best joomla host?

[Rochen-Martin]

A host has a duty to protect other users on the server.

One well coded site can easily push thousands of users a month in a shared enviroment. Another site, with poor components/modules can do significantly less hits but cause huge amounts of load. Bandwidth and visits will only tell you so much.

Did you actually investigate the components you run before installing? Or did you just install them and hope for the best?

[jscutler]

Gee thanks for the helpful response.

[Rochen-Martin]

Not a problem!

But what you need to realise is my response is actually VERY helpful. Take your head out of the sand and consider for one minute the abuse is your fault by using poorly coded components. Everything you install can affect other customers on that hosts servers.

How happy would you be if your site was loading slowly because of another user's site?

[biggalootmon]

I'm a small newspaper publisher too, and I'd love to know your site address, just to see what you're doing. :-)

As for the hosting, I'm using Rochen and have no problems whatsoever, but again they're pretty expensive. (You get what you pay for.)

I've just set up a reseller account with Interactive Online, and honestly, if their hosting is as good as their customer support, I'm going to be very happy. (They post here all the time, which is one of the reasons I chose them.) Small but responsive.

I plan to keep this thread alive with my adventures.

~SCOT

P.S. If anyone has an affordable/efficient Joomla freelancer, for template/css tweaking, I'd love the referral.

[davetanguay]

I switched from Godaddy to InMotion hosting last year and I can't say I'm all that happy. We have a website for a weekly newspaper and I get these high resource usage warnings from Inmotion and occasionally get shut down altogether. This happened just yesterday without any warning or explanation.

I've begged them to explain why, but they just says it's taking too many resources, despite the fact that my bandwith and visit stats belie that.

I even took the step of blocking newsbots in my robot. txt file to prevent the googles of the world from taxing my site. The bottom line is that there's no way a small weekly newspaper website is causing. There's got to be some kind of issue with their servers.

Anyway I'm not happy with them and I'd like to hear recommendations from others.

Keep in mind all shared hosts are going to have cpu and memory limits in place. Some hosts like bluehost (not sure about inmotion) have these limits as hard limits on the server. For example if you use more than 10% resources at bluehost (at any given time) your site will start to return INTERNAL SERVER ERROR.

We too have a 10% resource limit per site but it is a soft limit which means you can go over if resource usage spikes. Sites are usually not a problem until they are consistently using more than 10%. In the event they are consistently using over 10% we inform the customer and give them an option to upgrade to one of our higher reseller packages. We tend to overlook the high resource usage on the higher reseller packages but it really depends on how much consistent load the site is causing.

Also the posts about your components causing problems could be the culprit. I hope at least you are running 1.5.9 but even that isn’t going to assure there’s no other problems. If you have vulnerable 3rd party components installed, hackers or spammers could be using your site to their advantage.

Also find a host that is running su_php and make sure all folders are set to 755 and files to 644.

For you command-line junkies the following can be used to change all folders to 755 and files to 644 permissions.

It comes in handy when setting permissions on sites via SSH.

Make sure you are in the web folder and use the following:

Code: Select all

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

[tvkchaitanya]

i recommened you to use hostbrains there are on of the beest joomla hosting provides

[linkposter]

As a complete newbee to joomla and experiencing a myriad of beginner errors, I faced my biggest challenge to date... remote hosting. Transferring my local joomla site onto my remote host was a horrific experience.

I can’t tell you who the best host is, but I can tell you who I feel is the worst. 1and1.

My now "kicked into touch" host, were no help when it came to those migrating errors I've been reading so much about. After much reading and many calls to their tech department I finally resolved the issue but never again will I put myself through that. To give you an idea, the telephone support was horrendous, they have one of those outsourced call centres. Which is fine when you can understand one another….

1and1: hedoo, velcum to vun and vun, my name is Iqbal, how may I elp you today?

Me: Yeah, Hi, I’m having some trouble setting up a Mysql database with you guys?

1and1: <pauses> berry sorry sir, you’re - you’re having truble wiv your squeal?

Me: eh no? Mysql, you know the database thing, My-s-q-l.

1and1: I’m berry sorry sir but I cannot elp you wiv database squealing. Is maybe your compuder malfunctioning?

Me: Mate, I don’t mean to be rude but I need you to listen to me very carefully, just for a minute. I’m having some difficulty with, now please listen to me…

1and1: Sir I assure you, I hav been lissening.

Me: ok!!? I’m having some difficulty with the setup of MY <pause> S <pause> Q <pause> L

1and1: Ah I got you. Mysql, is that correct?

