Shared Hosting?

[RastaLulz]

Not really sure if shared hosting would be right for me or not, as I haven't used it in a while.

At the moment, I have my forums hosted a very basic LAMP stack, and it only uses about 0.01 of memory. I'm hosting it with Linode on a 1 GB VPS. At most, I have 80-100 users (and guests) online at a time (according to "Members Online Now"). Although, the normal amount is about 40-60 depending on the time of day.

Do you think that I would be okay on shared hosting? At the moment I'm paying $40 a month, and I'm looking for a cheaper solution, and obviously shared hosting is the cheapest.

 

[Paul B]

I used shared hosting currently and have on average over 100 online, peaking at 150-200.

Average posts are ~250 per day, peaking at 700.

Having said that I'm just about to move to a dedicated server, very kindly provided by one of my members free of charge

 

[RastaLulz]

I used shared hosting currently and have on average over 100 online, peaking at 150-200.

Average posts are ~250 per day, peaking at 700.

Having said that I'm just about to move to a dedicated server, very kindly provided by one of my members free of charge

Are you moving due to performance issues or because you're getting a free dedicated server?

Is your forum handling well on the shared hosting, and if so, what host are you using?

 

[Sadik B]

If anyone is interested in shared hosting I would seriusly recommend Gandi's simple hosting. It's more of a cloud than shared and performance is beyond a VPS due to their extremely efficient configuration... And the best part is the pricing...!

https://www.gandi.net/hosting/simple#main-nav

 

[Adam Howard]

Is price your only factor or does location and / or content factor into this as well?

For offshore I would suggest

Netherlands = http://www.transip.eu
Germany = http://www.server4you.net

For onshore I would suggest

UK = http://www.simplexwebs.com
* USA = http://www.hawkhost.com
* USA = http://www.speedysparrow.com

* Note referral link

 

[Paul B]

Are you moving due to performance issues or because you're getting a free dedicated server?

Both - the free server is just a huge bonus

Is your forum handling well on the shared hosting, and if so, what host are you using?

For the most part it's fine but the site did go down yesterday for a short time (10 minutes) and when I contacted Tech Supp they "fixed" it by removing the root .htaccess file, thereby making all of the files freely available.
The fault was actually server related and it was just coincidence that someone else fixed it when this muppet removed the .htaccess file.

To say I went crazy at him is an understatement.
Hopefully I managed to restore the file before anyone was able to download any of the files, such as config.php, etc.

So other than the sometimes very poor support (from India I presume), the actual performance is fine.
The host is http://www.eukhost.com/

 

[dieketzer]

i have about the same traffic as you and run easily on a linode 512. ever considered downgrading your node?

 

[Ghan_04]

+1 on just downgrading the Linode to a 512 if possible. I've run 512 Linodes with 300,000 or more page requests per day with no issues.

 

[Robby]

I have hawkhost and they are really reliable. Support is also great, you have an answer within 30 min or so. Very fast shared hosting envirement.

 

[sylvain]

I'm implementing a new forum on shared iPage servers. It is my second website using iPage, I never have any issue so far with them

Do you have any experience with iPage?

 

[Ghan_04]

I've heard about iPage before, but have never used them myself. My policy at this point is to never used shared hosting if at all possible, not least due to security concerns, but especially if they advertise vague amounts of resources (i.e. "unlimited" disk and/or bandwidth). For example, here is iPage's policy: http://www.ipage.com/legal/legal_unlimited.bml?type=details

And here is their policy on that and other things including CPU usage: http://www.ipage.com/legal/legal_useragreement.bml

I just try to stay away from providers that have to provide you three pages of fine print about how they define their services that you have to go through and decipher - I like sticking with something straightforward like Linode. That being said, for the money and a small site that isn't trying to actually run a business and make lots of money, shared hosting works for lots of people.
Just my opinion.

 

[sylvain]

I understand your points, my goal is to move to a non shared server once I get good traffic and members