New forum hosting?

[Steverd]

New I am ready to start my new forum, but where should I host it?
I have all of my domains and blogs on 1and1.com, BUT I'm sure that they
are not the greatest for a forum, Plus it failed every part of the Xenforo test script.

As a new forum, I would think a shared host is fine, I had it narrowed down, but then found these
cheaper pain that say they support Xenforo:

Arvixe - unlimited space and data transfers $4/$7
Xfhosting - unmetered bandwidth $3/$5/$7/$9 plans
XFHost - 10bg space - 200gb bandwidth - $15

I thought XFHost sounded good, but Arvixe and XFhosting are both 1/2 the price
and have unlimited space and/or transfers.
I've seen very basic VPS for $25-30 a month,

I need ALL of your help and advice, please!
Thank you so much!
Steve

 

[Mike Edge]

Hi Steve,

Anyone can throw up a page "hey look we host xF now" Is the owner of these companies a very active member of this community? Do those hosts even use xF them selfs? Will they be there for you when you need true xF support? Put in a ticket with them, ask them to show you xF communities they host with over 2 million posts, I'd be willing to bet they can't I know we can

For us we limit space and bandwidth as we don't oversell. There is no such thing as unlimited.. Hard drives only hold so much space, upstream providers provide only so much bandwidth per second. Most unlimited hosts, if you start cutting into high amounts of resources making it less they can over sell, your going to find yourself a termination of service notice. I will never understand why hosts outright lie to clients telling them we give you unlimited space.

Sure their plans are 1/2 the price of us, but there is a saying.. You get what you pay for You'll find many great reviews and folks recommending us in these forums.

 

[DRE]

Just go with xFHost.

 

[Gabby]

Steve,
I switched to XFhost about two weeks ago and in all honesty I didn't know forums could run this fast. The first time I saw my forum on XFhost, I was shocked (kinda got dizzy too lol) because it loaded and functioned so much better. It's a little bit more expensive but you really do get what you pay for. If you're not tech savey like me, it is a total blessing to know that upgrades and all that forum stuff can be handled by someone else in a reasonable time frame as well. Good luck in whomever you chose and good luck with your forum!

 

[Steverd]

Great replies from everyone! This was super helpful and made up my mind to go with Mike also!
That was my original plan, BUT when I saw the crazy low prices, I started drooling!
What I do not want to do is to start on one host and have to move it later because of limits, usage, speed problems, etc.

Thanks everyone!
Steve

 

[TPerry]

Great replies from everyone! This was super helpful and made up my mind to go with Mike also!
That was my original plan, BUT when I saw the crazy low prices, I started drooling!
What I do not want to do is to start on one host and have to move it later because of limits, usage, speed problems, etc.

Thanks everyone!
Steve

Good phrase to remember is "Cheap is, cheap does". If you look hard enough, you can find good priced shared hosting, VPS or even dedicated servers - but the VPS/dedi are usually unmanaged for the really GOOD prices.
My monthly server bill to ServerComplete runs about $240 a month - but that's for 3 dedicated servers.

 

[Mike Edge]

Great replies from everyone! This was super helpful and made up my mind to go with Mike also!
That was my original plan, BUT when I saw the crazy low prices, I started drooling!
What I do not want to do is to start on one host and have to move it later because of limits, usage, speed problems, etc.

Thanks everyone!
Steve

Sounds good, Welcome aboard!

 

[WSWD]

There is nothing special about hosting XF. You can do it just fine on any server.

 

[Mike Edge]

There is nothing special about hosting XF. You can do it just fine on any server.

Good luck hosting a fairly decent traffic board on a highly over sold server with very restrictive Cloud Linux resource settings that most $5.00 hosts use.

 

[WSWD]

Good luck hosting a fairly decent traffic board on a highly over sold server with very restrictive Cloud Linux resource settings that most $5.00 hosts use.

Like I said, there is NOTHING special with any host that makes it different for running XF. You can run it just fine on any server.

A restrictive host using Cloud Linux has absolutely nothing to do with it. You simply find a company without the restrictions. You don't need any sort of "optimized" hosting for running XF or anything else, for that matter.