Me: (mumbles) thank F***. Eh yeah mate that’s right.

1and1: ok and what deems to be the truble your aving today?

Me: When I click the Mysql setup on your Applications page, nothing happens. When I looked at the logs it says there is one already created but I haven’t created one. Yet under the Mysql application page you provide it also lists NO mysql has having been created. Can you help me so as I can create a Mysql database?

1and1: So… why aven’t you crated one?

Me: What?

1and1: You vant to crate a MySql database but you haven’t crated one! Why not?

Me: You’re an idiot.

1and1: vankyou for calling vun and vun have a nice day.


Man, I hate call centres.

Nice...
You should use experienced companies such as Host Gator.

[ECBB]

http://www.hostmonster.com is by far the best I have ever used. Right now they have unlimited hosting space, bandwidth, and email accounts for $5.95 a month. You could also go the easy way and run your own server. Then you always have exactly what you want and are in complete control. Learn more about that at http://www.ubuntu.com

I forgot to mention, also with hostmonster you can use simplescripts to install joomla automatically for your site.

FWIW, I had a very negative experience with hostmonster. After 1.5 years as a customer (paid up front + had SSL & certificate, etc.), they shut my site down right with no warning before the Holiday shopping season. Despite my plees, they would not give me a grace period during which to transition my site. They did give me a partial refund after spending hours with customer service; however, they cost me weeks of down time and a few all-nighters trying to get my entire site/database moved onto another host.
I am on webhostingpad.com now -- I experience a lot of downtime there, so can't fully recommend them either.

[ECBB]

I switched from Godaddy to InMotion hosting last year and I can't say I'm all that happy. We have a website for a weekly newspaper and I get these high resource usage warnings from Inmotion and occasionally get shut down altogether. This happened just yesterday without any warning or explanation.

I've begged them to explain why, but they just says it's taking too many resources, despite the fact that my bandwith and visit stats belie that.

I even took the step of blocking newsbots in my robot. txt file to prevent the googles of the world from taxing my site. The bottom line is that there's no way a small weekly newspaper website is causing. There's got to be some kind of issue with their servers.

Anyway I'm not happy with them and I'd like to hear recommendations from others.

Keep in mind all shared hosts are going to have cpu and memory limits in place. Some hosts like bluehost (not sure about inmotion) have these limits as hard limits on the server. For example if you use more than 10% resources at bluehost (at any given time) your site will start to return INTERNAL SERVER ERROR.

We too have a 10% resource limit per site but it is a soft limit which means you can go over if resource usage spikes. Sites are usually not a problem until they are consistently using more than 10%. In the event they are consistently using over 10% we inform the customer and give them an option to upgrade to one of our higher reseller packages. We tend to overlook the high resource usage on the higher reseller packages but it really depends on how much consistent load the site is causing.

Also the posts about your components causing problems could be the culprit. I hope at least you are running 1.5.9 but even that isn’t going to assure there’s no other problems. If you have vulnerable 3rd party components installed, hackers or spammers could be using your site to their advantage.

Also find a host that is running su_php and make sure all folders are set to 755 and files to 644.

For you command-line junkies the following can be used to change all folders to 755 and files to 644 permissions.

It comes in handy when setting permissions on sites via SSH.

Make sure you are in the web folder and use the following:

Code: Select all

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

The important point to note is that you give your customers a warning that they are exceeding the server limits. Regarding my post above, when HostMonster (same company as BlueHost) shut my site down, they gave no warning and a vague explanation. I had to contact them to ask for details, and was told that I was hogging too many server resources. On occasion I had seen the Internal server error appear (btw, if they had a hard limit that temporarily shut my site down after using 10% of the resources, how can they claim I was using more than my fair share?), but had no idea that a few queries and one large table were causing issues.
It took me a few minutes to fix these, but Hostmonster refused to let me restore the account, even for a week or two trial, causing me to spend weeks migrating the whole site to a new host. Worst business practices I've experienced.

[davetanguay]

The important point to note is that you give your customers a warning that they are exceeding the server limits. Regarding my post above, when HostMonster (same company as BlueHost) shut my site down, they gave no warning and a vague explanation. I had to contact them to ask for details, and was told that I was hogging too many server resources. On occasion I had seen the Internal server error appear (btw, if they had a hard limit that temporarily shut my site down after using 10% of the resources, how can they claim I was using more than my fair share?), but had no idea that a few queries and one large table were causing issues.
It took me a few minutes to fix these, but Hostmonster refused to let me restore the account, even for a week or two trial, causing me to spend weeks migrating the whole site to a new host. Worst business practices I've experienced.

