hostingnotes

Below are some notes on various hosting providers. Plans and technology change, so be sure to check details.

SiteGround (siteground.com)

Shared hosting starting at $3.95/mo

Unclear how much extra they charge for Dedicated IP

Unclear whether they support SNI for multiple domains with SSL certificates

Affiliate program (for you to to refer friends, clients, etc.) at siteground.com/affiliates

Sponsored Beyond Tellerrand Conference (2018 Berlin)

Features / options:

SSDs on all web hosting plans
NGINGX, HTTP/2, latest PHP
Data centers on 3 continents
built-in CDN
Security policy: 0day vuln fixes, custom WAF rules
Automated monitoring and daily backups
Customer support 24/7: tickets (1st reply 10min), live chat, phone
1-Click App Install (WordPress "or any other app with one click")
1-Click Staging
Free Site Migration
WordPress Autoupdates
Git integration
CLI access

Hosting plans described on siteground.com/craft

euro10/mo. includes Let's Encrypt & Wildcard SSL
more levels e18, e30, e64/mo. etc.

The rest of this page contains historical notes as of 2014. Please see the webhost page for newer information

(Original document from Darius Dunlap for his own decision process. Just hoping it's helpful to others)

See also web_hosting for great info about hosting types and who uses what.

WPEngine - http://wpengine.com/plans/

$99/mo professional plan allows up to 10 wordpress installs and does SNI, though I’d probably want the extra $5/mo dedicated IP address so that I can have my own certs. (Need to look into that in more detail if I decide to consider this provider.)

http://wpengine.com/support/why-am-i-seeing-a-certificate-error-for-wpengine-com/

Limited other capabilities outside of WP.

Pair

http://www.pair.com

Shared hosting:

http://www.pair.com/services/web_hosting/

VPS starting at $79/mo:

http://www.pair.com/services/vps/

SSL Support seems complicated and maybe the certs are only available through them? (expensive!)

SSL can be purchased and used with Basic, Advanced, Webmaster, Developer, and all High Volume hosting plans for a one-time $20 setup fee and a $10 per month fee. Individuals with QuickServe® dedicated servers can add SSL for a one-time setup fee of $20. QuickServe® dedicated servers are not charged a monthly fee for SSL.

http://www.pair.com/services/e-commerce/pairssl/

http://www.pair.com/support/knowledge_base/e-commerce/using_ssl.html

Dreamhost

http://www.dreamhost.com/servers/compare-our-products/

Shared with dedicated IP = $12.90/mo VPS starts at $18.95/mo (with dedicated IP address.

dedicated IP address is required for SSL Excellent wiki article on Secure hosting, SNI, etc.

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Secure_Hosting

"DreamHost proudly offers free web hosting to non-profit, 501(c)(3) charitable orgs registered in the US.”

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Non-profit

http://dreamhost.org

Empowering Media

Website does not provide a lot of easily accessible detail, but they've been around forever and are well regarded by many folks. It's unclear, for example, if they support SNI.

VPS service, Start at $80/mo:

http://empoweringmedia.com/solutions/hostcube.html

http://hostcube.com/hosting-solutions/managed-vps/

Shared Hosting:

http://empoweringmedia.com/solutions/hostasite.html

http://hostasite.com/small-business-web-hosting/

Fused

Shared hosting starting at $15/mo

Additional Domain: $12/yr

Dedicated IP (for SSL): $24/yr, or Free with “Business” hosting

No useful answers about SSL

Arvixe

http://www.arvixe.com/linux_web_hosting

Shared hosting starting at $4 per month (limited to 6 domains) and $7/mo Dedicated IP address: $2/mo SSL Certificate: $25/year

Also have MS ASP shared servers for $5/mo and $8/mo. Includes MS SQL databases

NameCheap

https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/shared.aspx

Shared hosting starting at $3.98/mo (multi-year pre-pay) Good plans at $77.80/yr and $131.80/yr. (2014-05-08) Business SSD starting at $20/mo. (multi-year pre-pay)

Dedicated IP - $24/year

https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9260/21/why-having-dedicated-ip-address-is-beneficial

Support SNI as of 2013

https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9259/29/sni-technology

https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/795/69/how-to-install-ssl-certificate

Seem like solid offerings.

Digital Ocean

https://www.digitalocean.com

Plans starting at $5/mo.

https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/

Different distros and 1-click installs available

https://www.digitalocean.com/features/one-click-apps/

Comes with dedicated IP (assigned by droplet)

Easy spin-up of servers. Charged by the hour, so you can sling something up for some testing and then snapshot it for later and shut it down, just paying a few pennies for the whole process.

https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/

https://www.digitalocean.com/help/getting-started/setting-up-your-server/

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-a-host-name-with-digitalocean

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/multiple-domains-on-the-same-droplet

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-ubuntu-cloud-servers-for-python-web-applications

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-deploy-flask-web-applications-using-uwsgi-behind-nginx-on-centos-6-4

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/a-comparison-of-web-servers-for-python-based-web-applications

Management of servers is much more complex than shared hosting systems. Much like manually managing a linux box.

Linode

$20/mo for a pretty beefy VPS on SSD

Very capable, but this is a bare linux server VPS (with some nice mgmt tools) that you have to manage yourself.

SSL support sounds strong