Simple hosting needs, with a twist

MisterNeutron · #1 01-07-2015, 04:26 PM

Another soon-to-be HG refugee here. I've referred a lot of other people to your "Top Web Hosts" list, and now it's time for me to move on, as well. I've managed to dodge several HG bullets (got migrated to CyrusOne instead of Provo, and don't have a reseller account, so I missed that fiasco, as well), but I'm just tempting fate at this point.

First, the "simple" part. I'm on shared hosting - three domains, with about 4GB of stuff in 20K inodes. Low traffic, about 6GB/month. All static HTML/CSS - no CMS, no mySQL. A handful of POP3 emails, and I use my ISP's SMTP for the outgoing side (less likely to get blocked). Don't care about backups, since I've got my own (static sites makes that easy). Almost never need support.

My visitors come from all over, with the U.S. accounting for about 20-25% (I'm in CT), Germany 15%, Netherlands 10%, and the rest of Europe at about 5% per country. Not much traffic from South America and Asia, and almost none from Africa. And sadly, I have yet to record a hit from Antarctica.

The "twist" is that my sites are image-heavy. I write web album software. So, a typical page might have 100 thumbnails, with pre-loading of the first 5 full-sized images, for a total of 3MB or more. As a result, slow page-loading is very noticeable. My HTML is pretty lean, but the images (with a few videos mixed in) create quite a load.

I was intrigued by A2 Hosting, though it's not on your list. I know that SSD may not make any difference on a CMS-heavy site, but I'm thinking that for my stuff, it might be worth the price of admission.

Any thoughts on that subject, or guidance on narrowing down the list? I suspect that any of the top hosts would do well for me (StableHost, MDD Hosting, Veerotech, etc.), but perhaps one or two stand out from the others?

Thanks, and keep up the good work.

kpmedia · #2 01-07-2015, 05:11 PM

Yeah, there's lots of EIG/Hostgator refugees these days!

CyrusOne is "better", but it's no darling. If the DCs were the 3 little pigs, Provo was straw, and Houston is sticks. What you want is a host made from bricks!

A2 hosting gets too many mixed reviews to make the list right now. I want to, but the review metrics aren't there for it. They simply rank low on a number of merits right now. There are better hosts.

SSD probably won't make a big difference for you either. The real solution here is http caching, maybe CDN. (This is one of the few times I recommend a CDN. It's become a stupid bandwagon in the past year or two, and those "page speed" sites are entirely to blame. It's often bogus advice.)

What is your max monthly budget for this? I have a few ideas on mind.

MisterNeutron · #3 01-07-2015, 05:23 PM

Well, my income from my software development activities approaches the high two figures in a good year (I'm a retired guy, and I give my stuff away). So, relatively cheap hosting is attractive. Truth be told, the speed at HG has been fine - it's just knowing that things could go to hell in a handbasket at any moment that's driving me away. Over $10 a month, and I have to wonder why I'm doing it at all.

No reason to be coy, by the way...

My personal site: http://jefftucker.org/

My software site: http://jgromit.com/

A site I maintain to do a little JW Player support (the JW Player guys, amazingly, don't know how to put up simple demos): http://misterneutron.com/

I've also got a semi-hidden family website, which is where most of the videos live (cute grand-nephew stuff). Very low-traffic, since it's immediate family only.

kpmedia · #4 01-07-2015, 07:30 PM

Hmmm....

How old is the site?
What's I'm trying to ascertain is the growth rate. How quickly will it go from 4gb to 5gb, from 5gb to 10gb?

Answer that one, and I'll have 2-3 good options for you.

MisterNeutron · #5 01-07-2015, 07:39 PM

Very slow growth. I probably won't hit 5GB for a year or more, for example. The demo sites stay pretty much at the same size, and my personal and family sites add material only gradually, maybe 1GB/yr.

kpmedia · #6 01-07-2015, 07:50 PM

I think you have several good options then:

(1) Site5. If you've been happy at Hostgator in the past, then I would consider Site5 as a Hostgator alternative. It has all of the good that Hostgator has/has, but none of the bad. It's not an EIG brand, and the owner of Site5 has already fought them off once.

(2) Stablehost. I think they're using some form of Varnish cache now..

(3) and one that I'll PM you about.

MisterNeutron · #7 01-08-2015, 07:33 AM

The Site5 options are intriguing. It might be worth the extra buck a month to get hosting in NYC or DC, for better access by my European visitors.