They have CPU and Memory allocations for each user but not MySQL limits in place. Here's a post on Matt Eaton's (owner of BlueHost and HostMonster) blog at http://www.mattheaton.com/?p=126 in regards to this.

It could have been you were overloading MySQL.

[ECBB]

The important point to note is that you give your customers a warning that they are exceeding the server limits. Regarding my post above, when HostMonster (same company as BlueHost) shut my site down, they gave no warning and a vague explanation. I had to contact them to ask for details, and was told that I was hogging too many server resources. On occasion I had seen the Internal server error appear (btw, if they had a hard limit that temporarily shut my site down after using 10% of the resources, how can they claim I was using more than my fair share?), but had no idea that a few queries and one large table were causing issues.
It took me a few minutes to fix these, but Hostmonster refused to let me restore the account, even for a week or two trial, causing me to spend weeks migrating the whole site to a new host. Worst business practices I've experienced.

They have CPU and Memory allocations for each user but not MySQL limits in place. Here's a post on Matt Eaton's (owner of BlueHost and HostMonster) blog at http://www.mattheaton.com/?p=126 in regards to this.

It could have been you were overloading MySQL.

Thanks -- I read through that as well and even e-mailed Matt (no response). The support team was vague and did mention both mySQL and CPU. That said, I was certainly not doing it intentionally, was unaware of a problem, and would think standard business practice would include alerting me to the problem and giving me a chance to fix it.

[digip789]

I prefer HostGator only. I have worked with it since last 3 years, no complain till date.

[davetanguay]

Thanks -- I read through that as well and even e-mailed Matt (no response). The support team was vague and did mention both mySQL and CPU. That said, I was certainly not doing it intentionally, was unaware of a problem, and would think standard business practice would include alerting me to the problem and giving me a chance to fix it.

Not if it is causing harm or extreme performance issues to the server. Standard business practice in the hosting world is to disable any sites that are harming the server, with or without the customer's approval. Keep in mind there are hundreds of others sites on the server. The hosting company is not going to let 1 site ruin it for everyone else on the server. They have SLA's to meet.

We try our best to alert the customer but that too doesn't work with every high resource user. I've had customers I've alerted at least 4-5 times and still they refused to do anything about it (or just couldn't understand how this was happening) so we had to eventually disable or move them to another server which had less activity on it for the time being.

Also you're probably not going to get a response from Matt. He owns 2 hosting companies that host over 1 million sites. I doubt he has the time to respond to customers directly.

[jacewade]

I'm looking for a reliable host that allows streaming of videos.

I currently use siteground and I'm a little unhappy with the time it takes for my sites to load.

Any recommendations?

[dkartuzinski]

I'm looking for a reliable host that allows streaming of videos.

I currently use siteground and I'm a little unhappy with the time it takes for my sites to load.

Any recommendations?
I'm looking for a reliable host that allows streaming of videos.

I currently use siteground and I'm a little unhappy with the time it takes for my sites to load.

Any recommendations?

I don't have another hosting company to recommend. BUT I would say that I would make sure that the slow loading is being caused by siteground. you can use YSlow and extension for Firefox to see if you have everything as optimized as necessary. This thread had a lot of people defending and promoting various hosting companies. But there are a lot of good companies, except 1and1 which is total crap, which offers good service.

For 7 or 8 or even 12 dollars a month, most hosting plans are pretty comparable and this is especially true for websites that are going to have relatively low levels of traffic. Like 50 visitors a day or less. I have hosted Joomla sites that I have built over the the last 1.5 years and except for 1and1, Hostway and Network Solutions, I have had fairly good experiences for lower level traffic sites. ALL slows I have been able to trace to how I built the site and which components were being used and 100 percent of the time i was able to maintain functionality but improve the speed by addressing the template itself, and properly configuring mature components, etc...

I just started hosting 3 sites with Siteground (about 4 days ago) and like the experience so far. But of course I can't really say.

Good luck.

-DK

[jacewade]

Thanks I'll check out that extension.

Between October and December '08 I was getting an average of 2000 visitors a month which is why I switched over to siteground. However, the plan I am using with siteground does not offer video streaming, they want me to upgrade to one of their dedicated server packages. I am just seeing if there are any better choices in the dedicated server category before I upgrade with siteground.

