July 24, 2004

Curious George: Hosted server I need some help from the monkeys here for finding a reliable hosted web server.

I need 40 GB of traffic a month, shell account access, MYSQL, and low latency for running a fairly busy phpBB board. I need some suggestions for a server that you know is fast and dependable, and isn't carrying 1999-era prices. In the past, I've used some hosted servers like Communitech.net which turned out to be running on severely overloaded racks, and I want to avoid this. Where should I be looking? Thanks!

posted by rolypolyman 20 years ago
  • I use Brinkster. I've never had any trouble with them.
  • I'm hep to the swells at wholesale internet. Tell 'em KJ sent ya and get the monkey filter special.
  • I asked a similar question a few months ago and got some very helpful responses. Hopefully some of those will work for you. My best bet: Dreamhost.
  • I was able to take advantage of 1 and 1's promo deal back in January, and I have to say, I love it. Deal's not good anymore, but they do have some good cheap packages. Very reliable. They take a out a four page ad in Wired every month.
  • Thanks everyone -- also to mfpb for pointing out the older thread.
  • For Thirty bucks a month, racknine has been taking good care of the Hut. 50 gigs of bandwidth is good enough for me to host music all month; I imagine you'll be okay. Customer service is VERY helpful; outages are extremely rare and their interface is simple enough that I can use it. They're recommended.
  • I use OLM for three domains (two work and one personal) and I'm pretty happy with them. Up-time is excellent and they offer all the features you mentioned. I wouldn't recommend them to everyone, since their learning curve for the neophyte webmaster is pretty steep, but the features are there and they have 24-hour live tech support. They offer a variety of plans, based on traffic and features. I believe they're entirely LAMP, so if you're a Microsoftie, they're probably not for you. For what it's worth, I disagree somewhat with the folks who are recommending Dreamhost. My experience has been that they're good for low-volume sites, and very good at helping new users set things up, but they slow down a lot under heavy load and at peak times. I moved one of our work sites from Dreamhost to OLM because of this. YMMV, of course.
  • hicinbaby's probably right. I've never needed much bandwith for my personal site (which is all I use it for) but if when you say 40GB bandwith you intend to *use all 40*, that's out of the league. Sorry about that