I'm looking for a new hosting service to handle 2 of our websites. They are both high traffic, high bandwidth media serving type websites. So far I have been upset with the service from 2 ISP's; the first being GoDaddy, whos (non-existent) support consists of people trained to search Google for the problems you are experiencing... and god forbid you disable the Control Panel - then you are really S.O.L because they won't even help you. The second ISP I've had problems with is 1&1, their support is just as a bad... their service is good in terms of uptime & speed, but they have no scalability (read 120gb max hdd) I'm looking for a host that provides 3 things 1) Scalability - I want to start out with 500 GB and be able to go up to say 1.5 Terabytes later on with no hassle 2) Proper Support - I want a LINUX ADMINISTRATOR handling support for my system, not a GOOGLE MONKEY 3) Fast Systems - I want a Dual Xeon system, with 2GB+ of ram and 500+ GB of HDD space -- also need 2000GB transfer per month minimum So far I've looked at 2 possibilities: 1) www.lunarpages.com - they seem to have a good support system in place, proper admins, IRC support etc... but I don't think they can go any higher than 400 GB hd space. 2) www.liquidweb.com - I saw an ad for these guys on digg (claiming their servers can handle the "digg effect" where people from digg hit a site and bring it down with so much traffic), but I havn't heard much about them, so if anyone knows about LiquidWeb please post here! Price is a factor too, I don't want to spend more than say $500 a month. So if anyone knows about the 2 ISP's above, or any better ones please let me know, your assistance is greatly appreciated.
I've had limited experience with liquidweb in the past. It was about three years ago and they always seemed to have connectivity issues. I would frequently experience dropped connections to their servers. In their defense traceroutes would always show problems with their upstream provider, not Liquidweb themselves, however it still trickled down into being their problem. The connectivity issues would be short, never lasting more than a couple of minutes, but they seemed to happen very frequently. It was almost as if there was some piece of hardware somewhere in their network that would reboot a couple of times per day. Other than that their support was adequate and the rest of the experience I had with them was good.
I've used both of them for dedicated hosting. Lunarpages is a very low-end host and you can expect huge hold times and terrible service. If you get hacked, forget about getting help. Their security is nonexistent. Liquidweb has amazing support and they're the nicest, most dedicated group of guys you'll ever meet, but they only know basic system administration. Also, I was shocked to discover that the 2000gb of transfer I had with my dedicated server were 1000 in and 1000 out, not 2000gb of transfer like one might expect. And extra transfer is some huge number, I think it's like $1.50/gig if you don't buy it in advance and $1 if you do but the problem is they just don't have the bandwidth to support a big site so they have to charge very, very high rates. If you can afford it, you should go with Rackspace. They have amazing techs . I can't afford it so I use ThePlanet where I'm getting very good, low-cost bandwidth but their service is non-existent. I hired my own server administrator on a freelance basis to manage the system. If I didn't have him I'd be dead. It's really hard to get a high-bandwidth host with great tech support. You probably should just go with The Planet / Server Matrix but find a server admin to help you get things set up and to fix your machine when it goes down.
Hmm thanks for the advice.. LiquidWeb has max 2400gb now, but it's 1200 in and 1200 out, like you said. That kind of sucks, you can't change it either. I checked out The Planet, they don't have the type of storage/price point I'm looking for. I'll check Rackspace... Anyone else?? Getting close to purchase time!
Why don't you try putting up your own server with a dedicated IP? If you are tech savvy enough to handle this then do it yourself. And if you run into troubles then you have a admin support guy for backup on call basis. THis would work much better.
I have a dedicate server at Liquidweb and I am happy with their support and their responce time. And the connectivity and their speed untill now is good. I have the server about 3 months and I had a VPS before the upgrade And the VPS was hosting by them. Before buy check for coupons and their special month offer
My lunarpages site survived a digg attack, 22,000 visits in 2 hours, and that's a cheapo shared account, not a dedicated server. I think anybody can survive digg unless you have tons of high res pictures.