So recently I’ve been playing with a couple different hosting options. The two services I’ve tried so far are GoDaddy and Dreamhost. Let me tell you a little about likes and dislikes of each.
GoDaddy Likes
- Quick, 24/7 customer service - I’ve called at 11 PM, I’ve called at 1 PM, I’ve called at 10 AM and the longest wait time I’ve had so far has been about 2 minutes. Very impressive. Only once was I less than impressed on the help, I got, too. Their guys really seem to know what they’re talking about.
- Easy to integrate existing domains registered w/ GoDaddy. - Makes sense that it would be - and it is.
- Affordable Pricing
GoDaddy Dislikes
- One click install feature is cool, but pretty buggy. I’ve fallen in love with Drupal as of late and can’t really imagine building a site without it from here out. I’ll post about that, too. Anyway. GoDaddy has a one-click install. However, it’s weird. It takes some tweaking to get certain modules (like a very important ‘clean urls’ module) to work. Why save trouble with the install when it takes more time to configure later? I wound up doing a clean install by just FTPing the files and using Drupal’s built-in install method.
- Confusing interface at time and excessive windows. Opening hosting manager opens a new window. Opening phpMyAdmin opens a new window. It gets cluttery quick. And you can’t find certain stuff you’re looking for (like the domainhost location for the DBs you set up).
- Limited MySQL databases and domains hosted on basic plan.
- (This was the clincher for switching to DreamHost) Slow. Just slow. I build my Drupal sites live, which means you’re loading a page every time you save a change or navigate the changes you can make. That means a LOT of wasted time spent on the aggregate. It’s not just inefficient, it’s very frustrating.
DreamHost Likes
- Much faster
- Affordable with the right coupon (I got 1 year hosting for about $70)
- Plenty of space - 500 GB and like, 2 TB transfer - way more than I’ll use
- Free domain with purchase ($1.99 w/ Godaddy hosting purchase)
- Smooth interface
- 24/7 Email Support
DreamHost Dislikes
- Right now the only thing I’m not crazy about is that you don’t get the 24/7 phone support. But the email support so far has been pretty quick, so I’m happy.
So, right now, looks like, as my friend gthing says, it’s Dreamhost ftw.
June 24th, 2008 at 8:02 am
I’m really surprised that dreamhost has been faster than godaddy for you - godaddy limits accounts to one domain name and doesn’t generally pack as many sites on each server, so in my experience sites have always loaded really quickly.
With dreamhost (which I also use) it’s kind of hit and miss - sometimes you’ll get on a nice, clean server and life will be nice, but watch your load times - because they allow everybody to add basically unlimited virtual hosts the servers get bogged down quick. I did have a DNS issue with them yesterday, though, and they fixed it within 1 hour, so that’s pretty cool.
June 24th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Actually I’m beginning to wonder if the whole hosting industry is a giant bait-and-switch, because I was blown away initially by GoDaddy’s speed (especially for how cheap they are), but it seemed to get progressively slower over time to the point where Drupal was barely usable. I considered it might be an issue of adding too many modules to Drupal, but it was the same story on multiple sites (even really light ones), so it wasn’t that.
June 24th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I have been on probably 4 or 5 different servers on dreamhost, and I had some problems on one of them. After I reported the problems and they were fixed a few times, they just switched me to another server. They said they put me on the one with the best uptime.
What most impressed me was when I made it onto the front page of slashdot, and before I even knew it they had gone in an optimized my site and were monitoring it to help keep it live. For $8/mo I didn’t really expect as much.