 

[Ernest L. Defoe]

I have to agree that yeah anyone host can run xF but when it comes down to the heart of the matter is if there is a problem you can't fix chances are that Mike can figure it out and get the issue fixed. While there are tons of hosts cheaper than @Mike and xFHost I'd put good money on it that they aren't going to give you the level of service that you will get from xFHost. I have been a client since almost when they opened the doors and have been nothing but pleased with them. Yeah there were a few issues in the beginning but those were issues outside of Mike's control. Things have been great since he moved to a new datacenter. I highly recommend him to anyone looking for QUALITY hosting. Yeah he isn't cheap but as Mike said and I have said it before "You get what you pay for!"

 

[WSWD]

And that all could be true, but I can't help but laugh (hysterically) when I see things like "_____ optimized hosting". It doesn't happen just with XF either; it happens with all different software. Just think it's hilarious that people actually fall for that.

 

[wickedstangs]

@Mike Edge

Pardon the dust while we develope our new website with xenForo 1.2

Stop dusting and open your site.. Love browsing it..

 

[Mike Edge]

And that all could be true, but I can't help but laugh (hysterically) when I see things like "_____ optimized hosting". It doesn't happen just with XF either; it happens with all different software. Just think it's hilarious that people actually fall for that.

Well considering how many of our clients state in reviews how much faster their forums run on my servers compared to any past host they have had.. We must be optimizing something correctly Laugh all you like, but there's a reason were the largest shared hosting provider for xenForo

 

[Mike Edge]

@Mike Edge Stop dusting and open your site.. Love browsing it..

*More Waiting is Required*

 

[Deepmartini]

Well considering how many of our clients state in reviews how much faster their forums run on my servers compared to any past host they have had.. We must be optimizing something correctly Laugh all you like, but there's a reason were the largest shared hosting provider for xenForo

What type of optimizations get done? I don't really understand this? Are there technical tweaks to just the server or is it the xenforo software itself? Can you explain this a little more in layman's terms. I know custom Wordpress hosting is a big business now with WPengine, Pagely, ZippyKid, etc. but some of them actually modify the wordpress core software.

 

[Mike Edge]

What type of optimizations get done? I don't really understand this? Are there technical tweaks to just the server or is it the xenforo software itself? Can you explain this a little more in layman's terms. I know custom Wordpress hosting is a big business now with WPengine, Pagely, ZippyKid, etc. but some of them actually modify the wordpress core software.

It is all server side tweaks we do. A lot from watching logs to see things we can do to make things run even a tad better and a bit less server load. I think we are about the only shared hosting provider that offers Memcache and APC at no extra charge and access to elestic search for only a small monthly fee more.

 

[WSWD]

Laugh all you like, but there's a reason were the largest shared hosting provider for xenForo

Sure, it's all wacky marketing, and optimizations that don't exist. HostGator, Bluehost, etc. are amongst the largest hosts period, GoDaddy probably the largest domain registrar. Look how great their service is.

 

[Mike Edge]

Sure, it's all wacky marketing, and optimizations that don't exist. HostGator, Bluehost, etc. are amongst the largest hosts period, GoDaddy probably the largest domain registrar. Look how great their service is.

Just like your "Blazing Fast SSD VPS That Will Blow Your Mind" AmIRite? All SSD VPS's are R10 SSD's.. Every host in the world offers IPv4.. IPv6 meh, who cares, 99% of the world isn't ready for it yet anyway.... Just all wacky marketing.

Again as I said earlier, if this optimization doesn't exist as you like to claim, why in thread after thread do clients mention how much faster we are compared to past hosts they had? Not knowing how to do something correctly and not existing are different ballparks my friend

 

[WSWD]

Just like your "Blazing Fast SSD VPS That Will Blow Your Mind" AmIRite? All SSD VPS's are R10 SSD's..

You would be amazed at how many "companies" don't run SSDs in RAID10 or even RAID 1. Same goes for mechanical drives. No wacky marketing here. We used to have the fastest production SSD hosting setups in the world. Then the cloud folk came in with their massive SSD SAN setups and bechmark higher than we do, as we don't use SAN. But we were indeed the fastest in the world.

On the contrary, there isn't anything you can do to actually optimize a server for XF. There just isn't. You can optimize a server in general, you can add litespeed, memcache, APC, etc. all you want, but nothing in doing that is remotely specific to XF. You can do that with any server, and say it's optimized for any application you want. Simply a marketing gimmick here, I'm afraid.