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MurrayM

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#303370 5-Feb-2023 12:34

I'm looking at moving several sites to DreamHost for their hosting. I'm interested in hearing if anyone here has used them (recent experience please, eg the last few years) and what their thoughts are.

These are mostly small sites (5 - 20 pages), and receive low amounts of traffic (less than 100 visits per day). PHP is needed for most of the sites, and MySQL databases for a couple of them.

I'm looking at DreamHost's "Shared Unlimited" plan, which appears to have all the features I want.

Thanks guys!

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#3032094 5-Feb-2023 12:50

I know you asked for recent, but some experience better than none ;)

Did use them for quite some time years ago, but then they had major email issues and took them months to fix. Turns out it wasn't the first time they had such issues. Hopefully they've gotten over all those issues because otherwise, they were good for the $$.

Keep eye on the US holiday periods as they use to offer 1 year for price of one month etc during these.

Also just remember, being US based = latency, so if wanting fast response times for NZ users, keep it local. (Can recommend https://www.prodigi.nz/ )

XPD / Gavin

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MurrayM

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#3032147 5-Feb-2023 13:09

Thanks xpd.

I had a quick look at Prodigi but they have very little info on their website about what their hosting plans offer. For example I found this page that says:

Shared Hosting
One simple plan. Add more disk space as needed.

Base 5GB storage
Everything else is unlimited
cPanel and Litespeed webserver

$14.95/month

and that's it. It says "everything else is unlimited" so I guess I can add an unlimited number of websites to this plan? What else does this plan offer (PHP, MySQL databases, email, etc)? They also don't appear to have any sort of knowledge base (that's one thing I do like about DreamHost, they have a fantastic knowledge base that covers all the services they offer).

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#3032156 5-Feb-2023 13:50

@danfaulknor

I use Prodigy for my basic VPS needs that hosts a website and a few other things.

Can recommend.

Ramblings from a mysterious lady who's into tech. Warning I may often create zingers.

michaelmurfy

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#3032161 5-Feb-2023 14:10

There is also https://www.cloudways.com/en/ which is very good.

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danfaulknor

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#3032172 5-Feb-2023 15:06

MurrayM:
Thanks xpd.

I had a quick look at Prodigi but they have very little info on their website about what their hosting plans offer. For example I found this page that says:

Shared Hosting
One simple plan. Add more disk space as needed.

Base 5GB storage
Everything else is unlimited
cPanel and Litespeed webserver

$14.95/month

and that's it. It says "everything else is unlimited" so I guess I can add an unlimited number of websites to this plan? What else does this plan offer (PHP, MySQL databases, email, etc)? They also don't appear to have any sort of knowledge base (that's one thing I do like about DreamHost, they have a fantastic knowledge base that covers all the services they offer).

It's your standard cPanel hosting. No limits on sites, databases, mailboxes etc.

No knowledgebase but you will get direct support ticket responses from me and the team, and cPanel is very standard so unlike with Dreamhost there is already an abundance of documentation available online :)

they/them

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WebOps/DevOps, Managed IT, Hosting and Internet/WAN.

MurrayM

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#3032253 5-Feb-2023 16:41

danfaulknor: It's your standard cPanel hosting. No limits on sites, databases, mailboxes etc.

No knowledgebase but you will get direct support ticket responses from me and the team, and cPanel is very standard so unlike with Dreamhost there is already an abundance of documentation available online :)

Thanks for that. I'd actually prefer to use a local host, and being able to talk directly to the people running things is an added bonus.

Forgive me because I'm not familiar with cPanel (all the hosting solutions I've used in the past have had their own custom consoles for maintaining things). So with cPanel I get one login that I can use to get into cPanel, and I can set up as many sites, FTP users, mailboxes, etc (within the disk space limits of the hosting plan) all from that one cPanel login? But only I use the cPanel (eg I can't give access to my clients so that they can maintain their email setup, etc themselves)? This sounds ideal to me, my clients currently can't do anything themselves so they're used to asking me to add new email addresses, etc.

One other question, most of my clients just have their emails forwarded to Gmail, Outlook, etc accounts, but a couple want mailboxes with their hosting and for them they use their ISP's SMTP server for sending. This occasionally causes me hassles. Does Prodigi's Shared Hosting offer SMTP?

And the Shared Hosting is billed monthly? So I'd just need to give you a months notice to cancel if I needed to?

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bigalow

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#3032269 5-Feb-2023 18:14

used them once before my sites where offline a lot

one thing about shared hosting is some one else on the same server they might used up all the server resources cpu ram etc

and your site can be off line

have you thought a VPS ?

something like this for the same or lower price

https://www.vultr.com/pricing/#cloud-compute

and most hosting companies have 1 click installs for wordpress etc

danfaulknor

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#3032270 5-Feb-2023 18:17

MurrayM:

danfaulknor: It's your standard cPanel hosting. No limits on sites, databases, mailboxes etc.

