Dedicated Virtual Host Comparison

I began this post a few weeks again as ManaNation was growing, and it was about to outgrow the Godaddy shared hosting. In the process of writing it I hit a money crunch and GoDaddy revamped their shared hostings, upping limits and so I did a small service upgrade which has since allowed us to continue sitting on their server. However, I’m again considering the move, so this post came out of the dust closet and here it is.

TrickJarrett.com is hosted on a box with a friend, Smiling Peanut hosting. He does great and if I have issues I just text him or call him, however his box has limits unfortunately. I’ve been hosting the files for ManaNation on the Godaddy shared account for months now and we hit my bandwidth limits before the upgrade in shared hosting.

Now the sad truth is, if you search for “web host” you’ll get a slew of sites “reviewing” hosts and giving their insights, some good, some bad. The facts are though that a lot of those reviews are bogus – either by the host themselves, or their mud slinging competitors and we, the consumers, have no way to know which is which. So I choose the best option – ignore them and talk to people! And so I sent out emails to friends, asking input.

So armed with this information I set out yesterday to find the next home. All information is pulled from their site, and is based on their month-to-month pricing if available.

To be clear: I receive ZERO compensation from any of these hosts in any way, there is no income for me from this post, this is purely for my own research and to help others.

GoDaddy
Package Name: Economy Plan
Price: $29.99
Space: 10 GB
Bandwidth: 500 GB
Other sites on host: Thousands. They’re the Wal-Mart of hosts.
Notes: They’re my current host, I’m including them for the sake of completeness. Their system though is too big and I want to move on. Plus the stories about them yanking hosting on questionable sites bothers me.

Bluehost
Package Name: It’s their only one
Price: $6.95
Space: 1.5 TB
Bandwidth: 15 TB
Other sites on host: Coverville.com
Notes: Having only one plan, and having it set so high for space and bandwidth is a red flag. Sure they will probably work as a host, and for the bandwidth it’s probably a good deal. But I’m wanting an account for multiple domains and extensibility.

Dreamhost
Package Name: Again, only one plan
Price: $10.95 going month to month
Space: 500 GB
Bandwidth: 5 TB
Other sites on host: WhatTheCast (an audio podcast I’m on)
Notes: Again, one plan, makes me nervous. They are well known but reports are that they’re questionable in uptime, service, bandwidth speeds etc…

Mosso
Package Name: Only one here too, “The Hosting Cloud”
Price: $100
Space: 50 GB
Bandwidth: 500 GB
Other sites on host: kottke.org
Notes: I’ve heard great things about them, and their one plan isn’t the Wal-mart brand in pricing, so I would be okay going with them except for the price. I’m asking for cookies and to eat them too, I know.

aSmallOrange
Package Name: Personal
Price: $50
Space: 10 GB
Bandwidth: 150 GB
Other sites on host: ???
Notes: Another one I’ve heard of, they specialized in non-profits and such for a while before opening up to others.

NetworkSolutions
Package Name: VPS Standard
Price: $50.00
Space: 10 GB
Bandwidth: 500 GB
Other sites on host: ???
Notes: NetworkSolutions is an old name in web hosting and domain registration, they’re certainly not going anywhere. However, they are also doing some shady things with domain registrations, so I’ll likely avoid them.

MediaTemple
Package Name: dv Base
Price: $50
Space: 20 GB
Bandwidth: 1 TB
Other sites on host: PaulStamatiou.com, and numerous others
Notes: You see their banners everywhere. Mostly on glitzy tech sites and you just go oooooh and ahhhh. I like their service, reviews are good, but I have one issue – any sort of backup on the dv plan is their “Snapshot Backups” for $20/month. Which may be a deal breaker, we’ll see.

SliceHost
Package Name: 256Slice
Price: $20
Space: 10 GB
Bandwidth: 100 GB
Other sites on host: ???
Notes: I found this host on recommendation from a discussion on news.ycombinator.com, they were recommended multiple times in that thread.

Overall the landscape is rough and uneven for dedicated virtual hosts, there seem to be two sets of pricing, either the super cheap or the pricier boutique services. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. But I figured I would share my information with the rest of you.