Thanks for the input - time to make a choice, do a little site cleanup (things are already in pretty good shape for an easy migration), and pull the trigger!

MisterNeutron · #8 01-17-2015, 09:18 AM

Signed up with Site5 this morning, and am doing the "big upload" as I write this. I wanted to make some configuration changes, so I opted to skip the free site transfer. Even so, the upload won't take more than a couple of hours. I sprang for their NYC data center, so access from my "hills of northwest CT" home is obscenely fast.

I haven't switched the nameservers yet, but will do so as soon as the uploads are done. Accessing the site with a raw IP address, however, is very encouraging - noticeably faster page loads than with HG.

I'll check back in when I have some Site5 experience under my belt. And I'll keep referring people to your "top webhosts" list!

kpmedia · #9 01-17-2015, 09:43 AM

Thanks.

Coincidentally, I was in our uptime monitors earlier this morning, and Site5 has a 99.99% uptime for the the past 12 months. (And it's not even the most reliable monitor because it can report non-existant downtime at time! I'm going to be changing it next month to 3 other monitors.)

Page loads are as expected for shared hosting. Not too slow, not too fast, but just right. (Yeah, I know, faster is better, but that would require a specially tweaked VPS or dedicated.) That said, Site5 will be faster than Hostgator by at least 2x, because they don't overstuff their servers or use the not-better "BetterLinux" OS.

Hopefully your experience mirrors this.

Please do come back and let us know!

MisterNeutron · #10 01-28-2015, 07:21 PM

One early sign of "bad webhost decisions." They needed to do a reboot of all their servers in order to plug a security hole. Fair enough, though it means at least 20 minutes of downtime (but really, 20 minutes to reboot?!). But they chose to do it at 8:00 pm EST, the very definition of "prime time," rather than at, say, 3:00 am. That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

Edit: And so far, page loading has been very good, but not outstanding. HG was generally quicker, and when HG was still using ThePlanet in Dallas, it was quite a bit faster.

kpmedia · #11 02-09-2015, 12:52 AM

Some hosts don't plug at all. Yikes!

Others try to use Ksplice, which supposedly does not require (as many) server reboots. But I've read about far too many issues with Ksplice over the years to put too much faith in it. I'd rather KISS (keep it simple stupid) and just reboot the sucker. We all know that works!

I think 20 minutes is a very overestimated number. Reboots are usually just 2-3 minutes long. Some are so brief that uptime monitor don't even catch them on 3- or 5-minute windows.

Page load can depend on the site code. How do your Resource Points look on Site5?

MisterNeutron · #12 02-09-2015, 01:40 AM

I use almost no resource points at all. My site is all static HTML - no mySQL, no CMS, etc.

If a server simply stops working properly, rebooting seems to be the cure-all. "When in doubt, reboot" is the mantra. But no one seems to be trying to figure out why servers become unresponsive. If things are properly configured, a server should run indefinitely without being rebooted (other than because of necessary software updates).

Another thing I find a little disturbing is the frequency with which servers become unresponsive because they run out of room on one the partitions, like the /home partition. HTTP still operates, but things like email and database operations come to a grinding halt. It appears to happen almost daily to one of their servers, somewhere. It's quickly resolved (usually by removing unneeded files somewhere), but running out of disk space should never come as a surprise. It should be actively monitored, and problems addressed before the free space is actually down to zero.

Maybe Site5 is just being more transparent about these things than other hosts. Maybe they're all like this. But I do have to wonder. Back in my old sysadmin days, I had machines that ran for months without disruptions.

kpmedia · #13 02-09-2015, 01:52 AM

Rebooting for updates is one thing, but rebooting for no reason aside from "I hope this fixes it" is ridiculous. That always tells me that too many of the "admins" are newbies (or unqualified). Admittedly, I'll do it too, but it's really rare. A few times per year at most.

I've had servers run for months or even years with no real issues.

I think the economy -- paying peanuts for employees + charging peanuts for service -- has led to this, when it comes to hosting. We always hear about tech startups with tons of cash, but it's not the hosting industry. It's still largely staffed by 20s youngsters, who lack the experience that comes with age. The pay in that industry is much lower than typical IT field jobs. This is where their career starts, not ends. By the time they're seasoned, they move on to better paying areas.

To answer your question, yes, it is because Site5 tries to be transparent.