Web hosting that doesn't suck?

[bd139]

Not completely OT as this is going to end up with an electronics related web site on it, but does anyone know of any cheap static web hosting that doesn't suck and meets the following criteria?

1. Competent.
2. Doesn't require running a VM or infrastructure.
3. Isn't Amazon/AWS
4. Preferably hosted in Europe.
5. Non ridiculous upload process. SFTP/git push = good. FTP/web interface = poo.
6. Cheapish.
7. Static web only (I'm pre-generating the entire site).
8. No silly site designers like wix.
9. Reliable.
10. Can shift a good TiB a month.

I've narrowed it down to webfaction.com so far.

[tszaboo]

11. Doesn't increase the price of the hosting after first year to 10 times as before.

[Jeroen3]

2. Doesn't require running a VM or infrastructure.
6. Cheapish.

You want a dedicated rack? Those two kind of cancel each other out then.

[bd139]

I spent the entire week arguing with a few hundred Linux VMs on AWS. I don't want to take the job home   ... also if you're on AWS and it goes down or fucks up (which it does VERY regularly), unless you pay for their basic support plan, you get McDonalds quality support. Also the free tier VMs can't even get past updates on CentOS without running out of CPU credits. The whole thing is a turd for low volume, single users. And not using S3 because to get root domain, you need to use Route53 which adds more cost and S3 is a PITA generally.

I'm looking at $10/mo with webfaction so far so colo hosting is out at $20/month. Just looking for literally static web hosting that doesn't suck. I've got email covered already. Don't want hardware. Don't want to run scripts. Just want to publish content.

I've got a couple of projects on the go, one of them taking the piss out of audiofools.

NANDBlog: that too!

[gnif]

I can provide hosting on one of my dedi's in AU if you're interested. It will be a VPS but on a Xen hypervisor and lightning fast. I can host in the EU but it will cost additional as I do not have a large client base in that region at the moment that warrants housing more then a couple of servers.

I do not lease out cPanel/Plesk, etc hosting, these are Debian based VPS servers with full SSH access for the web account. Any configuration/tools are available (ie, git) on request as each client is isolated on their own VPS.

[bd139]

Don't want lightsail. Still running hardware. It's also like DigitalOcean but the performance is shit.

Note: I'm an AWS certified solution architect. I know how far away to stay from AWS

[bd139]

I can provide hosting on one of my dedi's in AU if you're interested. It will be a VPS but on a Xen hypervisor and lightning fast. I can host in the EU but it will cost additional as I do not have a large client base in that region at the moment that warrants housing more then a couple of servers.

I do not lease out cPanel/Plesk, etc hosting, these are Debian based VPS servers with full SSH access for the web account. Any configuration/tools are available (ie, git) on request as each client is isolated on their own VPS.

Thanks for the offer - will pass. I'm after something canned, self service if possible. I'd like to avoid even shell access if I could. I want 1990s style hosting here as the intelligence is being kept locally.

[grumpydoc]

I use a 1&1 VPS - think it is their lowest offering at £12/mo

You don't have to have cPanel or anything like that as long as you are happy to manage via SSH and you get a fully functional Centos setup (there are some other options for OS as well, think Debian might be one).

There is a control panel thing which you can use to reboot the VM (if anything having something like this favours a VPS over dedicated hardware).

The only thing I haven't been able to do is set up a VPN endpoint on this server because the hypervisor kernel isn't set up for it.

I have found dedicated servers (usually Intel Atom based) for not much more money but haven't quite had enough need to switch (apart from the VPN think but I just set that up on the end of the home VDSL line and it meets my needs at present)

If you look around you should be able to find a deal on a dedicated Atom or Celeron box for less than £25/mo

[gnif]

I can provide hosting on one of my dedi's in AU if you're interested. It will be a VPS but on a Xen hypervisor and lightning fast. I can host in the EU but it will cost additional as I do not have a large client base in that region at the moment that warrants housing more then a couple of servers.

I do not lease out cPanel/Plesk, etc hosting, these are Debian based VPS servers with full SSH access for the web account. Any configuration/tools are available (ie, git) on request as each client is isolated on their own VPS.

Thanks for the offer - will pass. I'm after something canned, self service if possible. I'd like to avoid even shell access if I could. I want 1990s style hosting here as the intelligence is being kept locally.

I think you misunderstand, or I did not explain myself properly. I can offer several options.

1) Fully managed, you just throw your web files onto the server, we do everything else.
2) Semi-managed, we setup the server as you need it, monitor and manage it, along side you with root access.
3) No management, we deploy a bare bones server you fully manage, full root access.

