Searching for hosting alternatives

[rrlane]

My school district's contract with Network Solutions is up at the end of August. For the past seven or eight months, our Joomla 1.5 site has been experiencing a LOT of latency and lag, and every time I've called them up, they say the reason is that we need to move to one of their virtual servers. However, when I tell them each time that we cannot make any changes until August no matter what the situation because of budget constraints, the service gets better for a few weeks.

We're really thinking about switching hosts, and I'd like some advice on where to go. Our site gets about 30,000 visits a month (with a high of about 1500 a day) during the school year (it drops WAY down in the summer for obvious reasons) with about 50, 000 page views.

If we HAVE to go to a VPS, I guess we have to, but we're really trying to avoid that expense if possible.

Any suggestions and why would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[felipe.porro]

Hello, i am having the same problem. I am looking for the best possible server for a joomla site without having to put up with the expense of a VPS. Preferably something that would cost at the most 8 dollars a month.

Does anyone know what is the most reliable, low cost server out there?

thanks in advance!

[nightlrd]

check out bluehost
bluehost.com

[lovejasmine]

im thinking of using http://www.siteground.com anyone hosting there

[Gare]

I use http://svaha.com for many sites. Friendly support, great uptime, and low cost packages.

[Geoff]

If you are getting that many hits, a VPS or dedicated would be a wise choice.
I would advise you to come up with a reasonable budget for webhosting, specifications you are looking for and go to http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ to look for reviews, recommendations, etc. Since this is a school website and reliability is a high priority, I encourage you not to base your choice of pricing (though I do understand the limited budget issue) because after all you get what you pay for.

In the event you do decide to purchase a VPS or dedicated server, I recommend you spend a week or so tweaking/modifying the server for performance gains. JoomlaPerformance (http://joomlaperformance.com/) has some articles on server performance, tweaking, etc that should get you started.

Performance is key here and from the sound of it, it seems like you are on a shared hosting plan. Post around in the J! performance boards (1.0.X or 1.5.X depending on what you are using) to see if others can help out.

Note: I previously managed technology at a high school. Budgets are limited. We just have to do with what we have.

[onnojan]

Check out dreamhost, they provide a very good package for free to non profits, which schools are. The response time of the web site has been much better than what i had created using a Godaddy' account.

onno