Web hosting recommendation.

[Mike Boeh]

In the past, we had recommended a variety of hosts, with LiquidWeb being one of them. Now we exclusively recommend LiquidWeb. Why?

1. Indiegamer.com itself runs on a LiquidWeb managed server.
(http://www.liquidweb.com/?RID=indiegam)
2. When someone else signs up for a LiquidWeb server, Indiegamer gets a credit. We do NOT accept advertising and all funding comes from our own pockets- so this is one way you can keep Indiegamer going strong!

3. Their level of service is absolutely amazing. When they say "managed", they mean it! For example, if your site goes down, they know about it within 5 minutes, and proactively go in and fix the problem.

Please visit LiquidWeb via this link.
(http://www.liquidweb.com/?RID=indiegam)
Thanks!
Indiegamer Staff

[george]

looks awesome and i would gladly sign up... can you, or anyone else, vouch for their shared hosting plans? thanks!

[Dan MacDonald]

I grabbed a dedicated server and I have to say I've been very impressed with their service. Their support team is actually on the same campus as the machines so they can address problems quickly. I wanted to install something off the windows CD at 2 am in the morning. I called them up, a guy answered 1st ring, he didn't know how to install the specific feature I wanted but he walked down to my machine and put the windows disk in the DVD for me.

[tolworthy]

I grabbed a dedicated server and I have to say I've been very impressed with their service. Their support team is actually on the same campus as the machines so they can address problems quickly. I wanted to install something off the windows CD at 2 am in the morning. I called them up, a guy answered 1st ring, he didn't know how to install the specific feature I wanted but he walked down to my machine and put the windows disk in the DVD for me.

Now that's impressive!

I was going to recommend DreamHost for folks who can't afford LiquidWeb. If yuo really cannot afford more than peanuts (i.e. it's your first game and you're working out of your bedroom) then DreamHost gives by far the best service of the four or five hosts I've used. But I also have to accept that cheap comes at a price. The DH guys do miracles, but there is a limit to the service they can offer at the ridiculous low prices they charge. When I am able I'll probably move to LiquidWeb.

[Sharpfish]

I'm with dreamhost, they have a fair bit of downtime (not so much lately in fairness) and their servers seem overburdened (or just plain slow at times) compared to others.

However, they are cheap and generally reliable/decent features - I wouldn't recommend them though from my experience, and their newsletter style is annoying, everything is a joke (even your site being down for half a day) to the guy who writes the newsletter, however I suppose he's just trying to "keep it real" or something, i'd rather have more uptime and less jokes.

[Maupin]

I use Godaddy's hosting (Metropolis?) for my shared server stuff. The price is super cheap and I haven't noticed any downtime. Even recently when supposedly they were having problems, my sites were up. However their $20 a year email service sometimes has problems... Once and a while Thunderbird times out after connecting to the server.

EDIT: I have canceled Godaddy's email plan because they now silently filture out spam on all email plans - and you can't turn this "feature" off. After missing a few emails from Asia, I found out they were getting caught in this new spam filter. There's no way to recover these lost messages or even find out how many were lost. This makes Godaddy's email plans completely useless for anyone who can't afford to miss messages.

For the mean time I have switched to tuffmail.com for my mail account. Seems to be working well so far, but it's still too early to recommend them.

I use Hostdime for my dedicated server. Recently they've been fantastic. No downtime and my FreeBSD server hasn't been rebooted in at least a year. However I had a lot of problems when I first started with them (under the Servercove name) so it may be too early to recommend them. For dedicated servers, I'm now of the opinion that paying extra for good onsite tech support is worth it in the long run. There's just such a huge sense of helplessness when your site/server is down and you can't get in contact with anyone or they aren't sending you repair status reports, etc. Liquid Web looks pretty good and I may try them in the future.

I will recommend AGAINST Yahoo for webhosting, however. I registered two domains with them in 2001 and when I finally got tired of their abysmal email service (and customer support) I tried to transfer my domains to Godaddy. Yahoo clutched onto my domains in a death grip and it took 1 1/2 months of back and forth between them and the registrar they use (Melbourne IT), both companies claiming I should talk to the other.... before I got my domains back. I swore never to use Yahoo again and since then I've recommended to everyone that they avoid giving business to those yahoos. They got the last laugh, though, because after I cancelled my accounts with them (a necessary process in their insane domain transfer procedure) they continued billing me and I just discovered it recently, four months later.

