Hi Joomla Bamboo community! I appreciate the wisdom of many of you; and I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations on hosts. I need a VPS account, preferably with CPanel. Been using Hostican, but they're having issues and I need to move.

Thanks for any recommendations you have!

Best,
Peter

LunarPages has VPS in 2 flavors
Parallels ($44.95) come with PLesk, but you can upgrade to CPanel
Xen Cloud ($22.95) with LunarPanel
They're likely not the cheapest, but features, support and stability are really top notch

Rochen are great, really the best when it comes to hosting Joomla sites I think.

They are not cheapest though, but as with elsewhere in this world you get exactly what you pay for. Rochens shared hosting outperforms many VPS that I have seen.

Hello,
Glad to see this topic, as it is highly relevant to me right now!

I just started offering hosting to my clients. I opened an account with HostGator, but I'm finding that sites I create there are slow. But worst of all, they have php.ini limitations that are unbearable when installing certain applications (for example, e-commerce).

Rochen has always looked good. Might be time to switch! They are more expensive, but if I have even a few clients paying for hosting each year my costs are essentially covered.

Anyone have opinions about InnoHosting (www.innohosting.com/)?

I'd be really happy to hear more opinions.

Thanks,
Matthew

I don't know anyone who has been unhappy after switching to them Matthew. You pay monthly, there is no min contract, so worst case scenario you pay for 1 month then leave. Definately worth a look I would say

Seth,
When you said this:
"I don't know anyone who has been unhappy after switching to them..."

Were you referring to Rochen or InnoHosting?

A couple of others I am reading about that seem like higher-scale operations:
Downtown Host (www.downtownhost.com)
Clook (www.clook.us)

Thanks,
Matthew

I host with Rochen Hosting and would not host with anyone else. Especially for Joomla sites. Stellar customer service and technical support. I think it was Seth who mentioned Rochen Hosting on a question I had a while ago about hosting. And I'm very happy I switched to them.

To me, what you pay for vs. what you get makes their pricing extremely competitive.

All the best,
Cody

I've been hosting Joomla sites with Rochen for a couple of years now but I'm about to have a go at them.
For the last few months some sites have become very slow, lots of timeouts etc and I've had customers complaining.
For the cost I think I should expect better than that
Certainly can't fault the helpdesk performance it's second to none.


I've also been hosting a few with webhostingpad for a year now and haven't had any problems whatsoever and they're "cheap as chips"
I'm thinking of moving all my sites there

Hello,
Thanks Cody and BillyK!

I'm glad to have this discussion here, because I trust the opinions of Joomlabamboo members and administrators.

Rochen is a safe bet, as so many Joomla people just love them. But I've heard a few problems here and there (as BillyK reports). No one is perfect, of course, but since Rochen charges much more than anyone else I expect a higher level from them.

For general hosting, I would worry less. But for reseller hosting, I have to be more careful.

As I learn more, my research keeps sending me back to these three:
Rochen
InnoHosting
Downtown Host
Clook

It's kind of tough to know who to go with, as it's not easy to test them out before committing.

Anyway, more opinions please.

Thanks,
Matthew

We moved from Site5.com to Rochen at the end of lat year. We also implemented CDN on the site at the same time so Im not sure what the benefit has been in terms of speed and uptime but their reputation for support is very well deserved. I think hosting is such a tricky area and there are so many variables but in the event of trouble you really want to be able to know that the support is available for you - and in the case of Rochen is almost always immediate.

My two cents anyway.

Anthony, I was about to Post a request as to who you use for the bamboo hosting as I suspected it was Rochen.

Further to the points I made in the post above, this morning i'm updating 3 of the fifteen sites I run on on Rochen hosting and it's like being on dialup!!! All three sites are at a crawl and keep timing out, and I've already had one customer on the phone!

I thought while I'm waiting for my sites to load, I'll cruise over to Bamboo and have a nosey only to find it's running at a crawl as well!

