Recommend a hosting company

[procyon]

Have been with the same company for nearly ten years now however support is becoming erratic as is uptime so I need an alternative to consider. We have 20-30 small client accounts and a couple of larger websites.

Much appreciated if anyone can recommend a reliable web hosting company that offers the following:

1) Reseller account option.

2) Can take payments from Thailand (or Paypal).

3) 24/7 support (real support, not "we're asleep now, we'll turn your site back on when the US wakes up!).

4) Servers based in the US or Oz (though company can be based in Thailand).

Have tried iPower and Godaddy already - support sucks. Servint are very good but very expensive.

Thanks!

[IMHO]

I might not be able to give you any recommendations (I'm only useful if you want high end), but answering these questions might help others respond to you usefully:

What platform(s) are you using?

Do you need just hosting support, or platform/CMS support too?

Are you looking for a dedicated server to run all 30 sites, or just individual shared hosting plans?

Do you also host email?

What are the hosting requirements / traffic levels of the two larger sites?

Are any of these 'mission critical' - i.e.should have failover support, load balancing etc?

What about backups - do you manage these yourself or do you need this to also be managed for you?

What's the hosting budget for the 30 small sites / 2 larger sites?

Edited May 12, 2015 by IMHO

[procyon]

Platform: Linux/cPanel

Support: should include anything server side in case of problems

Server: considering both options, need prices

Email: yes, a lot of it

Traffic: largest site uses about 40Gb bandwidth a month, small ones hardly anything

Load: light, no balancing or fancy stuff

Backups: self managed

Budget: I'm hoping the smaller ones can pay for the whole box, they currently pay about $100 per year each

The key element is support, I need to know stuff is being fixed as soon as it goes wrong - not 6 hours later!

Edited May 12, 2015 by procyon

[mjnaus]

After using numerous hosting providers the past 15 years (over a hundred providers), we finally settled with A Small Orange (http://www.asmallorange.com) two years ago and never looked back. There are slightly more expensive then the typical crappy hosting provider (HostGator, GoDaddy, BlueHost, etc) but they're definitely worth it. We have a dedicated server with them for $125 a month, but they have a variety of VPS and semi dedicated options as well. Support is fantastic, with always available chat support (free of charge). In addition, they offer extra premium support packages for even faster problem solving.

[IMHO]

Platform: Linux/cPanel

Support: should include anything server side in case of problems

Server: considering both options, need prices

Email: yes, a lot of it

Traffic: largest site uses about 40Gb bandwidth a month, small ones hardly anything

Load: light, no balancing or fancy stuff

Backups: self managed

Budget: I'm hoping the smaller ones can pay for the whole box, they currently pay about $100 per year each

The key element is support, I need to know stuff is being fixed as soon as it goes wrong - not 6 hours later!

You're just in budget range of getting your own dedicated infra, which is a move I don't think you'll regret.

In this price range, I can highly recommend Rackspace's cloud boxes and their customer service:

http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers

http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/cloud-servers-with-managed-operations-support-for-linux

Make sure you actually speak to a sales rep, and push them for better pricing though - don't just sign up online

Note that Rackspace are one of the "big 4" (along with AWS, MS/Azure, and IBM/Softlayer), and many of the smaller hosting firms you will find are just selling space on some boxes they have with one of them anyway

Edited May 12, 2015 by IMHO

[ksamuiguy]

FatCow.com

iPage.com

[procyon]

Thanks for the recommendations, the Small Orange company looks like it'll fit our needs. I'll start with the reseller account and upgrade to a dedicated after about a year.