Best Hosting provider for XenForo?

My intention was not to post non-factual information. I apologise for that.
I only saw the host I mentioned earlier this week and thought I might mention it as this was the top thread as I was browsing around here.

By the way, vultr is currently doubling the first payment as a promotion. So if you pay $5 you get $10. Probably a good reason to try out maybe?
 
Anyone have experience with digital Ocean? I have been looking into their 20 dollar plan. Is it an issue to get my site transferred over - up and running from a shared hosting plan with Cpanel? Thanks for any input. @MattW - I see you have them listed in your sig - thoughts or recommendations?

i currently use 30-40 gigs of bandwidth a month now.

2GB Memory
2 Cores
40GB SSD Disk
3TB Transfer



Digital Ocean is fine (and gets fairly good reviews) so long as you know what you are getting yourself into. We used them for a very short time, for a DNS server or two. They are absolutely NOT a cloud, like they advertise. In fact, they don't even run a SAN back-end, self-healing nodes, servers are not tied together, etc. This was made especially clear in the recent hard drive failure debacle they had a couple months ago, where it was found out they are simply running RAID5 backends. This is the reason I left, and I left very quickly. No decent provider runs a RAID5 array on VPS nodes. It's just ridiculous, to be perfectly honest.

So DO is not a cloud in any way, shape, or form. They are simply a VPS provider, running a rather interesting RAID5 disk array. They throw "cloud" around, I guess because it's the cool thing to do these days. So if you are going into DO thinking you are getting some amazing cloud setup with 100% uptime, and all the other things that go with a cloud provider, that's not going to happen.

If you go in with the mindset that you're getting a decent VPS with decent performance for a good price, you'll be okay.
 
After doing more investigation, I think at this point I am going to go with a semi - dedicated server package, it seems I have ease of control at my level of expertise (I need a Cpanel) and its a step above shared. Looking at Hawkhost (again...)
 
After doing more investigation, I think at this point I am going to go with a semi - dedicated server package, it seems I have ease of control at my level of expertise (I need a Cpanel) and its a step above shared. Looking at Hawkhost (again...)

There's nothing semi-dedicated about a semi-dedicated plan, except that certain limits are increased, MySQL connections, mail limits, perhaps you can use more CPU, etc. That's the only thing that makes it a "step above" shared hosting.

What level of care are you looking for? Do you submit support tickets constantly asking your host to configure stuff for you, or install stuff for you, or what exactly do you need from your host? And perhaps more importantly, how much are you looking to spend?

Using your plan from Digital Ocean, you can add cPanel to that for around $15/mo. So for $35/mo. you're looking at a reasonably good hosting platform, that will likely run your site WAY better than any glorified shared hosting plan ever will. If you don't understand how to install cPanel, configure it, etc., I'm sure there are people here who would be more than happy to walk you through it, or do it for you. If you need management here and there, you can always just hire a 3rd party management service for an hourly fee. Really, all you need is somebody to harden/secure the VPS, install cPanel, configure it for you, etc., initially, and after that, you can usually get away with only needing management every few months, if that.
 
I'm sure there are people here who would be more than happy to walk you through it, or do it for you. If you need management here and there, you can always just hire a 3rd party management service for an hourly fee. Really, all you need is somebody to harden/secure the VPS, install cPanel, configure it for you, etc., initially, and after that, you can usually get away with only needing management every few months, if that.

Exactly... and there are some folks (looking in mirror here) that when they have time will do the basic setup for free. Of course, my expectation when I do one is that whomever I did it for WILL learn how to administer it themselves. I keep busy enough for an old retired fart that I don't want another job! :p
My only requirement is it be Debian (don't want to have to keep re-learning centOS based systems all the time - got better things to do like play my PS4/PS3/xBox One/ride the motorcycle).
Now, back to Borderlands 2 on the PS3 I go!
 
There's nothing semi-dedicated about a semi-dedicated plan, except that certain limits are increased, MySQL connections, mail limits, perhaps you can use more CPU, etc. That's the only thing that makes it a "step above" shared hosting.

What level of care are you looking for? Do you submit support tickets constantly asking your host to configure stuff for you, or install stuff for you, or what exactly do you need from your host? And perhaps more importantly, how much are you looking to spend?

Using your plan from Digital Ocean, you can add cPanel to that for around $15/mo. So for $35/mo. you're looking at a reasonably good hosting platform, that will likely run your site WAY better than any glorified shared hosting plan ever will. If you don't understand how to install cPanel, configure it, etc., I'm sure there are people here who would be more than happy to walk you through it, or do it for you. If you need management here and there, you can always just hire a 3rd party management service for an hourly fee. Really, all you need is somebody to harden/secure the VPS, install cPanel, configure it for you, etc., initially, and after that, you can usually get away with only needing management every few months, if that.
To answer your question, I do not generally call my host for anything UNLESS there is an issue with the site which is very little if ever. I am with a shared plan and only had to request help with upgrading PHP (easy) and one other item, but nothing big. I want no more than $2o a month, I know its not a far toss from 35 as you approximated, but its the break off point for me. If I can pick up a bit more speed with semi, its worth the extra 10 bucks - I pay 10 a month now.
 
I want no more than $2o a month, I know its not a far toss from 35 as you approximated, but its the break off point for me. If I can pick up a bit more speed with semi, its worth the extra 10 bucks - I pay 10 a month now.

I hear you. It is what it is. $35 can be a decent chunk of change, especially if you aren't making any money from your site. Unfortunately then, looks like a VPS with cPanel is going to be out of the question.

If you want to go with Digital Ocean, you can get their 2nd plan ($10/mo.) for around $23 with cPanel, which is really darn close to your budget. Of course, it's only 1 core and 1GB of RAM, so whether that will be faster than the semi-dedicated plan is questionable.
 
I hear you. It is what it is. $35 can be a decent chunk of change, especially if you aren't making any money from your site. Unfortunately then, looks like a VPS with cPanel is going to be out of the question.

If you want to go with Digital Ocean, you can get their 2nd plan ($10/mo.) for around $23 with cPanel, which is really darn close to your budget. Of course, it's only 1 core and 1GB of RAM, so whether that will be faster than the semi-dedicated plan is questionable.
I do make money (small amount via donations and Google ads) but I still do not want to blow it all on my hosting, especially if it isn't too bad with shared or semi perhaps with no complaints from users.
 
Any information is welcomed, as long as its factual.

Some more factual info:

DO vs Vultr

SnIXyeF.png


VbpiMyW.png


Notice the IO. SSDs have higher IO.. 160MB/s is on the low side. Some may argue its normal spinning hdds looking at the IOs :)
 
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I signed up last night after reading the thread on LEB. Haven't done anything though, as you need to add initial credit to your account first. Not going to dump $10 in just to spin up a VPS for a few hours.
 
Sorry, I meant how are you finding them, as in, what do you think of their service and how is your site doing now you are with them :)
Well, I can't answer that. I move to them 3 days ago lol. Need more time to review. Maybe 1-3 months.

But they answer my ticket in 3 minutes. That's good.
 
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