Hi, I'm thinking of starting a forum with about 10 sign ups a day. But I can't imagine hosting it on a shared server as the site may outgrow shared hosting easily. What hosting would you recommend? I'm especially keen to hear about the experiences from forum owners. Which hosting company are you using, which plan (vps or dedicated) etc. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.
Hello, What is your forum software?? and i will recommended a VPS hosting or reliable Shared Hosting or Semi Dedicated Hosting
So now is the thinking stage and yet to startup your forum? If yes then I advise you to startup with shared hosting will do.
If you're going down the shared route maybe give aquariusstorage.com a go. I've hosted a site with them for a while and server load always seems low and uptime seems excellent. They offer specific forum hosting which I haven't used myself, but judging by their shared hosting it might be worth a shot. http://www.aquariusstorage.com/simple_machines_hosting.php
Try cloud hosting, its cool RackSpace Cloud Hosting The beauty of cloud hosting is that it grows with you and its very much affordable. When you host on cloud server, you get the flexibility of adding more cloud servers without moving files or database. If your forum site is a hit then add an extra server in your cloud, if its not that much hit then do not add. Adding an extra server will cost you more, and the cost is not sky high like dedicated server. These days it makes more and more sense in doing cloud computing.
Thanks for all the great input. I have a few sites with traffic, but I've never gone past the stage where I add and manage a forum. all my sites are on shared hosting at the moment. So with traffic, assuming 10 sign ups a day, I'll be getting 300 members in a month, and 3600 members in a year. I just don't trust shared hosting to handle the load because I've heard horror stories that host shut down accounts because the site utilize too much server resources (CPU). I'm really interested in hearing from forum owners. In particular, how do you grow your forum? Did you start with shared hosting and then move it to vps or dedicated server later on? Or did you buy dedicated hosting right from the very beginning? Obviously, the prospect of having to move and transfer a huge forum is not very appealing, or is it something that is very easy to do? Looking forward to hearing more advice.
Go with HawkHost. I recently switched from them and my server speeds have at least doubled compared to any Apache server. As for forum software, look at phpBB, MyBB, SMF, vBulletin, and IPB (and XenForo), and see what you like. It's (and should be) a "Different Strokes for Different Folks" world. You can get a demo of all of them here. http://www.forum-software.org/ As for which forum software I recommend, I just advise not using vBulletin. Their market share/community is declining, and the complaints are slowly creeping onto the vBulletin forums. Their customer service/support is bullshit, and ticket support is now extra unless you get the Community Suite.
A VPS is an option if you can manage it, or if you have a budget to use managed service. Alternatively you can search for any high availability hosting service similar to Rackspace CloudSites. There are companies that offer such hosting plans.
VPS hosting solution will be the most suitable for running forums.. before to make any final decision, be sure that the company you are going to deal with has stable servers and knowledgeable support team.
start off with a basic shared hosting account, and then move up to a VPS when you need it. It should be easy enough to move up once you get some visitors
This seems to be the most practical thing to do. Thanks for all the info and advice. @NetworkInteraction - good recommendation. Prices seem fair enough.
I agree with funkywizard. I have a forum with 20-70+ online at the same and I still don't find the need to move it to a VPS just yet. You just have to chose a better hosting provider.