Budget managed VPS

[Steff]

I’m absolutely exhausted looking for a budget managed VPS. In the last three months I’ve changed host 5 times. On very nearly every occasions because of lack of support or the server was continually down. My latest (a promising host at first) Flipperhost set me up with a misconfigured mail server. My mail was being bounced back because nobody could resolve the dns. I even told them what to do, but they ignored me until two days later another tech guy fixed the dns error I reported… worst still, this happened twice.

Now we’ve moved on to the site is down. This has happened 4 times this week. Each time they say it’s fine. I’ve checked the site with independent site monitoring and the independents say it’s down. But Flipper disagree.

As it stands I guess this is as much our fault as theirs. We can’t afford a lot of money for a VPS, let alone a fully managed one, but I did want to ask if anyone knew of a host that was ok… perhaps better than what we already have that was within the starter VPs budget?

 

[Jeremy P]

Are you sure you need a VPS? You'll probably have better luck finding a solid shared host than a completely managed VPS, if your budget is tight.

VPS are generally more expensive to begin with, let alone managed ones. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

 

[Slavik]

Nimbus Hosting Hardly budget but the best service I and many others on here have ever had with a web host.

 

[Steff]

I did try that but we have about 300 online at peak times and no less than 150 all others. On shared we found that our site was using too much resources.

 

[Steff]

Nimbus Hosting

I've heard good news on them... I'm a little concerned that they don't publish prices though.

 

[Claudio]

looking for a budget managed VPS. In the last three months I’ve changed host 5 times.

You get what you paid for

 

[Steff]

As it stands I guess this is as much our fault as theirs. We can’t afford a lot of money for a VPS, let alone a fully managed one

I believe I mentioned that ... thanks

 

[WSWD]

What do you consider budget? Fully managed and budget VPS really shouldn't be in the same sentence, in all honesty.

Another option is to find a cheap unmanaged VPS and just hire management services when you need them. Yes, it's going to be pretty costly to pay somebody by the hour, but if you only use them once or twice a year or such when you need them, you'll save money in the long run.

 

[Martok]

I've heard good news on them... I'm a little concerned that they don't publish prices though.

Yes they do, pricing is on their website.

They're the best host I've ever had, worth every penny IMO.

 

[rdn]

I've heard a lot of good experience with Knownhost.

 

[Blatchy]

wiredtree has decent vpn hosting. I have used them for quite some time and never had any issues with them.

 

[Neutral Singh]

I've heard a lot of good experience with Knownhost.

I second it!

 

[BoostN]

I have a Knownhost VPS for a few small sites.. No complaints so far..

 

[Steff]

Thanks everyone for your comments and input. I'll take a look at the suggestions.
I need to grow my community so that adverts pay towards hosting and then I probably wouldn't need to look around

 

[m1ne]

I've heard a lot of good experience with Knownhost.

I second it!

I third this, used them for years in the past.

 

[WSWD]

Why not make it a fourth? Knownhost and Wiredtree are both very good for managed services.

They're certainly not budget providers, but you get what you pay for.

 

[Steff]

I wanted to revisit this thread and update everyone on the outcome.

As you read above I had a lot of trouble finding a good budget host, and at the time I was with a host called Flipper Host. Well I’m actually still with Flipper Host and here’s why.

I emailed their customer care team with all of my concerns in the hope that maybe they would perhaps put a bit of pressure on the tech support to sort out the server down issues I had. I figured that the host company may well have outsourced the tech support. Well a senior manager took my case on board and set about applying a very satisfactory conclusion.
Looking back I seem to have most of my tech support answered by the same guy… I’ve not heard from him since.
My VPS was set up on OpenVZ with 2gb ram and 50gb disk space. A team of senior techs looked in to my set up and discovered that a bug in Solus which was misreporting the ram usage so my VPS was actually out of ram and that was the reason for the non-responsive server. To fix this they gave me 2gb more ram for free and upgraded the hard drives to 75gb SSD for free!
then they investigated the emails and sorted out the mail server. Part of the issue was the glue records at the domain register.

Then they investigated what I used the VPS for and then recommended that I should upgrade to a KVM as it was more robust and is a true container rather than a virtualised environment.
They Upgraded me to this plan for free so I didn’t need to pay any more than I had for the old server. Lastly they migrated the accounts for me and upgraded my tech support to fully managed form just managed… again for free.

The important thing here is how is the server now. Well the emails fully resolve and dns is sweet. The server is up and running great. Google has given us some kudo’s as the site is faster now.
Tech support is now above excellent and issues are solved within a few minutes day or night.

All together my confidence has been fully restored in a hosting company that has done its absolute best to keep a customer happy… For the first time in more years than I can remember, I have to take my hat off to a host company who in the most part put profits before clients... but not Flipperhost I highly recommend them. After all we all have years and years of hard work tied up in our websites and communities so it makes a refreshing change to find a host that takes that seriously too.