Dear all,
Being new to CS-cart community altogether, I’m really unsure of which hosting service to choose. My domain is registered with GoDaddy.com but after going through a couple of threads on the forum, I’ve learned that GoDaddy.com isn’t really too good a choice for someone with CS-cart.
Next I checked the reviews regarding the hosting services of siteground.com, once again I was disappointed to read the comments of many members here, who say that they have had terrible experiences in this area.
Could the senior most members and others with substantial experience with CS-cart please help me out in making this decision?
For one, I’d like to know which hosting service the maximum number of CS-Cart customers are using ---- Is there anyone at all that can provide me this information? I prefer to move with the majority cuz where there are more people using the same platform, chances are that by now most of the issues have been resolved and therefore the flock has moved to that particular service.
Secondly, how many webhosting service providers allow you to keep the Safe_mod disabled? Doesn’t it cause security threats to your online business? Cuz this happens to be one of the unusual requirements of CS-Cart installation on the server.
Regards,
H.Q.
If you are looking in the USA, then I know there are at least 4 senior members of this forum using WiredTree. They have been fantastic with their service and support and couldn’t even think of a bad thing to say about them at this point. I have been with them for just under a year they are very quick to respond to support requests and have had no unscheduled downtime. I use their Hybrid VPS but I know others are using some of their standard VPS’s.
[quote name=‘whiplash13’]If you are looking in the USA, then I know there are at least 4 senior members of this forum using WiredTree. They have been fantastic with their service and support and couldn’t even think of a bad thing to say about them at this point. I have been with them for just under a year they are very quick to respond to support requests and have had no unscheduled downtime. I use their Hybrid VPS but I know others are using some of their standard VPS’s.[/quote]
We have used WiredTree since they started and they do a good job. Good prices 24/7/365 phone support - which I personally consider essential. When you have a 2am problem you want to quickly talk to a native speaker of English (if that is your language) and have them check your server while you are on the line.
With that said what do you need from a host?
I would not go with a host that is expensive that knows CS cart well instead I would go with a good host that is expert at hosting with a lower cost and then hire CS cart pros as needed to advise you.
For very small issues I use CS cart support and for modifications and upgrades I go elsewhere.
for shared or vps hosting choose kvchosting is very good and very cheap ($3.49 for the unlimited shared, and $15 for vps) and provide FREE dedicated IP and cheap SSL. their support is excellent. they reply to your ticket within 2 minutes. But they are new and so you can’t have a wide idea of their services
For shared hosting choose hostmonster is also tested by me (4 year now). They have the best technicians in the world. They can do any job for you and even for free.I mean they can help you install a script,an ssl, resolve some errors, etc. Their servers are also good. They are many years on service and so they are very popular (hostmonster and bluehost are the same company)
For a VPS or Cloud or Dedicated host, the No1 choice is Liquidweb
read the review at www.judgehost.com
CPU: up to AMD Quad x12 CORES 1.9Ghz-Total 48 CORES! =90 GHz processing power
RAM : Up to 256 GB RAM DDR3
[quote name=‘lefaek’]
For a VPS or Cloud or Dedicated host, the No1 choice is Liquidweb
read the review at www.judgehost.com
CPU: up to AMD Quad x12 CORES 1.9Ghz-Total 48 CORES! =90 GHz processing power
RAM : Up to 256 GB RAM DDR3[/QUOTE]
For a VPS Wiredtree, Knownhost, Futurehost, Liquidweb or Servint. You can’t go wrong with any of them as far as service and support go but the first 3 have much more competitive pricing than the last 2 do.
Not sure how much I trust the reviews over at Judgehost.com though considering they put 1&1 at number 8 in their top 10 hosts. Anyone that has ever used 1&1 knows how bad they really are. I personally do a lot of my research for hosting over at www.webhostingtalk.com.
I thought I’d just add to this. I was on Rackspace Cloud and while the customer service was excellent, the platform (CloudSites) was completely wrong for my CS-Cart, which is probably a small to mid-sized installation. The site was very glitchy and extremely slow on the CloudSites. (I should note that it’s still a great platform, just wrong for this cart!)
I just moved the site over to a new server with WiredTree. The customer service with WiredTree has been phenominal and the hybrid server that they set me up with is less expensive and way better performance for my site than what I had before. I’ve been with them just over a month and won’t look back. Very happy I made the move.
I was with siteground and now I am with vidahost.com in the U.K, they have speed of light servers and a 5 stars customer support
[quote name=‘whiplash13’]For a VPS Wiredtree, Knownhost, Futurehost, Liquidweb or Servint. You can’t go wrong with any of them as far as service and support go but the first 3 have much more competitive pricing than the last 2 do.
Not sure how much I trust the reviews over at Judgehost.com though considering they put 1&1 at number 8 in their top 10 hosts. Anyone that has ever used 1&1 knows how bad they really are. I personally do a lot of my research for hosting over at www.webhostingtalk.com.[/QUOTE]
Have you tried Futurehost before? Their pricing is pretty competitive. I am very curious.
Also, there I really do not see much difference in pricing on a managed VPS between ServInt and Wiredtree.