[bd139]

I fully understand. Unless you're a large commercial provider I'm likely to get a better outcome going with the herd so to speak.

I've looked at the options presented (thanks all), popped them on a spreadsheet and gone with webfaction in the end.

Currently setting everything up. Have site online, DNS moved over and rsync+ssh sync between a local directory at the site root already.

[Fungus]

2. Doesn't require running a VM or infrastructure.
6. Cheapish.

Pick one.

[bd139]

I think people forget the old web hoster model which is still valid, you know before the rise of the VPS.

It's called PaaS now

[amspire]

For modern websites, you need a SSL certificate. The decision is what kind you want and whether you want to pay for the certificate or use the free Let's Encrypt certificates.

If you only need a certificate for the domain.name and www.domain.name, certificates can be very cheap from companies like Namecheap.

If you need a wildcard certificate or fully validated EV certificates, you can be looking at paying a fair amount per year. If you are purchasing commercial SSL certificates, then you only need to find hosting companies that allow you to self-install the certificates and hopefully most good hosting companies now offer this. You should not have to pay a fee to install certificates.

The Let's Encrypt certificates are totally free, supported by browsers, very secure and you can add extra sub-domains (like mail.domain.name, downloads.domain.name,  etc) but they have to be regenerated every three months and it is the lowest level of SSL certificate validadation - you only have to prove you control the website for validation. The three months is intentional - if your site is compromised, then at least the maximum time fake certificates can last is 3 months even if you do not try and revoke the certificates.

Many hosting companies offer integrated Let's Encrypt support. It appears Webfaction probably doesn't have Cpanel Let's Encrypt-type support yet, but they do offer an API that is able to install certificates, so it is possible to auto-renew the certificates with scripting.

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/19988/using-letsencrypt

Richard

[bd139]

Good points.

I've got a task list item to set up letsencrypt already actually. I've done it numerous times on AWS EC2 instances but not with webfaction (yet). Should be relatively easy.

[EEVblog]

I just want to validate gnif's offer.
He manages the entire EEVblog website and forum server and backup system, and would without a doubt offer the most personal service possible.
Worth at least getting an EU quote from him.

The problem with the big hosts is the less than personal service when things go wrong or you need something done.

[Fungus]

The Let's Encrypt certificates are totally free, supported by browsers, very secure and you can add extra sub-domains...

But ... which major ISPs let you use them?

[amspire]

The Let's Encrypt certificates are totally free, supported by browsers, very secure and you can add extra sub-domains...

But ... which major ISPs let you use them?

Here are some that do support Lets Encrypt. Plenty more support it that are not listed - more companies are adding support every month:

https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/web-hosting-who-support-lets-encrypt/6920

Since most Cpanel based hosting companies support manual SSL certificate installation, you can run scripts on your host to generate the certificates and then manually install them. So if you are prepared to do about 10 minutes work every 3 months, any host that allows self installation of SSL certificates can use Let's Encrypt certificates.

[amspire]

For the information of anyone interested, it is no longer necessary to have a dedicated fixed IP address for a SSL certificate for a domain.

For a commercial site, a fixed IP would be recommended, but most browsers now support the SNI protocol that allows for SSL certificates on shared hosts all using a common fixed IP address. If you need support on Internet Explorer 6 or Android 2.xx or iPhone 2 , then SNI will not work so you will need that dedicated fixed IP address for your site.

Also with Let's Encrypt, it is easiest generating the certificates on the host that matches the certificate, but it is not essential.

I have a Ubuntu VM I run at home to generate certificates for 3 different domains, and then install them manually on the destination hosted sites. To get the new certificates verified, I do need to add some temporary files in an obscure path on each host's website for a few minutes to prove I control the website.

[Simon]

with hosting it comes down to you get what you pay for, I have a £500 per year re-seller account with heart internet, they are not perfect but have been reliable (i use them for email constantly so notice and outage immediately) I in turn host a few low traffic websites myself and give hosting to a few charities i know. Your welcome to a patch although I am no expert on hosting you seem to be pretty demanding for your 10 dollars a month. For goodness sake stay away from anyone offering sub £10 per month, I was hosted on someone calling himself iclickster and who then started calling himself iwebbster and basically he has an account just like mine, offers dirt cheap hosting, crap support if any and uses the same supplier as i do. At one point my totally unlimited account for £0.99 per month ground to a halt, even my £1.99/month account with him ground to a halt, pages never loaded and emails ground to a halt, at that point i had to opt for paying £50 a month and getting a real service and it cost me nearly £100 to have heart internet be gracious enough to move all of my accounts off his reseller account and onto mine, obviously he made giving me the codes to authorise this very hard work.