No knowledgebase but you will get direct support ticket responses from me and the team, and cPanel is very standard so unlike with Dreamhost there is already an abundance of documentation available online :)

Thanks for that. I'd actually prefer to use a local host, and being able to talk directly to the people running things is an added bonus.

Forgive me because I'm not familiar with cPanel (all the hosting solutions I've used in the past have had their own custom consoles for maintaining things). So with cPanel I get one login that I can use to get into cPanel, and I can set up as many sites, FTP users, mailboxes, etc (within the disk space limits of the hosting plan) all from that one cPanel login? But only I use the cPanel (eg I can't give access to my clients so that they can maintain their email setup, etc themselves)? This sounds ideal to me, my clients currently can't do anything themselves so they're used to asking me to add new email addresses, etc.

One other question, most of my clients just have their emails forwarded to Gmail, Outlook, etc accounts, but a couple want mailboxes with their hosting and for them they use their ISP's SMTP server for sending. This occasionally causes me hassles. Does Prodigi's Shared Hosting offer SMTP?

And the Shared Hosting is billed monthly? So I'd just need to give you a months notice to cancel if I needed to?

Yep you're all correct there. Shared hosting is a single account, Reseller hosting allows multiple accounts.

SMTP is included, or you can add the ISPs SMTP to the SFP records to tidy up any issues with emails going to spam etc if they really want to use ISP SMTP.

You have the option of paying either monthly or yearly. Most pay monthly.

they/them

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danfaulknor

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#3032277 5-Feb-2023 18:21

bigalow:
used them once before my sites where offline a lot

one thing about shared hosting is some one else on the same server they might used up all the server resources cpu ram etc

and your site can be off line

have you thought a VPS ?

something like this for the same or lower price

https://www.vultr.com/pricing/#cloud-compute

and most hosting companies have 1 click installs for wordpress etc

The fact that we're talking about my service in this thread aside, a VPS is great if you have the time and skill to maintain and secure it. Super dangerous if not. There's more to it than one click install and forget.

In regards to our service, we use CloudLinux to control resource usage per account. We've been doing hosting for 10 years and we've had one outage caused by a single user and that was before we implemented CloudLinux.

they/them

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bigalow

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#3032337 6-Feb-2023 00:45

danfaulknor:
bigalow:

used them once before my sites where offline a lot

one thing about shared hosting is some one else on the same server they might used up all the server resources cpu ram etc

and your site can be off line

have you thought a VPS ?

something like this for the same or lower price

https://www.vultr.com/pricing/#cloud-compute

and most hosting companies have 1 click installs for wordpress etc

The fact that we're talking about my service in this thread aside, a VPS is great if you have the time and skill to maintain and secure it. Super dangerous if not. There's more to it than one click install and forget.

In regards to our service, we use CloudLinux to control resource usage per account. We've been doing hosting for 10 years and we've had one outage caused by a single user and that was before we implemented CloudLinux.

i was referring to dreamhost

timmmay

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#3032343 6-Feb-2023 07:09

I used to like Dreamhost in about 2015, good performance and good support, until they dropped the ball when a website was completely down. Took them two days to reply. Normally they replied very quickly.

I gave up on providers about five years ago and host my own in AWS, though any reputable server host is fine. There's often no support unless you pay for it / get a plan with support, but I find it much more reliable. It can take a lot more time though.

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MurrayM

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#3032345 6-Feb-2023 07:29

danfaulknor: ... a VPS is great if you have the time and skill to maintain and secure it. Super dangerous if not. There's more to it than one click install and forget.

My feelings exactly Dan. Back when I had my web design business I would have enjoyed setting up everything myself on a VPS and keeping it running, but those times are past. I now work for someone else and so have limited time to dedicate to this. I would rather pay for someone else to keep everything running and up-to-date.

I've decided to give Prodigi's shared hosting a go and will sign up later this week and start with a few of the simple sites just to see how it all goes and to familiarise myself with cPanel. When I'm happy then I'll move each site over one by one.

xpd

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#3032347 6-Feb-2023 08:33

MurrayM:

I've decided to give Prodigi's shared hosting a go and will sign up later this week and start with a few of the simple sites just to see how it all goes and to familiarise myself with cPanel. When I'm happy then I'll move each site over one by one.

Its straight forward and Dan will take care of you :D

Now..... Dan..... about setting up referral codes.... ;)

XPD / Gavin

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danfaulknor

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#3032414 6-Feb-2023 10:07

xpd:

Now..... Dan..... about setting up referral codes.... ;)

I'll sort something out for you :)

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MurrayM

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#3036343 14-Feb-2023 13:03

Just as a follow-up to this thread; I signed up with Prodigi and have been experimenting with cPanel to figure out how it all works. I've moved several sites over to the Prodigi hosting and I've been very happy with the experience. I've also been very impressed with the great support that Dan has provided, even on the weekend! Thank you @xpd for putting me on to Prodigi.

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