| Looking for hoster. Any pos/neg feedback re: BlueHost |
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I am about to embark on my next "adventure" which is moving my app to a hoster. Does anyone know the scoop on Bluehost? I initially though that the 5 G of mySQL space was too small for me, but after a little back of the envelope I see that I have about 170 test records only taking up 48KiB. It has been awhile since I graduated bu KiB is is 10^3 bytes, right? My users will only need to use about 500 records/year each which is about 3 x 48KiB or about 150 KiB each in a year. I could fit a lot of users at that rate. There is some overhead, of course. But still. My only other concern is backup. I really don't want to lose user's data.
Any horror stories about Bluehost? Anyone else I should consider?
proof that an old dog can learn new tricks
There's very few *host companies that I would ever recommend and many are owned by the same parent company. I've tried Bluehost, Justhost, and several others.
If you're looking for a reliable host with a rabid uptime promise, give KnownHost a look over. They've just started doing cloud hosting and have VPSs(I have several of these) and dedicated servers. (I'm not affiliated with Knownhost) https://www.knownhost.com
Thx. I actually signed up with HostGator, for a year. I actually don't think this will be my final stop, but it is pretty reasonable for Wordpress and it will give me an environment to get out all the last kinks. I have 45 days to cancel so i really need to get my app up and working on it asap.
proof that an old dog can learn new tricks
Well, a lot to report now. HostGator didn't work out. Their tech support (at night) was super hlepful in helping me get my app up and going but then the next day they decided they needed to up sell me to give me anymore support. So I got a refund (the first year refund hasn't hit my cc account yet, but it will) and I then went over KnownHost. Same thing, I got some good support at first (I figured out that may app wasn't running because they were running PHP 7.2 while I was running 6.8) but am still having trouble getting my communication through the security wall. I got a response (not from tech support but from a technical sales person as far as I could tell) that I should move to a dedicated server, but they really don't know a technical or business reason why.
"If you had a VPS/Dedicated server, we would be doing the following -- https://www.knownhost.com/support-coverage.html However, it doesn't differ much from the shared services, the only difference is that you would have more to worry about the whole server in terms of maintaining than vs a shared server where all you have to handle is your cPanel account." So I will cancel my KnownHost account today. It wasn't a total loss because my CI app is up and going (once i figured out the version thing and an extra blank space in a few of my CI scripts) so I know I can get that part working. What I really need is a hoster with SUPPORT. I need support getting my app implemented on a public server. It already works fine on my local windows based Apache. BTW, I am willing to pay for this level of support. Can anyone recommend a hoster that has "implementation support"? The techSupport people at KnownHost think I am asking for application support. They have no idea how much effort it took to write my application! In trying to see the "positive side" of my experience it is better to find out the lack of support prior to actually having customers using the system. Can anyone think of a hoster who REALLY offers support?
proof that an old dog can learn new tricks
It kinda sounds like you're trying to get a shared hosting platform to run special stuff. That's just not going to work. Knownhost supports PHP 5.8 and 7.x. No one that I know of is providing PHP 6.8??
It sounds like you need a VPS (at minimum) where you can set the PHP version (though your app should be able to work on the newest-ish PHP version). Since you need implementation support, that (to all hosting) is application support, which none offer that I know of. Feel free to send me a PM and I can try to help getting your site implemented.
@richb201, I've used a bunch of hosts in the 14+ years I've been working on websites. I've never had a host give me the level of support you desire. It's simply not their job. As a developer, it's your job to know the dependencies and requirements of your application, and you should be able to ask a host specific questions without signing up. By asking the appropriate questions, you'd save yourself a lot of time, but then you'd probably already know the answer. Shared hosting is meant for the majority of small websites that don't require anything special. If previous hosts have recommended VPS, that's their way of telling you that you're going outside the box they're putting everyone in. Since you're willing to pay extra for support, why not just use that money to buy the VPS plan? VPS will allow you to have the server just how you want it, and since it works in your development environment, you'd just give the VPS the same extensions/features.
I would push back a little bit on getting a VPS - if its fully managed fine. Otherwise there can be huge security implications to running a VPS yourself. Highly recommend checking out the Fort Rabbit platform for serious hosting - it solves a lot of issues, its PHP only, and gets you up and running very quickly. You can easily set the PHP version. And it starts at $5 per month - and that plan is not useless, I ran a live app for months on that $5 plan - then we upgraded to the $15 plan :-) https://www.fortrabbit.com
So thats going to be superior but its not going to include a lot of extras that you get with more traditional hosting plans that use cpanel etc - another one to check out: https://www.hawkhost.com Great support, they don't overload their servers, and you get a ton of tools to use. Like having an admin panel to setup Cron jobs can be very nice. You can set PHP version yourself. So depending on what you need to do that type of hosting account might be better.
(05-03-2018, 08:11 AM)skunkbad Wrote: @richb201, I've used a bunch of hosts in the 14+ years I've been working on websites. I've never had a host give me the level of support you desire. It's simply not their job. As a developer, it's your job to know the dependencies and requirements of your application, and you should be able to ask a host specific questions without signing up. By asking the appropriate questions, you'd save yourself a lot of time, but then you'd probably already know the answer. Shared hosting is meant for the majority of small websites that don't require anything special. If previous hosts have recommended VPS, that's their way of telling you that you're going outside the box they're putting everyone in. Since you're willing to pay extra for support, why not just use that money to buy the VPS plan? VPS will allow you to have the server just how you want it, and since it works in your development environment, you'd just give the VPS the same extensions/features. The most important is the support 
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