I've used plenty of shared web hosting in the past. However, I'd like to find some dedicated hosting for a project I've been working on that will be going live soon. I'm not sure what company to go with, as I've never searched for dedicated hosting before. I'm hoping people here can offer some recommendations on hosting they've used in the past, or even hosting services they run. Here are the main things I'm looking for in a dedicated host: Servers located in U.S. Able to serve site content for multiple domains/sub-domains. Relatively inexpensive (No more than $100/month). Any Linux OS, with PHP 5.2+ and MySQL 5 installed. Thanks for any suggestions!
You won't find many managed servers for that price so you will need to know a bit about running a server. An alternative is to get a VPS hosting account which is a fixed portion of a dedicated server. Here's a list of managed VPS hosting providers starting at around $40 per month. Andrew
Thanks Andrew. I admit I'm a complete noob when it comes to anything domain/hosting-based beyond the basics of shared hosting. I'll have to look into managed VPS hosting, I wasn't aware of this as an option!
For cPanel vps, you can take a look at ServInt or PowerVPS. Or if you can open to other like DirectAdmin, there are some more options. DirectAdmin is far better than cPanel, from our experiences
Are you familiar with Linux? I would also resommend you get a box a home that you can dual boot or just boot with linux to start learning the system. You can also get a fairley inexpensive dedicated server and pay for server management. Any time you need anything done you just open a ticket and they do it for you. Most also take time to secure your box from being an open relay and hacking.... We have a couple servers in the $50 price range and offer fully managed service for $49.95/month. If you dont think you need fully managed then we have some really nice oxes around $100/month. Let me know if you need any help with anything and good luck!
Meanwhile low-end server seems a good option, but I definitely recommend to go with high-end vps, instead of low-end server. Why? Low-end server is usually using cheap desktop stuff, and it's few years old. By that way, you are facing to hardware trouble any time. With high-end vps, you will utilize the new hardware, with raid protection. It's much more better than low-end server
I'm not sure about the quality of their US service (since I use the UK one) but 1and1 do managed servers for that price. Might be worth you checking out!
Managed server requires a very good supporting service. However, mostly I have heard bad things about 1and1 customer support.
I have as well, but when your giant like them you can't please everyone. Sooner or later mistakes will be made but I would agree that they are a dominant company. Have you considered other hosts? Special needs in your plan? IN any event, i would go with a solid VPS before a managed server.
I have used vps-hosting at vpslink for some time now - and even their link-2 product runs my LAMP-based website without any problems. The site has been on the frontpage of digg, lifehacker and delicious and the server just kept running. Also vps provides a little more flexibility over managed shared hosting, but you required a little skill to pull it off. I had some special requirement for mod_rewrite which could not have been handled by a normal hosting solution, this was the only reason I started using vps.
www.softlayer.com is the best dedicated server rental facility in america. Between all of my clients I manage roughly 20 servers located at their facility.. I wished they offered colocation (for my own boxes).. I think their cheapest box (on the specials page) is like 119 or 109$/mo for a dual opteron w/ 1gb of mem, 250gb hd, 1 tb of transfer, and 5 external ips + 1 internal.. They offer the only internal routed network (internal lan in the 10.x.x.x range for communication between servers) of any datacenter in america (as far as I'm aware).
Yep 1and1 do have a bad record but look a bit closer at the complaints - they are always about the shared hosting. There is a 24hr Server Emergency Hotline for the managed servers + it's been pretty good for me so far.
About a year ago I had a client when I went to work for him who had 16 dedicated servers at 1and1. I worked with them for about 6-7 months to get everything moved over properly to their new servers at their office space on a dedicated line. 1and1 is by far the worst service I have ever used. (I've been on the internet since 1990ish, using dedicated servers, web hosting, even ran my own hosting company for a time.) I've hosted at many datacenters in america... softlayer, liquidweb, steadfast, theplanet, dedicatedbox.net, aplus.net, rackspace.com, staminus.net, and many many more over my years. My experience: Hardware problems with at least 2 servers per week (usually looked like bad memory or bad motherboard, which would be replaced and would die again in another week). At the time I think they only offered 3 intel P4 packages which were insanely expensive for their value. I haven't used them (thank god) in over a year. Several dead harddrives, customer support times were insanely long. At one point they turned the main webserver off because of 'spam complaints'. They left this server offline for 7 days before responding to a support ticket or phone call. When you do call them, you dont speak to someone who actually knows what they're talking about.. But rather a secretary who writes down what you tell him into a little window which gets sent to the real technicians. Thankfully I had a recent backup of the webserver and was able to get billing going on another box. It was a NIGHTMARE.
might want to try out http://www.xcelservers.com and ask for managed VPS if you have no idea what you're doing. Or pick up a dedicated server dual core for around 80 bucks.