Finding Decent Unix Server Hosting?

joesao asks: "I've hosted my website and a number of others at Communitech for 4 years now and I've enjoyed affordable, quality Unix hosting that has given me no headaches. Recently they have been bought out and the service has completely deteriorated. The online forums are on fire with people pledging to leave, calling in and taping conversations, and so forth. So now I'm searching for a decent Unix host. My requirements aren't too bad: I need PHP, MySQL, the ability to configure my server somewhat (htpasswd, htaccess), raw log files, SSH, FTP, crontab, decent bandwidth (~10 GB), POP accounts, around 300 MB disk space (I host the bulk of my images/videos elsewhere)... and I wouldn't mind paying what I pay for DSL every month (~$50). That excludes buying a T1 for my house. And I don't mind what flavor of Unix/Linux it runs on, as long as it just works (wouldn't mind XServe, either). I'm having trouble finding credible sites with rankings out there so I ask the Slashdot community for help. Any recommendations?"

Cubesoft

[frankm_slashdot (614772)]

http://www.csoft.net

*ssh, cvs, openbsd/freebsd/redhat, 1gig storage.... 25$/month unlimited userconfigureable subdomains... etc..

excellent service....

just check out their site too learn more.

-Frank

Another vote for Cubesoft

[V. Mole (9567)]

I've been using them for a couple of years now, and been very satisfied. Pretty much exactly what you describe as your requirements, for $25/mo ("standard v-host"). They've got both Linux and BSD servers; I get the feeling that the admins prefer BSD, but I can't see any difference in level of support.

Their admin tool is command line, rather than a web "control-panel", which means you need to ssh into your account (no telnet) to change stuff. That suits me, may not you.

You can't upload your site via ftp; I think the only supported ftp access is anoymous download -- i.e. you can run an ftp repository. Use scp or rsync over ssh to upload.

Re:Cubesoft

[Aknaton (528294)]

They also offer IMAP services. Very nice.

My favorite...

[addaon (41825)]

What you describe would cost you less than $30/month at BSDWebhosting.net... less than $20/month if your bandwidth description is a maximum you must have available, rather than what you continuously use. I have never used BSDWebhosting.net for a large site, and don't know how well their services scale up... but I use them for a large handful of small sites, and have never been so pleased with a hosting company.

I like VenturesOnline

[friedegg (96310)]

I don't work there or have any affiliation other than being hosted there.

VenturesOnline [venturesonline.com]

Depending on your needs, they have standard virtual hosting packages, as well as bigger "bulk hosting" packages (host/resell a bunch of different sites on your own). They also have virtual servers and full server offerings. Support is great and always very fast, and I find the prices very reasonable. There is also a fairly active user community forum for trading tips and such.

I need PHP, MySQL, the ability to configure my server somewhat (htpasswd, htaccess), raw log files, SSH, FTP, crontab, decent bandwidth (~10 GB), POP accounts, around 300 MB disk space (I host the bulk of my images/videos elsewhere)... and I wouldn't mind paying what I pay for DSL every month (~$50)

They have PHP, MySQL, .htaccess and .htpasswd support, access to raw log files (as well as the control panel generated stats), ssh access (if you ask for it), ftp cron, and bandwidth and diskspace based on the package you get.

I've been there over a year now and am very happy.

Stay away from Interland

[Itsik (191227)]

Hi,
Sorry I don't have a good recommendation. I would recommend however staying as far away as possible from Interland and its daughter subsidiaries.

Re:Stay away from Interland

[lsommerer (89441)]

Interland is the company that bought Communitech, so I'm sure he'll stay away from that. Of course, it may still be good advice for anyone else looking for hosting.

Cologuys

[Hungus (585181)]

I personally love the colo company we use. They are called ColoGuys [cologuys.com] I belive he is offering what you are looking for or will be very soon.
They host our server as well as several others, most notoriously Megatokyo [megatokyo.com] and Aniverse [aniverse.com].

Re:Cologuys

[rudy_wayne (414635)]

ColonGuys? Are they related to goatse?

I use....

[Ummagumma (137757)]

www.tera-byte.com

I've been very happy with them. Mysql/php, etc.

I'm only on a shared server (its all i need), but they offer dedicated servers, too.

Here are thier virtual server plans, seems to fit what you are looking for:

http://www.tera-byte.com/hosting.html [tera-byte.com]

FYI, I have plan 4U.

RackShack

[tdemark (512406)]

I've used RackShack [rackshack.net] for the last year. They are a little more expensive than you listed ($99/mo), but you get your own machine (Celeron 1.3, 512MB RAM, 60GB drive) and 400GB of monthly bandwidth.

