xFhost.me Web Host Review

DRE

Well-known member
This is my review of xFhost which is a new hosting service that specializes in optimizing Xenforo websites.

Xenforo forum software is the most secure, fastest and intuitive forum software out. It was created by the same dudes who made vBulletin 3 forum software. My site www.8thos.com was originally a vBulletin 4 forum hosted by a vBulletin hosting service. Sometime after switching over to Xenforo I began looking for a host that specialized in Xenforo optimization. After trying out several hosts, I learned that the price I paid for them was over-priced for the average performance I was getting, even on some of their best 'semi-dedicated' packages. I was also getting tired of hearing of complaints from UK users saying the site was too slow.

After a year of searching I saw that xFShowcase was being hosted by xFHost (not anymore though). I was not impressed at first until a member from my own site said that it was much faster than my site. I couldn't tell the difference so I did some speed tests, the results of which you can see here. Even though the speed tests showed that xFShowcase (when it was hosted with xFHost) had only a slight edge over my site, I was still not convinced because at the time, xFShowcase had nowhere near as much activity as my site. My site sometimes has around 200 users online, most of which are visitors so I contacted xFhost to see if they would be able to handle my site at a low cost compared to my previous hosts.

xFhost is still very new and I wanted to know more about the company. I learned that xFHost was created by Mike Edge who has over 12 years of experience as a Linux admin for other companies. I learned that before he started xFhost, he installed and setup Xenforo on setups such as a VPS with litespeed and memcache for a company he worked for called Hudson Valley Host. I am now using the 'Growing Community' package with dedicated IP and memcache port. It's been almost a month now and xFhost.me so far is faster with more memory and better support at a reasonable price than all my previous hosting sites of whose services I used that were both shared and semi-dedicated. I have noticed a major speed difference when creating styles and uninstalling and installing addons and only a slight speed difference when posting. The biggest difference is that my UK posters are saying my site is now faster than the UK forums that they post on.

I give xFHost.me 5 out of 5 stars.
 
I used to have a VPS with the company Mike used to work for. They were a great company but the people I usually talked to didn't know much about xF. So one day while chatting with the owner about a problem I was having he got Mike into the Live Chat. From there I found out he really did know his way around xF. Saw on here that he was starting up his own hosting company that was optimized for xF and that did it for me. I switched and my site has never better faster. I like you 8thos have the Growing Community package with dedicated IP and memcache port. My site screams. So I will agree 100% with your 5 out of 5 start review and give them the same as well. No hijacking your thread just putting in my 2 cents.
 
I used to have a VPS with the company Mike used to work for. They were a great company but the people I usually talked to didn't know much about xF. So one day while chatting with the owner about a problem I was having he got Mike into the Live Chat. From there I found out he really did know his way around xF. Saw on here that he was starting up his own hosting company that was optimized for xF and that did it for me. I switched and my site has never better faster. I like you 8thos have the Growing Community package with dedicated IP and memcache port. My site screams. So I will agree 100% with your 5 out of 5 start review and give them the same as well. No hijacking your thread just putting in my 2 cents.
Hey thanks for your review because I didn't know of Mike before. He had one smart ass post on his BananaPup account that made me want to punch him in the face one day but other than that, that was all I knew. I pretty much had to stalk the rest of his posts down and compare both xFShowcase (when it was hosted by xfhost.me) to my site by putting them through a series of tests before deciding to switch over because I was very skeptical. After all the vigorous testing he passed and I switched over.

I am very impressed at my site's speed now and my members are signing in more because of it. My site usually had around 8 people online at a time and now I'm averaging around 15 on some days. That may not seem much but as my site's new and I've only done webmaster stuff for a lil over two years now, that's impressive to me. I will be posting my reviews on other sites too. Here's some that I already posted. If you are member of them, you should reply there too to let peeps know whats up.

http://admin-talk.com/threads/42945/
http://adminextra.com/threads/xfhost-me-web-host-review.6289/
http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100142
 
Not a member at any of those but I may register at them later to chime in to help drum up some more business for Mike.
I registered to those long ago and have posted hosting reviews of my previous two hosts on either those sites or others, I can't remember. I try to review every service I pay for.
 
I also use his web hosting, and so far like it.

EDIT: The fact this is possibly a one man support host is kind of a turn off now actually. That means if someones site were to 'go down' and a newbie admin to the forum and hosting community wouldn't know what to do. This could be bad for inexperienced members..
Just sayin'
 
Yea, I read the other thread and figured it was that. I know how easily various (poorly coded) XF addons can make the load skyrocket.
 
EDIT: The fact this is possibly a one man support host is kind of a turn off now actually. That means if someones site were to 'go down' and a newbie admin to the forum and hosting community wouldn't know what to do. This could be bad for inexperienced members..
Just sayin'

Arranged as of yesterday Oman will be joining us as staff to cover the hours I'm asleep.
 
Yea, I read the other thread and figured it was that. I know how easily various (poorly coded) XF addons can make the load skyrocket.
I'm down to 98 or so addons. My previous host MDDHosting also said I had too many addons. Back then I had around 120 addons.
 
I'm down to 98 or so addons. My previous host MDDHosting also said I had too many addons. Back then I had around 120 addons.

You don't seem to be getting this when people keep saying it. 98 is still a massive number. I'd guess most people have 20 addons at most.

Having said all of that, if they were well coded and not server intensive you could easily have 100s, I'm guessing in your case its one or two poorly coded or conflicting addons that caused the issue when combined with something specific to the server setup you were on.
 
You don't seem to be getting this when people keep saying it. 98 is still a massive number. I'd guess most people have 20 addons at most..

FYI, I consider myself a "lite" add-on user, and my main forums have about 30.
I don't run out and install every add-on which comes along...just those needed or real enhancements.

Since XF is designed to be "zen", much of the functionality is in add-ons, from simple listings of the members in order to the "go to top" buttons to spam management.

I do agree that 100 seems excessive - some people seem to install every one which gets released....not a good idea on a production site, but good for the rest of us (they do the experimentation).

Either way - not being disagreeable, just saying that 30-50 may be realistic in certain busy and production sites. Then again, I would not put these production sites on anything but in a sandbox (own instances of mysql, etc.)
 
You don't seem to be getting this when people keep saying it. 98 is still a massive number. I'd guess most people have 20 addons at most.

Having said all of that, if they were well coded and not server intensive you could easily have 100s, I'm guessing in your case its one or two poorly coded or conflicting addons that caused the issue when combined with something specific to the server setup you were on.
It could be as you said, just one or two poorly coded addons.

I'm good with what I have now. My addon number will probably increase since I'm no longer having issues.

There are a lot of addons that should be core products. Xenforo is a basic forum software, not a publishing suite. There are a lot of basic functions xenforo is missing from vbulletin that can only be installed as an addon. Until xenforo reaches publishing suite status and adds all the stuff the developers planned then the resources posted here will have to make up for it. I had far fewer addons when I was on vBulletin 4. When you convert a sophisticated vBulletin 4 forum over to simple xenforo you will be missing a lot of things and some of your users will complain.
 
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