[ECBB]

I suppose that we're into the realm of opinion now, but it seems you guys still give warnings.
I would think that when a customer calls and says "I've been a customer for over a year. I didn't know I was causing a problem (because you never told me). I think I solved the problem. Can you reinstate me unless it crosses the threshold again?", most businesses would say "Yes, we're sorry for the inconvenience, but if you take up too many resources again, we will have to disable your account, with a pro-rata refund". We're just talking common courtesy (again, which it sounds like you do) -- my main problem is that I had no warning.

I even offered to pay them for two accounts temporarily to account for my extra resources used.

I guess when you have 1MM customers you can afford to let people go, but it shows me, as the customer, the benefit of going somewhere where my business is valued.

Thanks -- I read through that as well and even e-mailed Matt (no response). The support team was vague and did mention both mySQL and CPU. That said, I was certainly not doing it intentionally, was unaware of a problem, and would think standard business practice would include alerting me to the problem and giving me a chance to fix it.

Not if it is causing harm or extreme performance issues to the server. Standard business practice in the hosting world is to disable any sites that are harming the server, with or without the customer's approval. Keep in mind there are hundreds of others sites on the server. The hosting company is not going to let 1 site ruin it for everyone else on the server. They have SLA's to meet.

We try our best to alert the customer but that too doesn't work with every high resource user. I've had customers I've alerted at least 4-5 times and still they refused to do anything about it (or just couldn't understand how this was happening) so we had to eventually disable or move them to another server which had less activity on it for the time being.

Also you're probably not going to get a response from Matt. He owns 2 hosting companies that host over 1 million sites. I doubt he has the time to respond to customers directly.

[davetanguay]

I suppose that we're into the realm of opinion now, but it seems you guys still give warnings.
I would think that when a customer calls and says "I've been a customer for over a year. I didn't know I was causing a problem (because you never told me). I think I solved the problem. Can you reinstate me unless it crosses the threshold again?", most businesses would say "Yes, we're sorry for the inconvenience, but if you take up too many resources again, we will have to disable your account, with a pro-rata refund". We're just talking common courtesy (again, which it sounds like you do) -- my main problem is that I had no warning.

I even offered to pay them for two accounts temporarily to account for my extra bandwidth.

I guess when you have 1MM customers you can afford to let people go, but it shows me, as the customer, the benefit of going somewhere where my business is valued.

Yes you would think they would want your business but BlueHost alone gets 5,000+ new sites per week. Unfortunately it seems with a lot of the larger hosts you're not treated as a customer, you're just a number.

[kotya]

Hmm... I will try to specify my own criteria(s) for the hosting (I am looking for a hosting for my new web site right now).

1. Reliable. This comes on top of all the VAS/Tech support. I'd rather have a hosting without the need of support than one with crap backend and excellent tech representatives.
2. Bandwidth 250Gb+ a month. Yes, no less than that and it must be guaranteed. Clear price policy on exceeding this limit MUST be available.
3. Joomla-ready, Curl, php etc must be installed and enabled.
4. Gradation in pricing, should I need to increase traffic etc.
5. Price: <=$25 per month with monthly billing cycle. This seems to be the current industry price.
6. NO hidden changes.
7. Streaming video and audio (not a requirement, but highly useful).
8. If (7) is enabled, full bandwidth monitoring with warnings must be present.
9. VERY clear price and utilization policies.

Anyone?

[brad]

Have you read this thread yet? Have you checked out www.webhostingtalk.com perhaps?

This is a Joomla support forum..

[kotya]

Yes, I can see that it IS Joomla support forum and I am looking for a hoster to host Joomla web site. Unless I am TOTALLY wrong, those 3 pages of Joomla support forum are about finding the right hosting company for Joomla-powered web site. I did read this entire thread and provided extra information to narrow down the search.

[brad]

Well.. our rules prohibit people replying and promoting their own companies, or using affiliate links. So, don't expect too many replies.

I recommend though, that you address these questions directly to the hosts you are interested in, via the methods each users to handle their sales.

Anyway, it's up to you. All the best.

[kotya]

I couldn't find any reasonable host in this list so far. I also hope that the web hosting companies, presented in this forum, are actually read and listen. Some of them at least. Hopefully they are interested in what people are looking for (for Joomla sites).

[Geoff]

I couldn't find any reasonable host in this list so far. I also hope that the web hosting companies, presented in this forum, are actually read and listen. Some of them at least. Hopefully they are interested in what people are looking for (for Joomla sites).

