[thelist] ServerBeach... what does the world think?

David Kaufman david at gigawatt.com
Thu Sep 22 19:49:21 CDT 2005


Hi Mark,

Mark Aldrich <MAldrich at cex.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi everyone.
>
> I find myself in the position of needing to get a bigger faster
> stronger server, i.e. move my shared hosting to a dedicated server. I
> was wondering if anybody has had any experience with ServerBeach at
> all? [...] they offer 2TB a month bandwidth and their prices are
> quite good. This seems like a vast ammount compared to a lot of
> companies that tend to offer around 30GB/month.


I don't have experience with ServerBeach in particular, but beware of 
offers that seem to good to be true.  A few years ago lots of hosting 
providers advertised "unlimited bandwidth" just to get as many signups 
as possible in the shortest amount of time.  Naturally those providers 
networks were often soon saturated with gaming and IRC servers, porn 
sites and warez traders making use (er, abuse) of the "free" ride. 
Since then, providers have backed off of this ridiculous claim, learning 
that while "all you can eat" advertising may bring in a lot of new 
customers, in the end there is seldom such a thing as free and unlimited 
...anything :-)

Evolt is now running happily on the cheapest dedicated server package 
available from ServerMatrix.com (an offshoot of ThePlanet.com). 
Actually our box only costs us $69/month because we got in on a special 
they were running last year -- now the same box is up to $99.

I was even a bit skeptical of ServerMatrix's 1.2 terabyte limit, but 
latesly that service level has become fairly common.  I'd be interested 
to see how much of that traffic we actually *use* though.

I've found WebHostingTalk.com to be a useful community for finding out 
what a given provider's customers (both gruntled and disgruntled) really 
think of them.

Check out WebHostingTalk's Dedicated Server forum:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=2

Searching these forums is very informative.  I just did it, and 
ServerBeach seems to get mostly a so-so rating, due to network 
performance.  I have the same occassional complaint about EV1 (which 
some clients of mine use).  ServerMatrix's network is great, but reports 
are that their support is very slow and some say often rude or 
dismissive.

Best recommendations seem to come consistently for:

http://www.layeredtech.com/

http://www.liquidweb.com/

http://sagonet.com/

for (unmanaged) dedicated service from "big" providers.  But many people 
often say that they get better service from their smaller local ISP's 
and regional data centers such as HE.net in California, NAC.net here in 
New Jersey, and so on.

As it was with shared hosting years ago, how happy you'll be seems to be 
a function of how much hand-holding you need.  If you run your own local 
Linux machines and can install and configure your own server software 
and configure your own networking, just go with the best performing 
network.

But if you expect them to cheerfully help you a lot, get a good 
*managed* provider -- bite the bullet and pay for Rackspace - their 
fanatical support truly is.

HTH,

-dave 



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