Best low-cost web hosting - ideally NZ based?

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jarledb

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#1703283 14-Jan-2017 20:37

There are a few options if you want to use a VPS and have it managed for you.

Cloudways is one, and my experience with them is pretty good. Can use Vultr with their Sydney hosting location and have the OS fully managed.

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jnimmo

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#1703288 14-Jan-2017 20:48

jarledb:

There are a few options if you want to use a VPS and have it managed for you.

Cloudways is one, and my experience with them is pretty good. Can use Vultr with their Sydney hosting location and have the OS fully managed.

Thanks - Cloudways looks very cool, will check it out sometime (had been meaning to have a look if anyone was doing this sort of thing)

Peppery

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#1703298 14-Jan-2017 21:36

If you don't mind a US host, I've been with Dreamhost for 10 years now and it's been remarkably smooth. Support is decent, their control panel isn't utter crap either. All of my sites now sit in front of Cloudflare so they're generally pretty snappy.

I'd still stay away from anything owned by EIG, plenty of horror stories around - that includes A Small Orange now unfortunately.

Otherwise, I'd maybe look into hosting in Sydney as it's much closer to NZ (so latency is very decent) and generally cheaper than hosting locally too.

michaelmurfy

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#1703332 14-Jan-2017 23:19

Hmm am playing around with Cloudways and have been pretty impressed.

1) They provision a Debian-based server.
2) Hellish quick - I provisioned at Vultr in Sydney a test instance and it put my current instance to shame.
3) Nice control panel.
4) Don't have to care about maintenance - they manage everything (via a bunch of Python scripts by the looks).
5) 1-click support for Letsencrypt is a bonus!

Cheap too and can host multiple things on one server. Could be a good option for you.

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jarledb

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#1703338 15-Jan-2017 00:02

michaelmurfy:

4) Don't have to care about maintenance - they manage everything (via a bunch of Python scripts by the looks).

Thats not completely true. They manage the OS/PHP/MySQL etc, but they don't manage WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. (or other frameworks you might install).

You can run several apps (which is what they call sites) on a server instance, but its not generally recommended. Its a lot easier to debug whats going on if you keep to 1 server = 1 app.

PS: Do setup New Relic, its nice to be able to quickly see when something is using huge amounts of CPU or things gets slowed down for some reason.

There are a few things I wish they added, like fail2ban or something similar. They have a WAF, but thats a black box of mystery really. Would also be good if you could easily scale up storage without having to upgrade to extra CPU cores. (Well, you can with Kyup, but thats a lot more expensive than using Vultr).

michaelmurfy

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#1703339 15-Jan-2017 00:09

jarledb:

michaelmurfy:

4) Don't have to care about maintenance - they manage everything (via a bunch of Python scripts by the looks).

Thats not completely true. They manage the OS/PHP/MySQL etc, but they don't manage WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. (or other frameworks you might install).

You can run several apps (which is what they call sites) on a server instance, but its not generally recommended. Its a lot easier to debug whats going on if you keep to 1 server = 1 app.

PS: Do setup New Relic, its nice to be able to quickly see when something is using huge amounts of CPU or things gets slowed down for some reason.

There are a few things I wish they added, like fail2ban or something similar. They have a WAF, but thats a black box of mystery really. Would also be good if you could easily scale up storage without having to upgrade to extra CPU cores. (Well, you can with Kyup, but thats a lot more expensive than using Vultr).

Yes you're correct here. I mean the host server itself - you only need to maintain the site. It appears they're using fail2ban (logged into the server and confirmed this) along with other things for security. I use New Relic too and it is incredibly good.

jarledb

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#1703350 15-Jan-2017 03:27

Ah, yes you are right. They do have fail2ban. What I meant was using fail2ban to deal with things like blocking access to http based on suspicious behaviour, not just blocking access to ssh etc.

While fail2ban is installed, it doesn't seem like its possible to change the configuration (because its owned by root, and you don't have root access through Cloudways).

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Benek

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#1703352 15-Jan-2017 07:49

Cloudways looks very interesting. Will certainly check that one out.

spacefish

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#1742736 17-Mar-2017 13:33

Great topic, came looking for the same info myself.

Cloudways does look interesting ... and they have a b'day special on for the next 6 hours. :)

Edit:

Oh yes, and re ASO (a small orange) I have hosted with them and won't be going back. Emailed a complaint and answered a satisfaction survey and they never got back to me either.

Benek

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#1742748 17-Mar-2017 13:37

I've been with Cloudways for a little while now and have been happy. Lightning fast (via VULTR Sydney), cheap, and the support response time via email and chat is far better than my old host. I also like that they have cheap add-ons like Rackspace email accounts, free SSL certs, transactional email service, etc.

jarledb

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#1742755 17-Mar-2017 13:56

@Benek (and others on Cloudways with Vultr), you can save some money by cloning your server to a new 1GB VPS if you are running one now, Vultr has updated its prices. But you only get the new prices if you scale up (then you keep your old ip-address) or clone the server (and get a new address).

Their 1GB/1CPU/25 GB storage VPS now costs 11 USD per month.

Benek

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#1742756 17-Mar-2017 14:01

Thanks for the info. I'm actually on the old 768mb plan so I can scale up to 1gb to get that pricing at just $2 more per month, which I will be doing soon. They got rid of the small 768mb plan now but the current price for 1GB isn't much more.

chewster

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#1743696 19-Mar-2017 09:09

Just wanted to jump in and say that serverpilot.io offers a very similar management/config service to Cloudways.

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