[IanMacdonald]

I can recommend Siteground

Have been a reseller for years, and had only two or three complaints in that whole time. Our own site is hosted with them. Uses a fair bit of bandwidth for our software downloads. (28GB in September) Typically under a second to open in spite of the obligatory monster graphic on the frontpage.  This is running a really fast file based CMS mind you, Wordpress does take a fraction longer.

Servers in various places including London.

Automatic Lets Encrypt setup provided that all domains listed in the cpanel point to the Siteground account. Automated setup of most of the common CMS, and  auto security updates on wp/joomla which is really a big security help.

[amspire]

I can recommend Siteground

I suspect they are excellent. I was with Site5 for many years (before they were sold) and had exceptional support, and I gather that many of the best Site5 people went to Siteground. At Site5, most tickets were responded within 1 hour and the replies were from very technically competent people. I imaging Siteground is similar.

The main reason I didn't move to Siteground was I wanted a reseller package and their credit system just didn't work for me.

The problem I had  was that I sometime need to make a temporary site for say one week and then shut it down. At Siteground, if you set up a site for one year or one day on a reseller package, you use up a full credit (about $42). So if I set up a site for one week, for low traffic use, it will cost something like $42 for that one credit, whereas with other reseller packages, I can more or less do it for free.

In the cases the Siteground prices work for you, I think it would be a really great choice.

[Corporate666]

I can recommend Siteground

Have been a reseller for years, and had only two or three complaints in that whole time. Our own site is hosted with them. Uses a fair bit of bandwidth for our software downloads. (28GB in September) Typically under a second to open in spite of the obligatory monster graphic on the frontpage.  This is running a really fast file based CMS mind you, Wordpress does take a fraction longer.

Servers in various places including London.

Automatic Lets Encrypt setup provided that all domains listed in the cpanel point to the Siteground account. Automated setup of most of the common CMS, and  auto security updates on wp/joomla which is really a big security help.

I am going through this right now (looking for a new host) and SiteGround pissed me off a bit.  I was trying to decide between AWS/VPS/LightSail and SiteGround.  They don't offer a free trial on their site, but they have a 30-day money back guarantee - but to get that, you have to pay for a year of hosting up front, then apply for a refund if you don't like.  If you do their month by month plan, it's pre-pay and they charge $25 setup, so if you don't like it - you lose the setup fee plus first month.

I partially went through the signup process, then they emailed me asking why I didn't finish.  I asked about a one month trial, they said they don't do that.  So I signed up for AWS.. then they emailed me again a few days later offering a 30-day free trial.

I f*cking hate that sales bullshit.  If you do a free trial, just offer that up front!  It especially pissed me off that I told the damn salesman I would like a trial to check it out and he told me they don't do trials... 2 days before I got the email from him offering a free trial.



I am surprised to hear about people dissing AWS in this thread - but I don't really know whose good and who isn't.  AWS rates highly for throughput, latency and uptime (LightSail is just a stripped down ECS instance)... I know a lot of high-end enterprise stuff running on EC2.  Can AWS really be bad?

I'm wondering if I should do that 30-day SiteGround trial after all... still annoyed by their sales bullshit though.

[cdev]

Its a totally viable approach now to host sites on a raspberry Pi 3, and back it up to a real hard drive at regular intervals. The newer Pis combined with a decent USB disk have the power to serve up a fairly complex, low to medium traffic site.  Its a lot more power than what people used to use.

[Naguissa]

I'm using a dedicated box with 2 or 4 gigs of ram and unlimited bandwith on online.net (France) and costs less than 11€/month vat included. For better servers and support I use hetzner.de (Germany).

But you have to install, configure and maintain them.

Enviado desde mi Jolla mediante Tapatalk

[sleemanj]

Regards ssl.  Letsencrypt works fine, I use it on my ec2 hosted sites*

More recently cPanel also automatically issue free (legit, not self-signed) ssl certificates for sites on cPanel servers since they became a signer, like lets encrypt they are short-expiry certs, but the cPanel setup auto renews them.  Name based SSL of course, but I think that enough browsers support this decade old technology now.

* Contrary to opinion on page 1, I have plenty of sites run just fine on lowly micro or even nano ec2 instances, IF you take the time  to set them up of course,  nightly snapshots, home on an ebs also housing the mysql and cron spool, appropriate apache, php and mysql config for instance size,  fail2ban rules to kick useless seo leech bots and basic dos protection, practice doing an instance swap (and/or be prepared to go to load balancing setup) if it hits the fan and you need to step it up... of course for a one-off site a turn-key solution is better, but when i have sites unsuited to shared hosting, ec2 is my go-to.