- Tony

It's a new Slashdot game...

[lsommerer (89441)]

Just for fun, see if you can name all of the hosts that people suggest that are (a) Communitech resellers or (b) Interland --the company that bought Communitech-- resellers.

"dude, here's the host that I use and they offer almost EXACTLY what you had with Communitech. The price is pretty close, and you can talk to the owner of the company when you need support. Check them out..."

Dreamhost

[Figaro (20471)]

I strongly recommend Dreamhost.com.

They have all that you've specified and it's under $20 a month to boot.

I've been with them for the past year, and I've been very impressed.

Re:Dreamhost

[shr3k (451065)]

I second this. I've had Dreamhost for a little over a year and they've been nothing short of awesome.

They have a great web-based configuration panel, great tech support forums, and timely customer service.

Plus, they have several payment plans to fit the type of service you want.

I am a very happy customer and would recommend it to anyone who wants/needs a host.

Dreamhost really is.

[immanis (557955)]

Ever since I moved over to Dreamhost [dreamhost.com] I've been as pleased as punch.

PHP, MYSQL, Apache, .htaccess, ssh1/2, telnet, pop3, stmp, webmail, personal jabber servers, options for CVS, https, streaming media, an outstanding customer service dept, and I could go on for days.

Re:Dreamhost really is.

[xyzzy (10685)]

I would second that -- I've been with them since '99, and they've held prices constant while continually adding services/bandwidth/disk space/you name it. They seem quite good for small to medium-sized web hosting (I just use them for a family site)

Re:Dreamhost really is.

[timur (2029)]

I also recommend Dreamhost [dreamhost.com]. They have everything the submitter is looking for, and more.

AddAction.net

[TheSHAD0W (258774)]

I recently got an account at AddAction.net [addaction.net]. I haven't been with them very long, so I can't tell you how good their customer service is. On the other hand, I haven't had to deal with their customer service. Their facilities are pretty good, the only thing I don't like about them is the paucity of their subdomain service. And the price is right, too; $9.95 special for a 6 month trial period.

JohnCompanies.com

[davesamson (614779)]

Someone asked a similar question a few weeks ago. This is somewhat what my answer was:

Me and a couple of friends share a co-located server from John Companies [johncompanies.com] and have loved the service we received from them so far.

If you use a portion of your coloc to host your open source project, you can get the coloc for $45 USD a month. For that, you get the following:

• root on your own server
• Full Linux Filesystem
• 4 gigs disk - Up to 10 IPs
• 40 Gigs transfer / Month
• Firewall access
• Unlimited tech support
• They supp

Re:JohnCompanies.com

[Coward, Anonymous (55185)]

John Companies is not giving you a colocated server, they're giving you a "collocated" server (note the extra 'l'). You're given a virtual machine on a shared physical machine. I'd steer clear of any company that uses such deceptive advertising.

Re:JohnCompanies.com

[rainer_d (115765)]

Well, when you ask whem (or deduce it from the description), they're quite open about it.

Johncompanies get's good reviews by its users nevertheless and if I didn't allready have a server, this would be serious contender.

They also have FreeBSD-jails.

Eryxma

[dalutong (260603)]

I have enjoyed Eryxma.com's hosting. I have had service for about one year and don't have a single complaint. The CEO even gave me his AIM screename! Now the company is larger and he is more busy, but he is still very pleasant. The forums are active, and anything I've ever asked for I've gotten.

I can't say whether they have all of the things you requested... but they are worth a look.

Try local

[linuxwrangler (582055)]

Check your local area - I'm quite happy with my local ISP, lmi.net. They are very geek friendly (run a server? no problem. NAT? we don't care. Blocked ports? no. Static IP? that's all we offer...) but without customers the locals will disappear.

If you don't have a local ISP that meets your needs try Pair (pair.com host of Tom's Hardware, Perl Review, etc.) or Hurricane Electric (he.net). I don't use either but have heard some good comments about both.

Pair and HE

[cornice (9801)]

I've used both Pair and HE and had great experiences with both. My only complaint is that they never had exactly what I needed. For example I wanted to run one of the open source shopping carts at HE. The cart only ran on a very recent Perl version and HE wasn't about to upgrade just for me. I can't really fault any provider for something like this. Their job is to be as stable as possible for all of their customers. I eventually just upgraded our connection and ran on a box in-house but our bandwidth

$50/month? I get that for $100/year!

