over 9 years ago from Mike Barker, Designer (mike-barker.com)
I'm leaving Dreamhost for various reasons.
I have been trialling Digital Ocean, however it's not very good for Wordpress or multiple site hosting (without getting expensive). I've eliminated MediaTemple and BlueHost from the running.
Are there any other hosting companies out there worth using for 10+ small traffic sites with support for PHP?
For Wordpress hosting, check out Flywheel.
I dig them as well - I use them for client hosting.
I've really liked http://www.asmallorange.com/ - straightforward, honest, great support, good prices.
I refer this one to almost all my clients.
Q: how is DO expensive for WP? I have 30+ sites that total hundreds of thousands of visits a month and I pay $20/month there. I use a single CentOS droplet.
They're faster and more reliable than MediaTemple too.
I had heard nothing but good things about DO however my one droplet/site goes down on a weekly basis, losing it's db connection. I'll google it again but I recall trying to host more than one wordpress site per droplet was not easy to set up and meant the loss of post-title based urls. That said I may continue to use it for one-off non-php/mysql sites (want to try running a ghost site).
Update: found the solution for enabling pretty links when setting up multiple sites. Will do a test run, however it doesn't solve the random weekly database connection issues.
Regarding your DB going down; without knowing your setup or droplet stats, it may be a memory issue. I ran into this a while ago & cured it by adding swap.
I had exactly the same problem. The default configuration for MySQL is not adequate, so you need to configure MySQL yourself properly.
This script can help you : MySQL Tuner
Awesome! I would love to switch to Digital Ocean, however I'm used to managed hosting and cPanel. Do you have any resources, tips or tricks to get started? I would really appreciate if I could get some advice from a experienced DO user like you.
I use Digital Ocean for myself and all my clients. I've since scaled back to a single droplet, but at one point I was managing 23 sites on the $10/$20 plan (depending on usage), and I host my own sites (5, currently) on the $5 plan. I was a total newbie to DIY hosting on virtual servers when I started, DO has a fantastic community of tutorials and guides for pretty much anything. Seriously, there are guides detailing setting up Minecraft servers, installing a LAMP stack, setting up and optimizing any combination of Wordpress setups, and a lot more. I highly recommend DO, but if rolling your own isn't ideal then Flywheel or A Small Orange are the runners up.
I've been using Webfaction for a couple of years now and it's always been great. Great pricing, amazing support and ease of use of a managed hosting packaged + the flexibility of a VPS. Highly recommended.
I use 'Digital Ocean' for myself, and 'A Small Orange' for everyone else.
+1 for A Small Orange (http://asmallorange.com). Incredible customer service, and amazingly cheap prices. I'm on a super fast VPS at http://scotthurff.com for only $25 / month. They were running a 50% off special, not sure if it's still going.
Awesome! I picked up a personal VPS with that exact same deal.
I've been using HostMonster - www.hostmonster.com/track/jshariat/ (Referral link because why not?) for about 6 years now. It's good if all you have is static site, wordpress, or simple webapp.
The price is unbeatable: Unlimited* for ~$6-7/mo
*With a few restrictions, like using it for backing up photos, applied.
I got on the front page of reddit with a flash game I made, and got hit with 200k users, and my site handled it just fine.
Also the customer support has always been quick and friendly, even with dumb questions about how to do this or that.
I have tried quite a few others since then, for clients or friends, still nothing has beat it for me.
Have you tried Media Temples updated grid service? It's quite good. Jumpstarter is good as well. Offers SSH + lots of one-click installers: http://jumpstarter.io is
+1 for DO. Use their beta LAMP stack and setup virtual hosts for multiple sites. If configured right it will be blazing fast and cost effective (even for larger sites or apps).
Is there some kind of instruction on how to configure it right?
I would also like to have a nice cheatsheet for this.
Here's a tutorial on multiple WordPress sites from DO. (Not using WordPress Multisite but actually configuring the server for multiple installations.)
I use FutureHosting. Pretty happy with them. I used WiredTree in the past and they were really good, but a bit pricy.
Heroku
Get something like Webmin for Digital Ocean. It will make it easier to manage virtual hosts.
Can I ask why you've eliminated MediaTemple? I have a 4GB VPS and it's been rock solid for 4+ years. No downtime except when I've done a manual reboot.
I recently switched from MediaTemple DV to Linode and I couldn't be happier.
It's faster, less expensive and they have good support too.
I've written about my experience so far here: http://lifeofadesigner.com/personal/mediatemple-to-linode-transition/
I highly reccomend Linode.
Currently have the (gs) service from MediaTemple; however, I only use it for hosting my portfolio (which is $17/month). So whenever I can get around it, I'll be switching to GitHub Pages hosting. Reason being is that it's super easy to push changes live and it's free. Although GitHub Pages does not support PHP, Ruby, ect. Just static HTML and CSS.
If you are looking at having around 10 sites with PHP though, MediaTemple is a great solution. For one, it's relatively cheap for what you get. The support is outstanding. Seriously. It is also very easy to manage many sites at once, which I think many other options don't have that kind of simplicity.
Anyways, I hope this helped! Good luck.
I have servers on both Linode and INIZ although I do like prefer using a VPS and managing it myself.
Big Wet Fish are really great, they offer some of the best support I've ever had from a company and they're pretty active on Twitter too. They've even given free pizza! http://www.bigwetfish.co.uk/whmcs/aff.php?aff=394 (aff link ftw)
I use Site5, they have been really good for me...
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