[Escapee]

For me I have been extremely sastified with lunarpages. The other hosts that i'm using are Vistapages and p4host.

As for domain, i'm using namecheap.com, netfirm (4.95 per year ) and yahoo.

I may go for LiquidWeb managed server some time in the future , thanks for the recommendation

[3DRT.com]

We are using site5
way better experience after lots of other hosters.

[Matthew]

Oh hey, thread resurrection. Suppose I'll post:

We actually moved to a Liquidweb server a few months ago, very shortly after a bad move to Layered Technologies. Liquidweb has been fantastic--very prompt support for all of our questions. I monitor our server with Hyperspin, and only had a tiny bit of downtime this month (3 minute monitoring):


2007 Jun 99.965% 99.965% 12min 1 Detailed Log
2007 May 100.000% 100.000% 00min 0 Detailed Log
2007 Apr 100.000% 100.000% 00min 0

LW is a little more expensive, but it's definitely been worth it.

[Videogame Biscuit]

I highly recommend Godaddy. Cheap, easy to setup, great service and support, and it's easy to find discount codes to make it even cheaper. I paid less than 100$ for three years of hosting and a domain name!

[fpdevco]

I used to use LiquidWeb along time ago, when they first started up (circa 1997/98). Pretty good experience overall, although they definitely had some teething troubles back then. I left to share a dedicated server on Rackspace, which was great but crazy expensive. I've been with ServInt (http://www.servint.net/) for the past 4 years or so and have had no problems. Would highly recommend them.

[KingAto]

What about 1and1?

[Brent]

I noticed that most people don't seem to use websites from the top ten lists I see. Is this because most of these lists are rigged? or because most of them don't offer dedicated servers.

hosts like host monster are almost always in the top ten. Has any one tried a site like this?

[mooktown]

I just have to mention Servage.net (http://www.servage.net/?coupon=mooktown) as an awesome host!

This year I've had no noticeable downtime at all, 360GB of webspace, 3600GB of monthly data transfer all for $6.95 a month! Almost a quarter of what I was paying previously for an inferior setup... Yup, I'm happy with servage! :)

Another feature is the webdrive program which adds your server drive into your My Computer to use as a normal hdd, nice! ;)

[DFG]

The top 10 lists you usually see are all affiliate stuff - meaning you click on them and sign up and you get a generous cut or free months of hosting (see mooktown's servage.net and Mike's Liquidweb links above tagged to them ;) ). Many of the hosting companies used around here don't have aff programs so you won't see them in the top 10s.

[dma]

I just have to mention Servage.net (http://www.servage.net/?coupon=mooktown) as an awesome host! [...] 3600GB of monthly data transfer all for $6.95 a month!

3600 GB of monthly traffic is essentially "unlimited traffic" since 99.99% of users would not even come close to using 0.1% of that amount. So I wonder what would happen, performance wise, if they actually got a user who did use that much? In that upper range, my host (http://www.he.net/hosting.html) offers 5 TB of traffic for $300. I trust them not to cut off or throttle back on performance if I pay that much. But if I'm only paying $6.95, I'd be a little wary. Actually, a lot wary.

Anyway, the only way to find out is to see if someone is using that much on Servage. How much are you using each month, Mooktown?

[jlv]

I looked at servage when I was shopping for a web host. I liked the high bandwidth limit, but when I read the fine print it turned out that their limit is daily not monthly. So it's 3600GB / 30 per day rather than 3600GB per month. Probably not a big deal unless you get huge surges of traffic. (The most I've ever used in a day is 5GB.)

[mooktown]

Anyway, the only way to find out is to see if someone is using that much on Servage. How much are you using each month, Mooktown?

Yeah, nowhere near that much unfortunately! ;)

[dma]

So it's 3600GB / 30 per day rather than 3600GB per month. [...] (The most I've ever used in a day is 5GB.)

Still, 120 GB per day is a huge amount of traffic. If their typical customer used that much, I think they'd be quick to rethink their $6.95 pricing model. :)

[LmT]

hostmonster.com is pretty good. They have nice ratings and they have 600GB web space along with 6 TB monthly transfer.