[eggstasy (458692)]

My host is www.lusodigital.com... the webpage is in portuguese, but its actually part of an american group called Everlasting LLC.
I have no idea where the servers are located though, or what hosting companies this american group has on the other side of the pond.

CagedTornado

[Hank Reardon (534417)]

I'm using CagedTornado [cagedtornado.com] for my hosting needs.

They run a product called FreeVSD which is a kind of virtual root system. You can modify about half of the system (apache configs, some Sendmail settings, global procmail stuff) not including most of the system files and additions to the /etc/rc.* directories.

Out of the box they support:

• Virtual Domain hosting (I have 4 running)
• SSH and Telnet
• FTP
• Majordomo
• PHP
• mod_perl
• Your own MySQL install
• Per-user disk quotas
• Other stuff... Check the site.

My only big bummer with them is that they don't have perl 5.6.x or higher and they don't support IMAP; thank to the non-editing of the /etc/rc.* directories, I can't install it either.

The price is nice. I'm paying $49 a month for the virtual root, 15 Gigs of bandwidth, and have 3 gigs (I think; might be more) of disk space.

Their support hasn't been that helpful, but to be fair I hit them with some really nasty questions that their system probably doesn't support. Mainly, upgrading Perl and mod_perl to use Perl 5.6.1.

Pair Networks

[dr00g911 (531736)]

I've had a many-year-long relationship with Pair Networks [pair.com], and am a huge fan with several hosting accounts.

Pair's one of the oldest and most respected hosting companies out there. They've got ridiculous amounts of bandwidth, and are very generous with hosting allowances.

For example, you can add as many domains under a single $30/mo "Webmaster" [pair.com] account as you'd like for an additional $1 apiece, and their $30/mo account has a 600mb allowance.

Their servers are running FreeBSD, and they allow shell access and custom binaries (custom-compiled PHP, for instance) on their Advanced and higher accounts.

Can't recommend them highly enough.

BlackSun.ca

[Anonymous Commando (6326)]

Check out Black Sun [blacksun.ca]. I can't speak for their basic hosting plans (we're actually co-locating our gear there), but the guys there are good to work with and know what they're talking about. In terms of their gear, they host mostly on Cobalt Raq boxes, with MySQL, PHP, etc. And hey, they're Canadian, so you can benefit from the usually crappy exchange rate. <flamebait>Unless you're one of those drooling hyper-patriotic idiots who refuses to have anything to do with Canada because we didn't send troops to Iraq. In that case, go back to your plate of "Freedom Fries" and flip the TV back to Fox News. Sorry for offending you (hey, I'm Canadian, I have to apologize!).</flamebait> (Kidding - mostly) :-)

Kind of embarrassing, but...

[cybermace5 (446439)]

...my website priority is not mission-critical (yet). So I looked for the cheapest thing I could find.

Got it from webhostingfactory. I have 1GB of space, 5GB of bandwidth per month, Perl, PHP, MySQL, shell access, FTP, stats, POP/IMAP/webmail. I can configure and administer up to 100 users in my webspace, give them all email accounts and web pages. I can even log in through SSH and read my email or do a quick page edit in vi.

Price? It was $19.95 per year. Was a little unstable the first month, but has bee

my host...

[Tumbleweed (3706)]

glypto.com [glypto.com] has the following plan that fits your needs. They have excellent routing (probably in the same building as Mae-West, though I'm just guessing).

Omega

- 350 MB Hard Disk
- 15 GB Data Transfer
- 50 Sub-domains
- 50 FTP Accounts
- 15 MySQL Databases
- 350 POP3 Accounts
- Static IP Address
- Setup fee $0.00
$ 19.99 per month

Recommendation

[redtail1 (603986)]

I'm happy with NPS [npsis.com].

Your requirements are higher than mine but for $7.99/month I get 100MB, Perl, PHP, MySQL, e-mail with a web interface and all the other usual stuff. Tech support has been helpful and friendly for the couple of years I have used them.

bytemark

[Tomun (144651)]

Debian geeks may find Bytemark [bytemark-hosting.co.uk] in the UK to be agreeable.
You get a full UML virtual machine to play with.

I'm not using them myself, still thinking about it.
I found them via this Debian Planet Article [debianplanet.org]

Re:bytemark

[mattbee (17533)]

I can recommend them too :) For £15 / $26 per month we do a Linux Virtual Machine package based on User-mode Linux [sf.net]: you get 7.5GB bandwidth, 64MB of RAM for your machine and 3GB disc space for you to do what you want with. You get root access to your machine, out-of-band access to do your own reboots, machine reinstalls, bandwidth monitoring and setting up of watchdog services which can send messages to your mobile phone if something goes wrong with your server. We're also one of very few (the only

ProNic Solutions

[nlh (80031)]

I haven't seen it mentioned here, but I use ProNIC Host [pronichost.com], and I've been nothing but happy with them. Of course, I use a basic little $10.95 / month plan (100MB storage, 7GB transfer, 50 Emails) but they have lots more at very competitive prices.