[quote name=‘clips’]
Also, there I really do not see much difference in pricing on a managed VPS between ServInt and Wiredtree.[/quote]
I haven’t used WiredTree so cannot comment on their prices/services however I have been with ServINT for the past 3 months to much success. I’m paying $50p/m for VPS (you can find a 50% off for three months coupon if you look).
Highly advised.
J.
[quote name=‘clips’]Have you tried Futurehost before? Their pricing is pretty competitive. I am very curious.
Also, there I really do not see much difference in pricing on a managed VPS between ServInt and Wiredtree.[/QUOTE]
By spec, Wired Tree’s Hybrid VPS is equal to Servint’s Ultimate VPS which is $30 more except the Wired Tree Hybrid gives you a dedicated processor, an extra TB of transfer and 4 more IP’s (total of eight). So $30 dollars in my pocket and a the other hardware was enough to persuade me. Haven’t had one issue with them. Has been a wonderful partnership so far. You guys I am sure will be the first ones to hear me bitch if something changes. 
We are currently with ServInt too, so far, so good. We too have been with them for about 3 months and got the 50% off coupon too.
The price point with Futurehost is pretty interesting though. For example, their Titanium package (managed VPS) has 4000GB bandwidth, 2048MB RAM, 75GB of Space and it is only about $53. Now it does only have 2 IPs but that is the only negative I see there. That is compared to 768 MB of RAM and 1000GB bandwidth at servint for about $50. So that is why I am wondering if anyone is currently hosting with them and well Futurehost has worked out.
I did get a reply from Futurehost and they would charge $1 per IP, per month. So that would add a nominal amount of $2 if you wanted the 4 IPs that Wiredtree, ServInt and others provide.
So has anyone tried virpus.com? It didn’t bring anything up in the search results here at the forum. They have pretty aggressive pricing for a VPS.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned HostGator.com and their managed VPS plans (http://www.hostgator.com/vps-hosting/). They’re one the largest hosting companies in the US and they too offer 24/7/365 phone support, excellent customer service and fantastic up-times.
We’ve been using them for several years after moving several times from host to host, some of whom have been mentioned here. However we have no experience with Wired Tree. Does anyone have experience with both Host Gator and Wire Tree to give us a comparison?
[quote name=‘mayanetwork’]I’m surprised no one has mentioned HostGator.com and their managed VPS plans (http://www.hostgator.com/vps-hosting/). They’re one the largest hosting companies in the US and they too offer 24/7/365 phone support, excellent customer service and fantastic up-times.
We’ve been using them for several years after moving several times from host to host, some of whom have been mentioned here. However we have no experience with Wired Tree. Does anyone have experience with both Host Gator and Wired Tree to give us a comparison?[/QUOTE]
Well we did some searching and found a recent extensive WiredTree thread at WebHostingTalk.com and now we won’t even consider WiredTree. Read the posts for yourself: [url]WiredTree down | Web Hosting Talk
Hey Paul (mayanetwork), that is an interesting link! This was the same time that I was having massive problems with Wiredtree. They kept telling me it was my fault because of the traffic we were getting, even though my server worked fine during Nov/Dec when we were slammed! Dan from Wiredtree kept insisting that the fact that my site was “ooming” was my own fault. We finally gave up Jan. 21st and moved to ServInt. It hasn’t been too bad at ServInt, but we still keep maxing out the RAM even though we have increased it. Right now we just purchased our first package with Futurehosting to give them a try.
BTW, I don’t blame Wiredtree for our downtime, I am irritated that they blamed it on my site when there were problems way deeper than my puny little VPS that were causing the issues. I should also mention that the replies from “Zac” at Wiredtree on the webhostingtalk site are interesting to say the least.
Thankfully my VPS wasn’t affected by that outage. Seems like they fixed the hardware issues though as the last few months they were doing planned outages to improve their power scheme. So, I don’t think this will be a concern any more which is why there hasn’t been any new threads regarding service outages with them.
Just curious why people are so hung up on VPS. VPS benefits the host in that they can control the resources you receive and there is no requirement that the sum of the VPS’s on a server match the configuration of the underlying hardware. But the host can restrict you from using RAM and other virtual services that have not been allocated to your container where on a shared server, the whole server is available to you while you have your time-slice.
Similar to a shared server, it is all about how the host manages their underlying hardware. They can load it conservatively or they can do it aggressively.
A VPS that is really a segement of the underlying hardware (I.e. you have 2GB of an 8GB machine) and there are only 3 other VPS’s on the system) will ensure that you have 2GB of ram available for your VPS and that it will probably be resident in memory when your VPS is switched to (by the underlying operating system) and not have to be paged in. But if you have 2GB of memory on an 8GB machine and there are 20 other 2GB VPS’s configured on that server, you’re going to fight for the resources you’ve been “allocated” but that are probably never available.
So it depends on the host. A shared hosting environment can be just as fast (actually faster) than a VPS if the underlying system is configured correctly and that resources are not over-allocated.
Using the above logic if you have an honest and well managed host you are going to have the resources that you pay for with a VPS.
Also even with well managed hosts isn’t VPS better for safety?
Also looking the other way if you want Raid10 etc it can be expensive to jump to a dedicated server.