[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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