Web Hosting Talk (http://webhostingtalk.com/) is a forum dedicated to web hosts with more web hosters actively monitoring it. If you are still looking for more opinions, I suggest you read the reviews over there. They're usually pretty good at matching up requests with capable hosts.

EDIT: Whoops! Sorry, just noticed Brad's post on this.

[VThomas]

I'll share my experience with hosting joomla sites. I currently host multiple sites with Rochen. I pay only $25.99 per month, and in that account I currently host 5 joomla sites and 13 non-joomla sites (several are "small sites" - email hosting only that I limit to <200MB total storage, which is OK with these clients as they download their email to the desktops/laptops anyway). Each paying client (some sites are mine) pays me $14/mo for hosting. The numbers work for me. So, whether Rochen is "affordable" depends also on the number of sites you will host and the income you get for hosting. Rochen has always provided me w/excellent customer support...all my problems resolved and my questions answered...the best support, by far, compared to previous hosts.

I do teach my clients how to optimize their graphics for the web before upload to keep their storage space small (and I do the same for the sites I manage). All my sites on Rochen are very fast.

For my other clients, who need large amounts of storage (mainly due to media and video files), I host with hostgator (they are not joomla sites, though, so I can't comment on their support of joomla).

The previous host I used for joomla (several years ago)--that was a disaster. Maybe by now they have better support, but I don't use them anymore. They have not been mentioned in this thread.

[sytian1]

im currently hosted at www.awardspace.com .... ALL my joomla sites load very very very slow.... tech support is OK but again pages load very very very slow... not to mention the frequent and long downtimes...

dont make the same mistake i did... dont host any sites at awardspace.com....

im currently looking for a decent hosting... i cant affort rochen too expensive.. i might go for hostgator...

[sungkhum]

I've had powweb as a host for almost six years now, and finally gave up on them. Over the years they have just gotten slower and slower. In looking for a new host I was a little overwhelmed by all the options, and especially concerned because I know Joomla can be a little heaver on a host than just a static page. But Joomla is essential to the site I run (as well as some wordpress blogs on subdomains) and so I had to look for something that was fast, knew about Joomla as well as was affordable (we are a non-profit).

After looking around a bit we settled on Interactive Online (http://interactiveonline.com). It seemed like they had a strong presence here on the forums and so knew Joomla well which is exactly what we were looking for. Their price isn't that bad as well (at a little over $5 a month - a great deal).

We migrated our site (one main domain and two subdomains) without much trouble in about three days and the site already is running great and fast. Before it could take up to 6 seconds for the powweb server to be found, now it is consistently around 1 second (as seen at pingdom tools for actioncambodia.org).

I highly recommend Interactive Online to anyone looking to host a joomla run site, or any site for that matter. They have great tech support, fast servers, and a great price.

-Nathan

[davetanguay]

Thanks for the positive feedback Nathan!

[skimberley]

I love these questions. Who is the best Joomla host....... but I don't want to pay any money LOL. As with most things in life I think it's fair to say that you get what you pay for. Are the likes of Rochen and the other providers who provide fantastic services really that much more expensive, after taking into account all the grief that can ensue from "being clever" and opting for a more "cost-effective" solution. Far too much of my working life is taken up with sorting out other peoples "cost-effective" hosting.

[Hilfiger]

I've had powweb as a host for almost six years now, and finally gave up on them. Over the years they have just gotten slower and slower. In looking for a new host I was a little overwhelmed by all the options, and especially concerned because I know Joomla can be a little heaver on a host than just a static page. But Joomla is essential to the site I run (as well as some wordpress blogs on subdomains) and so I had to look for something that was fast, knew about Joomla as well as was affordable (we are a non-profit).

After looking around a bit we settled on Interactive Online (http://interactiveonline.com). It seemed like they had a strong presence here on the forums and so knew Joomla well which is exactly what we were looking for. Their price isn't that bad as well (at a little over $5 a month - a great deal).

We migrated our site (one main domain and two subdomains) without much trouble in about three days and the site already is running great and fast. Before it could take up to 6 seconds for the powweb server to be found, now it is consistently around 1 second (as seen at pingdom tools for actioncambodia.org).

I highly recommend Interactive Online to anyone looking to host a joomla run site, or any site for that matter. They have great tech support, fast servers, and a great price.

-Nathan

I totaly agree with this post. I did recently changed the host to IO and i am very happy, no more blank pages, no more erors..and in top of that the 10 seconds or more, page load is gone.

If u want an afrodabile host then u should go with IO.