Stablehost vs MDDHosting - Which is best for semi-dedicated hosting?

[joms]

Hi,
I tried to register at digitalfaq but it seems my IP range is banned which I believe is due to my location - Philippines.

Anyway, can I ask for your advise/suggestion. I am down to 2 hosts right now and I need to know which one is better in terms of their enterprise/semi-dedicated plan. Host in question is Stablehost and MDDhosting. I've read your suggested host as well as read numerous reviews. But I still want to know your suggestion on my specific case as I highly value your opinion.

My needs:
- at least 5GB disk (more would be nice but not a deal breaker. just in case i want to start a new website)
- at least 100GB Traffic
- initially, most disk/traffic will be used by our email
- currently our email data is around 1GB (from 5yrs+ of non deleting of email) and traffic it uses is around 5GB to 8GB / month (for the past 18 months)
- we email our clients at an average of 70 emails a day with a max of 100 emails a day
- we highly value email stabiity and it is of primary importance to us.
- our current host is hostnexus which we plan to leave since we are having intermittent email problems for the past 3 months. Our client's email bounce back and they inform us by calling us on our phone. It is embarrassing that this has happened several times already hence we decide to change our host.
- as of now, our site only has 1 static page for its website but we plan to update it in the future. Nothing too heavy though. At most 10 pages. No video/audio/forums/etc. At most some flash on the main page.

Since this is our family business and we need to have a very reliable host, we decided to increase our budget from $5 (hostnexus) to $20/month. I decided to go semi-dedicated or enterprise plan for stability. VPS is too complicted for me, specially an unmanaged one. I also think VPS is too much since we don't need the resources for such a small requirement.
-Stability and support is what is paramount to us.
-We are from the Philippines and 100% of our client is also here. I believe our country has a fast connection to US-West. Im not sure though but I think we have a better ping when we ping US-west using speedtest.

In this regard, which would you recommend? Stablehost enterprise basic? (which will run at around $14/month after discount coupon) or MDDhosting at $21.25/month (if I pay their yearly dedicated plan)

Note: MDDhosting has a 50% coupon but it can only be applied once and it is not recurring unlike stablehost. I can apply it on their yearly package though but I like to go monthly as of now so I don't get tied up incase the host doesnt perform well. Hopefully, if the host performs well after a few months, we plan to stay for a long time as we dont want to keep changing hosts.

I hope you can help me by giving your suggestion.

Thanks

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[kpmedia]

Hello, and welcome to the site.

We ban IPs using several methods, and sometimes it unfortunately blocks good people like yourself. For this reason, we can manually setup accounts.
See this page: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/banned.htm

Now, to answer your question...

Both of those are excellent hosts, so either will be a good decision.

The biggest consideration is for email. I would contact both Stablehost and MDDHosting and see how well they can handle your email needs. However I would suspect that both are fine, and that volume of email -- which is tiny -- should be fine for a shared hosting plan.

To be honest, unless your site is using some resource-heavy application, it would be fine on shared. There's no need to use semi-dedicated (aka enterprise) hosting. The site seems small, both space and bandwidth, including the email use. And if that's the case, you can use the Stablehost "SAVE40OFF" to get 40% off. Just sign up for annual or longer for the best deal, as it's a one-time coupon.

MDD Hosting is in Colorado, which is not the west coast. It's more central.

Stablehost is in Phoenix, Arizona, which is considered west coast. Yes, that will be faster for you. And I know a number of folks in Singapore, Philippines, etc, and they have no problem loading sites well. So in my opinion, that's the one to get.

If you want monthly, you can use Stablehost coupon "US-WHT2012-25" to get 25% off "for life" (forever, lifetime discount).

We've been with Stablehost for 4+ years now, and have multiple services. This very site is partly powered by a Stablehost VPS (and a EuroVPS dedicated server, and several EuroVPS VPS plans). For us to trust a host is NOT something that we take lightly, But after 4 years, Stablehost has proven themselves trustworthy. So you can use them with confidence. MDD is fine too, we use it, but it just doesn't power this site.

If you have any more questions, post them here. Thanks.

[joms]

Again thanks for the reply. Despite your suggestion of only getting a shared host, I think I'd still go for the enterprise or semi-dedicated option just for the simple reason that we will be placed in a server with less people (less chance to be with someone who can get our IP banned). Also, this will get us priority status with regard to support (stablehost's priority support for enterprise web hosting). I might also setup a big website one of these days that will use up said resources. It is really very important for our email to be functioning since our client sends us their scanned documents which we process on a daily basis. Time is critical. If our email is down then our personnel has to physically go to our client's office and retrieve the document manually.

