So how hostings really handle WP?

[Rarst]

As WordPress spikes in popularity hosts advertise themselves as WordPress-compatible, optimized for WordPress, perfect for WordPress and more of that marketing speak.

Since this forum has high concentration of techies with first-hand experience of such things lets pool our experience on how well hostings work with WP in reality. Minimum marketing fluff, maximum cold hard numbers.

WPWebHost

Who - division of Exabytes Network. US-based servers, mostly non-US based support.

Claim - best compatibility and performance for WordPress, specialized support with WordPress-specific issues.

Good parts - affordable, generous quotas, massive marketing contests and promotions for WP community.

Hidden rocks -

• WPMU forbidden on basic plan;
• no SFTP and SSH out of the box (were provided to me personally after security issues at their side);
• no mid-range plans between cheap shared (up to 300 accounts/server) and expensive shared (up to 10 accounts/server).

Track record -

• I was badly hacked, with signs that hacker had infiltrated other accounts on server for weeks; took escalation to US-based security department to get it all cleaned up and my blog restored;
• no WP optimizations or specialists that I can see, support only has very basic understanding of WP and it ends up with "consult your programmer";
• in recent months I experienced heavy slowdowns and numerous (thousands a day) database errors, support was unable to solve issue or even determine that something is out of order; after two tickets and numerous log submissions best I got was offer of free migration to another server.

What it can handle - according to support account should consume no more than 3.33% of CPU time. My blog (Hyper Cache plugin, <30K monthly pageviews) currently consumes 2.96%

Uptime - Pingdom uptime reports

Personal opinion - excellent marketing front that dumps you into very generic shared hosting. Hardware quotas won't fit anything but single low-traffic blog.

[andrea_r]

Hidden rocks -

• WPMU forbidden on basic plan;

It was my understanding on lower plans that it wasn't exactly forbidden, you just weren't allowed to use subdomains.

From article linked above:

They have nothing in between their $5 shared hosting plan and $79 semi-dedicated plan.

I have not found this to be true.
http://wpwebhost.com/wpmu-hosting/
You can just put single WP on it, they don't have to install for you.

I'm wondering if one of their boxes is dying. The one time I've seen issues like this was on my own VPS that I had trouble with for *months* before my host determined (finally) that it was indeed a hardware failure. And, I do have some lightweight clients who have accounts there, and some of them experienced issues at the same time.

In my own experience, the more times I've had issues with particular hosts, in retrospect it had far more to do with me outgrowing their specs (aside from the one hardware issue).

If you need more than shared (i think you might) and you want at least some control over the box, you gotta get a VPS. I have never had a pleasant experience with > $10/month hosts and anything other than a low traffic site.

[Rarst]

It was my understanding on lower plans that it wasn't exactly forbidden, you just weren't allowed to use subdomains.

I asked on twitter direct question if you can use WPMU on basic plan, answer was no - have to buy WPMU plan. Maybe person didn't elaborate but that's what I got. And there are unlimited subdomains on basic plan available.

Edit: that WPMU plan is hardly different from basic one, larger quotas, slightly more expensive. It hardly fills mid range when so-called semi-dedicated $79 a month. And if you hit ceiling on basic they will offer that one, not WPMU.

Anyway there are enough boring topics with my issues around. Share what hosting you use and what can it handle. :)

[Jeffro]

AnHosting Part of MidPhase

Claim - AN Hosting is proud to be recommended by numerous open source projects including WordPress and Drupal, b2evolution and others.

Good Parts - Very affordable. They only have one package which I got for $6.95 per month which is about 80 bucks per year.

Cons - They are offering an enhanced package at a cheaper price

Hidden Rocks - I don't know of any.

Track Record - Have experienced occasional downtime in my three years of sticking with this host but part of that downtime was due to a server migration. Support has been very responsive and in fact, it's been quite awhile since I've had to generate a ticket. In fact, these guys do a good job of keeping the Control Panel updated as well. So far, the best webhost I've been with without going broke.

[Otto]

WPMU will work on GoDaddy Deluxe hosting, however you have to purchase the "Dedicated IP" option for $2.99 extra per month. Having the dedicated IP allows the wildcard DNS setup to work.

[andrea_r]

GoDaddy definitely on my "avoid" list, WPMU or single WP.

[Otto]

GoDaddy hosting is actually not too bad, it's gotten better in the last few years. I use them for a few sites.

Their shared hosting packages are a hell of a good deal, actually. The data transfer cap is so large that it's practically unlimited, and their servers, while overloaded, work perfectly well for static file transfers. With WP-Super-Cache, you can make a site fairly responsive on them.

Their dedicated hosting plans work great, but the price isn't quite as good of a deal.

They recently added a new "WordPress hosting", but from what I can see this is simply a remarketed version of their existing web hosting services.

I have not used their new Grid Hosting, but I've heard good things. It will run WordPress. That's about all I know.

Tech wise, they do have good PHP 5 support, with a simple checkbox to make it default. Their mySQL servers are separate boxes from the web hosting, which is good, and they're not too overloaded, which is also good. Response times are average. Not stellar, but not bad.

Few minor things I don't like: Lack of php imap extensions makes it hard to create a "post by email" setup. Their management tools are difficult to find and difficult to use and separated from the purchase section, which is also annoyingly difficult. Their services are confusing to a new user, so lots of people end up buying the wrong thing. Their hosting packages default to Windows hosting, so I always have to tell people to switch it to Linux, and the process to do this is confusing.

Other than that, it's good for a startup site.

[Ipstenu]

I use a 'big' guy, Liquidweb.com, and while they're definitely on the more expensive end of things, my $60/month VPS hosts two fansites which get weekly massive traffic spikes for 9 months out of the year, and it tolerates the drama pretty much perfectly, with WP-Super-Cache. Heck, I caught a 3x normal traffic day yesterday and the worst I heard was 'Site's a little slow, eh?' and only for 'peak' hours of lunch and dinner times. I was on their shared hosting for years, and upgraded to the VPS to combine multiple shared sites into one VPS. They're nice people, responsive, available 24/7. When I got nailed by the Digg effect, they called me and helped me fix it. When my wiki broke, they helped me sort that out too, even though it wasn't supposed to be supported.

But yeah, they're expensive. I really feel I get what I pay for with them, and I'm happy.

There's a theme there, eh, Otto? WP-Super-Cache is a great thing.

[Rarst]

@Ipstenu

Hm, their shared is clearly more expensive than usual but they don't try to impress with "unlimited" crap and list plenty of tasty features like SSH upfront.

Will keep them in mind, thanks!

I am still kicking issues with current host, hate to lose. :)

PS I thought this topic will have bit more traction. What, don't complain about host and it won't explode? :)

[Martin]

Hm, their shared is clearly more expensive than usual but they don't try to impress with "unlimited" crap and list plenty of tasty features like SSH upfront.

Having unlimited harddrive space and bandwidth is not something I would look for in a host... Basically it's over selling. I actually avoid those types of hosts.

Hosts that offer a certain amount of bandwidth and space (not crazy amounts) normally have more stable servers because users are not going crazy using up resources.

I would love to see all users at any one host that offers unlimited space/bandwidth start to actually use all the unlimited resources. All servers would start to crash and the host would be losing a lot of money. The joys of overselling

At PWPH we offer specific amount of resources for a reason, keep servers stable and have good up time and we give the customers enough resources to manage their site properly.

Any PWPH users feeling like adding to this thread about how our hosting services compare? I know a couple users are here...