep at night

stakey

hosting365 use hsphere for both there Windows and Linux plans

tomED

deconstruct wrote:

hosting365 use hsphere for both there Windows and Linux plans

Ah sorry yep - that's right - I always get them mixed up!

Sposs

tomED wrote:

If I was to choose from the available hosting companies in Ireland, I would have to choose Blacknight

And the fact their a client of yours, doesn't change that

tomED

Sposs wrote:

And the fact their a client of yours, doesn't change that

To be honest, it's the other way round really, I would be a bigger client of theirs than they are to me.
(edit: in the sense of how much i would spend with them as opposed to them spending with me)

But either way, in a professional business, it doesn;t come down to that - it comes down to what you can rely on and I can rely always rely on them.

steve-hosting36

I always say the same thing, but I'll say it again, if your hosting is important to you, host locally and physically check the host out. The fact that most of the international hosts (and a great many of the irish ones) are small time resellers who have no infrastructure of their own is not often obvious from a slick website. Check the scale and customer base of a provider and then physically visit them.

That said, if it's a hobby site and uptime isnt a huge concern, then by all means buy based on price, just remember, you very often get what you pay for

HTH, Stephen

ps: Hsphere's -much- nicer than cpanel

mneylon

cianclarke wrote:

I just found the layout quite poor - not what I need when I want to do menial tasks quickly, and get to know my way around.

Hmm.. Most people find it quite intuitive ..

cianclarke wrote:

Also, I went in and looked for some way of fast-installing things like joomla, gallery - and couldn't find it easily.

You can't see it in the demo on our site for some silly reason.

We do offer an easy to use auto-installer for Joomla etc., if you want to play with a live account just let me know

Rollo Tamasi

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Check the scale and customer base of a provider and then physically visit them.

Hi Steve, i'm just curious to find out if the backlog of support queries have been resolved by you guys? I have seen a few reports on forums that there was an issue or two with your tech support response times.

As for control panels. I have used the big three (Cpanel, Direct Admin and Plesk) and I have found DA to be the most efficent. This is especially true if you're running a dedicated/vps sever as it requires less processing than the other two. Plus the license is the cheapest of the lot. Cpanel is a clunk of a thing. Plesk is probably the most user friendly of them all. Not sure if any Irish hosts are using it though.

steve-hosting36

We've hired and been inducting a total of 16 new staff over the last 4 weeks, so yes, all support tickets and calls are now resolved lightening fast !!

I would include Hpshere in the big 4 too, when talking about control panels, it's more a 'hosting management system' than just a control panel, but it is excellent for shared hosting.

ntlbell

steve-hosting36 wrote:

We've hired and been inducting a total of 16 new staff over the last 4 weeks, so yes, all support tickets and calls are now resolved lightening fast !!

I would include Hpshere in the big 4 too, when talking about control panels, it's more a 'hosting management system' than just a control panel, but it is excellent for shared hosting.

16 new staff in 4 weeks? high turn over? staff unhappy?

CuLT

ntlbell wrote:

16 new staff in 4 weeks? high turn over? staff unhappy?

Sounds more like responding to demand if I'm reading it correctly.

You can't have a high turnover if you don't have a large staff to begin with.

Unless you have some insider information and are stirring the pot?

Lets not talk about the inner workings of hosting companies here, we're allowed precious little discussion on hosting as it is with the hosting board being closed and still very much enforced.

steve-hosting36

Rapid growth, as cult suggests, a few left over the last few months and we were slow to replace them, we've grown as much in the last 12 months as we had in almost the previous 36 - so a big hire was required to keep up!