Not good enough!!

I've checked other joomla sites I have elsewhere and all is normal as are a dozen or so I regulary visit so it's not my ADSL2+ connection.
This seems to be happening more and more over the last 6 months and it's becoming very frustrating as well as embarrassing.

Rochen - Here I come!

*Edit*
As an example how slow it is: When I hit the submit button for this post it took 16secs to submit, When I hit the edit button to post how long the submit button took, the edit button took 24secs to open the edit window. Slow, but a darn site quicker than my sites at the moment.

Yeah Im not sure where that issue creeps in from to tell you the truth. Sometimes I have to hit submit twice to get a reaction.

When I get some time this week Im going to look at the logs. Its most likely not related to traffic at the moment as Monday morning here is traditionally very slow.

Let me know what Rochen say about your situation.

Anthony

Yeah the JB site is usually very slow for me and I have a download speed between 50-60mbps.

I use Rochen too and sometimes my sites are slow. I do have one site on Cloud Access and it always loads fast.
Hopefully Rochen can work out their problems.

Is it just the forum thats slow or other pages?

I wonder if its a result of sh404 + community builder linking to Kunena.

Cheers Anthony

It's mainly the forum. It is painfully slow.

@Matthew - I was referring to Rochen. I think one of the things that really swung it for me was the lack of a tie-in. No min term contract.

I thought, I can try it for a month and then just stop paying if I am not happy with their service. I continued paying. I think such things are very important in this business, as you can never really know until you try it for yourself. They all look good on paper!

@Billy @Jeff - sorry to hear that your experience has not been so good. Let us know what Rochen say.

Seth,
I figured you meant Rochen but wanted to make sure.

I agree that going month-by-month allows me to make a change any time. Most reseller offer some money-back period. But it's such a hassle to switch reseller accounts, because all your sites have to follow you, and there's always a 24- to 48-hour downtime as the name servers pick up the change. So it's not easy to do a "trail run" of different services. I need to make an informed decision up front this time -- don't want to repeat the mistake I made with Hostgator.

I've been hearing too many complaints about Rochen lately. As I said, every host will have some issues, but I expect more from Rochen based on their rates.

To Anthony,
Joomlabamboo has always been slow for me as well, with the forum being extremely slow.

To everyone,
I'd still like to hear names of other "premium" reseller hosts. Currently my top candidates, in order of preference:
Downtown Host
InnoHosting
Clook
Rochen

I need to know how hosts perform under Joomla, and more specifically under a Joomla e-commerce system like redSHOP. Even Rochen has php.ini limits (30 second time-outs and file-size caps) that are a big problem. Just getting an e-commerce system like redSHOP installed is a major hang-up.

Thanks,
Matthew

I'm with Matthew on this. A month-to-month agreement is great; and a total hassle if the service doesn't work. Switching hosts is a major process.

I too would like to find a premium reseller. I'd rather pay more for peace of mind and excellent support.....

p

seriously guys - Lunarpages. They've been sterling.
-top notch support 24/7 - even phone support available most times - week days you can call directly and in off hours, if you start with email and request a call, it usually comes within a few hours, even in the wee sunday morning hours. I've only had need of support a couple of times in the past several years, but it's good to know I can count on them being there to work with me patiently when I do need them.
-vigilant monitoring and proactive maintenance of the servers
-increase php.ini time limits and upload size. They even have a page with instructions on how to do it. They're very liberal in their policies about what you can do inside your own account.

Virginia,
Are you using Lunarpages host or reseller plan?

The inability to alter the php.ini file settings is the single reason for not being able to launch an e-commerce site with something extensive like redSHOP. I was on the phone with Hostgator twice about this because I couldn't believe they would rather have me close my account than help me install the application.

Rochen also does not allow users to change their php.ini file, so I presume the same issue would come up with them as well.

Sometimes, I wonder how anyone installs any kind of good e-commerce system with Joomla at all.

Thanks,
Matthew