Anyway my question now is about registrars. While waiting for your reply, i've read from your forums about registrars and learned that what we are using is not such a good one. (Godaddy). May I know what makes them bad? Is it only the support? Will our domains be at risk with Godaddy which would unable us not to send/receive emails?

I've also read that you prefer directnic and namecheap. In our case, which would you recommend between the two? What are their differences?

Finally, if I do change my registrar, would there be an interruption with our emails during the time it propagates from the old registrar to the new one?

This is what I plan to do:

a) Sign up with stablehost enterprise web hosting - Kindly give me your link so you can get credit for my sign up as my referrer
b) Fix all our email alias and email forwarding with stablehost. At the same time, also upload any files from our old webhost (hostnexus). (Don't worry, we only have a 1 page website so it won't be that hard on this part and we dont have any database)
c) Login with Godaddy and change the nameservers to the nameserver of stablehost
Note: (should I wait for nameserver to propagate before transferring my domain from godaddy)?
d) Open an account with either directnic or namecheap
e) Transfer Domain
f) Close my account with hostnexus
g) Close my account with Godaddy

Is this right? Will our email service stop during any of the phase indicated above?

Thanks

-joms

[kpmedia]

There's definitely no harm in getting semi-dedicated hosting from a good provider. The important part is "good provider".

About mail...

As far as email goes, a host like Stablehost is vigilant about being blacklisted. I've never seen it blacklisted.

Furthermore, all shared hosts likely send and receive mail on a mail server (or two, three, etc) -- which isn't the web server. They don't have mail services running on the web servers. By contrast, the mail servers have only mail on it. I forget the details, but I believe already-received mail is on the web server (in cPanel), but the actual send/receive is done by the dedicated mail server. If in doubt, ask Stablehost. Tyler or Anthony will probably answer, and they know their email systems better than I would.

About Godaddy / Registrars...

Godaddy has the infamous "60-day rule" on domains. If you update you domain info, it can't be moved for 60 days. And if that 60 days falls in the renewal period, you're stuck. The same is true of "hidden whois" domains. Unhiding it is required to move registrars, and unhiding it (to transfer it) is considered a change by Godaddy. Furthermore, you'd have to leave it unhidden for 60 days, at which point it will likely be cached by domain watching sites/services. So it defeats the purpose. And that's just one of their little BS tricks. Godaddy is honestly unethical. It was not ICANN policy until Godaddy pushed for it. There's a number of things Godaddy has done in the past that were not ICANN approved.

Another one is that they steal domains for "spam" reasons, even when it's been proven to be wrong. Sites have been stolen by Godaddy in the past.

Namecheap is what I'd suggest to folks these days. I use DirectNIC, but Namecheap has more options. For example, hosted DNS for free. DirectNIC didn't have it until last year, and now they charge $5 for it per domain.

i.e, DO NOT CHANGE THE DNS UNTIL AFTER YOU'VE LEFT GODADDY! Transfer first, update DNS second.

About changing hosts...

Yes, there will be about 3 days there where mail will be unreliable. What you can do is check both by IP or hostname, not your domain. The old email will get some, and the new one will get some, during this period of a few days. It'll also help to verify the mail is all there.

DO NOT CANCEL THE OLD ONE UNTIL YOU'RE SURE IT'S ALL MIGRATED! This is important. Don't act too fast.

Did you have a HostNexus cPanel or Plesk plan? If cPanel, what you should do is let Stablehost migrate it, cPanel to cPanel. That will be easiest for you. That way, there's no risk of forgetting to migrate anything if done manually. If it's a Plesk plan, however, you got some work to do. (I've done it too.)

So here's the correct order:

1. Get Stablehost plan.
2. Transfer domain from Godaddy to Namecheap. eta = 5 days
3. After domain transferred, put in a ticket to Stablehost to migrate (assuming cPanel at HostNexus)
4. Verify migration.
5. IMPORTANT! Take your own cPanel backups of HostNexus.
6. Update DNS at Namecheap = eta 3 days
7. See what you local computer uses for the DNS = cmd, ping mysite.com
8. When it's new DNS, update local email programs. Check new email.
9. Use webmail (web browser) to check old mail at IP or hostname (i.e. nexus44.mail.hostnexus.com < I made this up)
10. Godaddy should be an empty account. Nothing to cancel.
11. Cancel HostNexus

When signing up for Stablehost DO NOT use the hosted email! I use a Yahoo account, for example, to correspond with hosts. If the site doesn't work, neither will the email.