[dma]

hostmonster.com is pretty good. They have nice ratings and they have 600GB web space along with 6 TB monthly transfer.

For $5.95 per month, like the previously mentioned Servage.net, it's probably safe to say that you can't take that transfer number seriously. Amazon's S3 service (http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261) would charge you $1,080 for 6 TB of data transfer. (A little on the pricey side, but at least, more realistic.) You'd only get 33 GB of bandwidth for $5.95 from Amazon. That's still a healthy amount as you could download a typical 20 MB casual game 1,650 times with that much, giving you $320 in sales at a 1% conversion rate

Even the 600 GB of storage space is kind of laughable, as at today's hard drive prices, (about $140 for 500 GB) it would take them nearly 2 years to break even at $5.95 per month.

When it comes to cheap hosting plans, I'd take all claims of high transfer rates and storage with a grain of salt. They make these claims, but bet (correctly) that the vast majority of people won't use but a very tiny fraction of those numbers. Those who do use more will most likely be mysteriously cut off.

[LmT]

Thanks for the information. I suppose I'll do more research before making a final decision on my own professional website. Instead of spamming this thread, shall we continue this conversation via PM?

[GolfHacker]

FYI - I just signed up with Liquid Web this past week, and am very impressed. Their support staff is top-notch - they helped me resolve some config issues that I encountered while setting up my vBulletin forum. They were prompt and courteous. Oh, and yes - I did credit Indie Gamer when I signed up!

[jlv]

While I have my doubts that my current host (Lunarpages) could actually deliver the 15000 GB that they claim, they really did serve up 80 GB for me last month with no problems. I would have been 20 GB over with Liquid Web for twice the rate.

My only gripe with Lunarpages is that you can't reliably get your httpd logs.

[Brent]

FYI - I just signed up with Liquid Web this past week, and am very impressed. Their support staff is top-notch - they helped me resolve some config issues that I encountered while setting up my vBulletin forum. They were prompt and courteous. Oh, and yes - I did credit Indie Gamer when I signed up!

Same just signed up you should be geting credit.

[svero]

Im hosting Twilight on Liquid (different box from indiegamer) and last week or so I ran into some trouble with some folks hitting the server with hack attacks. They didn't get in but the attacks were causing some trouble. I would say that Liquid's tech support was EXCELLENT through this. They were very helpful. I can continue to recommend them.

[flyaflya]

I use www.webfaction.com for my django site, I thinks it's the best choice for making cgi site using python or ror. for PHP, we have more choices. like bulehost, site5...

[Crunch]

Hey all, I ran through the list of recommended Subversion hosts that was recommended on their sight, and didn't really see a great price/performance setup for hosting both an SVN repository and a website.

I don't really want to fork over enough for a virtual or dedicated server just yet. Does LiquidWeb allow SVN hosting on their standard web host accounts?

Anyone have any experience with such a beast?

Thx!

[Jack Norton]

While I have my doubts that my current host (Lunarpages) could actually deliver the 15000 GB that they claim, they really did serve up 80 GB for me last month with no problems. I would have been 20 GB over with Liquid Web for twice the rate.

I was thinking the same so I got an hostgator shared hosting to test the potential. 55Gb delivered last month, but unfortunately reading the AWStats I found quite many 503 "server too busy" errors (about 35-40).
For some people that isn't a problem (I use that as extra mirror for example), but if a potential customer tries to download the game and see that message (and is your only hosting) that would be bad... I guess that's the tradeoff if you use shared instead of dedicated server. Of course, a shared account can cost 1/10 of dedicated one, so probably in the beginning is worth it.

[Diragor]

I don't really want to fork over enough for a virtual or dedicated server just yet.

How cheap does it have to be? Slicehost's cheapest VPS is only $20 and I've read lots of glowing reviews of their services. That's where I plan on going if I ever have a serious website to deploy. Until then, Dreamhost is good enough for the tiny amount of money I'm charged.

[Jack Norton]

edit: np, after a chat, they decided the phone call wasn't needed :)

[e_barroga]

Home server.
:)

[magallanes]

Home server.
:)

Home server can be a option versus a housing but it's impractical in comparison with a inexpensive $8xmonth server.

[Arion]

hello, I really don't have a clue on which plan I should choose for web hosting but it seems Liquid web would be my 1st choice in the future after reading the posts in this topic. Can someone explain what do the different packages on liquid's website mean and what are their advantages? I'm really sorry but I'm not well informed in this subject - any help would be appreciated.

[Maupin]

You need to say what you're going to do with the hosting before anyone can recommend a plan to you.

If you're just going for a basic static/db driven website (company site, game homepage) then the $14.95 standard web hosting plan is probably what you want. (Though 60 GB transfer per month seems very low to me. I pay $14.50 a month at Webfaction for 1200 GB transfer. 60 GB is probably not enough to serve as the only host of a semi-popular downloadable game.)

If you plan on running lots of server-side programs or doing heavy database or custom software installs, you probably want a dedicated server or VPS.

[magallanes]

I checked my always-parked site in : www.000webhost.com

i don't known what is the catch because :
1 ) it's free.
2 ) ads free.
3 ) plenty of space.
4 ) quite decent speed.
5 ) you can use a real domain.

[Maupin]

If you read user reviews at FreeWebHostingTalk, user's accounts are terminated without explanation and any requests as to why are only met with an autoreply from their support ticketing system.

You get what you pay for.

(FreeWebHostingTalk eventually banned mention of 000webhost because they were getting overrun with shady affiliate links advertising the site.)

[Arion]

i've heard from a friend that hostmonster.com offers cheap packages for hosting - are there people who have used their service before?

[magallanes]

If you read user reviews at FreeWebHostingTalk, user's accounts are terminated without explanation and any requests as to why are only met with an autoreply from their support ticketing system.

You get what you pay for.

(FreeWebHostingTalk eventually banned mention of 000webhost because they were getting overrun with shady affiliate links advertising the site.)

It's good to known it, at least my parked site is still alive.

[ashburnham]

Always been with 1&1 and never had any major problems. They do seem to need a kick up the backside when the server goes down (i.e. a phone call) and always seem unhelpful saying simple things may take 48 hours but normally done within the hour.

[DtD]

I've always used 1&1 as well, and have been pretty happy.
They give you alot of features you would never expect with a shared hosting server (EG: SSH and SCP) and all for a very low price.

Like ashburnham, I have had some problems with them getting the server up after it goes down, but they have a very nice control panel (better than damn cpanel imo)

~DtD

[Acord]

I highly recommend 1&1 - I've been using them for over a year and had nothing but good experiences. For the price they're amazing.

[EFWStaff]

I've been using JaguarPC for hosting for my business website (security software, expanding into games) for years, and the downtime's been only a few minutes over the last three years and that owing to a hardware failure that forced them to move my site to another box. They want $9.95/month for their best-bang-for-the-buck account and it's got all the bells and whistles one could want, including a ton of space and bandwidth along with support for custom CMS coding if you dabble in Perl/PHP/mySQL/etc. Or, you can use a canned package (they have several, many with autoinstallers).

Full disclosure: I do get a free month of thank-you for a new account referral, but they do that for everyone. In keeping with the no-advertising rule and the spirit of the board I'm not posting any affiliate link or info.

[Jason Chong]

I registered a new domain name and plan to host separately from another company but some of these companies require that I transfer my domain name to them.

I find these companies to be shady at best. I want to retain separate control of my domain name.

I thought I only needed to modify my domain name to point to the nameservers of the actual webhosts.

Why are some of these webhosts insisting I transfer my domain names to them? I find this to be a huge turn off and rather shady.

[ChrisP]

Which web hosts are these? When you say "insist" are they actually forcing you or is this just their recommended path (for people who don't understand web hosting)? Are you sure that they mean a transfer of domain registration?

[Jason Chong]

Which web hosts are these? When you say "insist" are they actually forcing you or is this just their recommended path (for people who don't understand web hosting)? Are you sure that they mean a transfer of domain registration?

It means when you order through their forms you either get options to order a domain name as well, and the other option is you transfer your domain name to them before ordering.


Then there's one that doesn't tell you anything, but to just key in your domain name. Then if you check the javascript, it calls the function 'transfer'

If you didn't lock your domain name when you bought it, you're pretty much screwed if they transferred it.

I don't want to name some of these companies but they have been mentioned in this thread, which is why I checked them out, tried to order then I rolled back or rather, didn't proceed since the order form on some of them are like what I described.