Our links...

- Stablehost.com = http://www.digitalFAQ.com/go/stablehost.com
- Namecheap.com = http://www.digitalFAQ.com/go/namecheap.com

(Note: We affiliate with these companies because they're excellent. I was using both long before I became an affiliate. So none of the advice here is affiliate driven. We often suggest products and services that have no affiliate program, or a program that we're not part of.)

[joms]

Thanks for the manual registration. It's nice to be able to post here now.

I've read your reply carefully and will do as you say. However, why do I need to get stablehost first then transfer domains to namecheap? Won't that be a waste of 5days time for my namecheap host doing nothing? Won't it be better to transfer domains first then get my stablehost plan on the 5th day? By the way, we are using plex so it might be harder to migrate. Don't worry, I think ill just start fresh and upload my 1 page website only. I can just redo all my email settings. We only have 20 emails so its not much work. By the way, we use openDNS and google's 8.8.8.8 DNS in our office. I don't know if this information is useful to my migration. Just wanted you to know.

Anyway, while waiting for your reply, I have been reading around and I came across "cloud" hosting. I've read up on it and it seems interesting. The reliability part is very enticing since its like 100% uptime since every part of the hosting is redundant. From the CPU, RAM, HD, power, etc. Since my priority is reliability, this sure sounds interesting.

I have also seen some hosts that offer such cloud hosting for $20 and less which is within my budget. I'm not sure about their reliability though.

Some cloud hosting host which offers hosting for less than $20:
digitalocean.com
greenvaluehost.com
atomicvps.com (this host even offers Zen filtered email which they say is better?)

What are your thoughts on this? I know that I am really going overboard with what I am considering given my measly requirement but I want to get it right the first time around. Note: I don't want cloud VPS (even if its within the budget) since I don't want to manage it. Cloud shared hosting though seems interesting since I won't manage much and I get more reliability with almost 100% guarantee uptime.

If I do choose cloud shared hosting, do you have anyone that you can recommend in my price range? ($20/month)

[kpmedia]

You want to transfer the domain first, but also get the Stablehost account setup while you wait. Then they'll both be done in 5 days, and you can propagate.

If you want to manually migrate the settings, do it. I've done the same thing myself, migrating Plesk to cPanel without any automation (even though the host offered).

There's nothing special about "cloud hosting" unless the infrastructure is good -- and most isn't. It's still shared, VPS or dedicated, but with more computers. The 100% uptime stuff is complete BS. In fact, a lot of the infrastructures out there (especially OnApp) is more unreliable than traditional hardware. I keep in touch with a lot of hosts, and there's some pretty disgruntled ones out there. So be careful if you go for "cloud". For many, it's just a buzzword, or at best it's used to describe a semi-cloud (SAN storage, for example).

EuroVPS is one of the few that's invested time (years!) and $$$$$ into excellent cloud infrastructure, but that's not a host you'd want. Europe is too far away from west Asia, unfortunately.

AtomicVPS is great, but it's owned by HostNexus. So be aware of that, if you want to leave that company entirely!

GreenValueHost and DigitalOcean are hosts I've seen around, and they're okay from what I can tell. But it's really just shared hosting. I would see what is "cloud" about those offerings. GVH is onApp, which really isn't any better from traditional hardware. AtomicVPS uses "Atomic Stack", for which no info exists anywhere when Googled. And DigitalOcean is a VPS provider, which you don't want anyway.

So I think those 3 are eliminated.

Looking at your WHT post, MDD Hosting sent you a special test file ... but that may not mean anything on a populated server. Mike's great, that's a great host, but test files are usually nonsense.

As usual, you're thread has been overrun by newbies and spammers. "Use my XYZ Crap Host" or "Use Hostgator (and Godaddy), they're great!". Those people are noise. Look for the Premium or Corporate members, or the various mods (like Trip), and pay attention to them.

I'd stay with the original plan -- semi-dedicated hosting at either Stablehost.com or MDDHosting.com -- you won't go wrong there.

What I'm not sure about is if MDD has their semi-dedicated customers are special servers just for those users. You can set up a shared server, and allocate half to standard shared, and half to the semi-dedicated. I know that Stablehost doesn't do this, as they have separate physical servers, but I'm not sure with MMD does. They just don't have anywhere near the knowledgebase (KB) or information like Stablehost does. (And thus one of the reason they rank lower on this site)