It's shady, and those of you who're not familiar with why one should never combine hosting and domain name, will certainly get screwed if you have any disputes and want to change hosts (but your domain name is owned by them because you transferred to them when you sign up)

[ChrisP]

If they really are forcing you to transfer your domain name to them then that is pretty bad. I'm well aware of the perils of not having control over it. Without seeing the form in question I can't really comment further, though. :)

[Poseidon]

Figured I would add in my two cents. I looked at the Liquid host people, they seem like they have a very nice setup!

For years I've consistently used two hosts: One for my web hosting, and the other for my game server itself. For webhosting I use a company called Topclasshost, and for game server hosting I use biggameserver.com

These were two companies I kinda found randomly, and what I like about both of them is that they're both run by small companies/actual people which is to say that in the three years of hosting I've always worked on support with the same people (which to me I find comforting!). They also have some nice hosting packages, although TopClassHost can easily be beaten in price by other people nowadays.

Our team has also tried hosting from: Ipowerweb, GoDaddy (website hosting) and Serverbeach, Aplus (dedicated servers). Ipowerweb was terrible, GoDaddy was nice but their user interface was confusing. ServerBeach was alright, but if your game remotely falls into the category of "irc" (which most games do) then count them out. Aplus was alright but we experienced a lot of issues with the network which they attributed to hacking and could never figure out/they tried to resolve the issue by selling us more 'features'.

To me the most important thing has always been to work with a company that's willing to work with me, which is why I tend to favor small companies (hey, like indies!) as opposed to the big commercial guys.

[Mtg_kirin]

I use websytz, stupid name but reliable and cheap

[Jeff]

I highly recommend Google App Engine. :)

[Red27]

Joined LiquidWeb a few weeks ago using the link here to support Indie Gamer forums.

Glad I did; great customer service, no issues whatsoever with red27studios website at all (so far touch wood etc), so happy to give them a big thumbs up. Pre paying 6 months at a time gives you month free (2 months if you prepay for a year, so the economies of scale are the same).

PM me if you want any more info - happy to answer questions on them.

[krasse]

I tested servage.net and my first impression is this: The support was really fast and nice but they seem to have many technical problems (my webmail did not work and some very vital PHP functionality were not working).

[mooktown]

I tested servage.net and my first impression is this: The support was really fast and nice but they seem to have many technical problems (my webmail did not work and some very vital PHP functionality were not working).

were they able to resolve your issues?

[krasse]

were they able to resolve your issues?

Yes, the first issue were resolve quickly and I got a good impression of their support. The second issue took three days and they seemed much less professional then.

[mooktown]

Servage SUCKS. Do not use them. Always slow and sites on there go down at least a few times a day. Humorous vitriol, I've never noticed everybodys (http://everybodysgames.com/) be down, or am I just lucky when I check it? Admittedly a pretty basic site but one that was used to base my recommendation on.

I regret following a recommendation on here to try them. Sorry! :D

I recommend liquidweb for anyone looking for hosting that works. If anyone reading this takes Pkeods advice be sure not to hold bitterness towards him a year from now if you are one of the 1% of liquidwebs users who has a problem. ;)

[Cartman]

Do not use Site 5.

I've been with them for almost 3 years now and have only experience a few downtimes. However this week, I've been up and down continuously over the last 3 days. I don't know how much money I have lost, since I'm trying to release at the same time this was happening.

First they replaced 3 failed hard drives, a raid controller, and then finally a PSU. Then the CEO had to get involved because that didn't resolve the problem. Then they finally replaced the Ram and assured everything was fine. Now today another drive failed. WTF? Just replace the whole machine and get it over with.

I do not recommend them especially if they put you on the Delbin server.

[mooktown]

When I asked them why your site is online while mine isn't Servage replied that you are on the old data center and my site is on the new one; the same center that new customers would go on. Wow, that's terrible! So if I get an email saying they are "upgrading" me to a newer data center (again) it could be time to look for recommendations! Cheers Pk :)

[Jack Norton]

Just wanted to post about how great is liquidweb. Last night instead of going to bed I decided to try implementing my own Phpbb spam protection which ended up in destroying Phpbb mySQL database...! I sent them an email and in 1 hour they restored last backup, I lost nothing.
If I compare this service quality with previous host companies I was with, there's really a huge gap...