They also have all the "standard" bells and whistles, which includes:

-- POP3, SMTP, FTP, Webmail
-- Cpanel / GUI-based control panel
-- SpamAssasin
-- PHP+MySQL, Perl, Python
-- phpBB, Invision, PHP-Nuke pre-installed for you
-- Several shopping carts pre-installed
-- SSL

etc.

Very good guys, and very helpful.

--noah

Try towardex.com

[afay (301708)]

Friend of mine knows the guy who runs it and says he's good. Pretty good prices and FreeBSD machines. towardex [towardex.com]

Pair Networks

[legLess (127550)]

Pair Networks [pair.com] rocks my world. Uber-reliable, great support, cheap. They run FreeBSD and host their own CPAN mirror (they also host Perlmonks, Tom's Hardware, lots of other big sites). I've used them for years for everything from cheap-o FTP-only accounts ($6/month) to dedicated servers ($300/month).

Re:Pair Networks

[RhetoricalQuestion (213393)]

Pair is awesome. I've also been using them for years without problems. I've recommended pair to many people, all are very happy with their service. It's fast, cheap and reliable.

Here [pair.com] is a comparison of their different plans.

From what you describe, I think either the Advance ($17.95/month) or the Webmaster ($29.95/month) will cover what you need and then some. Pair is really flexible about their plans as well -- you can usually buy any additional services individually.

jatol

[eddy the lip (20794)]

We've been using jatol.com [jatol.com] for hosting our and several client's sites. Good bandwidth, the few occasaions we've needed to contact support, response was great. Support is also available over IM, which is highly convenient. MySQL, PHP, Perl, crontab, .htaccess, shell access on request, and extremely reasonable rates. (I can't recall what they charge offhand, but they're one of the least expensive for non-critical web sites that I've seen).

No affiliation, just a happy customer, so I wouldn't mind tossing some

$4/month is not bad...

[Hanashi (93356)]

I use Total Choice Hosting. So far, I'd say that I've been able to get everything I need. I run InfosecBooks.Com [infosecbooks.com], which needs PHP, Apache, MySQL, SSH and some other stuff. It's good, the people are quite responsive, and it's dirt cheap.

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com

XServer possibility

[sribe (304414)]

In the Mac world, digital forest [digitalforest.com] has a good reputation. I haven't used them personally, so I can't give a truthful glowing endorsement. But I do know people who have been quite happy with their service.

Important question that isn't being asked...

[slashdot_commentator (444053)]

What is the level of bandwidth availability for the prices they're charging?

Perhaps it can be assumed its unlimited bandwidth at $X/month. But I'm sure if any server with the magnitude of traffic comparable to Slashdot were to move in, they'd be shutting it down soon afterwards.

Colossus.Net is easy and dependable

[joelparker (586428)]

Have you heard of Colossus.Net hosting?
Their website is here [colossus.net]

I have hosted with them for eight years,
both personally and also professionally
for School.Net and Sun Microsystems.

Pros:
- Definitely the most dependable host I've used.
- Easy to ramp up more bandwidth, disk, speed, etc.
- Most everything you need is automated
- Very fast email support from a real person

Cons:
- Not on the cutting edge (older Slackware, no J2EE)
- No handholding, so you need to know what you're doing
- No marketing fluff,

PowWeb

[Futurepower(R) (558542)]

PowWeb [powweb.com] FreeBSD hosting, $7.77 per month, has been good to me. The tech support is a little squirrely. It took them a week to discover why a compiled Perl program I wrote was not working. They found that someone had changed the OS without logging the change.

Sorry, but you can't pay more than $7.77 per month, when you pay on a yearly basis. I know that $30 per month would make many people feel more secure.

another Communitech refugee

[ubiquitin (28396)]

I colocated two servers for about three years at Communitech until about two months ago when I saw the writing on the wall and started looking around. Was told unofficially that Communitech would be shutting down in May, but I've seen no public acknowledgement of any deadline. After looking around both in Kansas City and Omaha, I signed on a cabinet for a year at: Axiom Integration. [axiomintegration.com] Nice data center, good prices, and I've got room to spare so look me up at phpconsulting.com [phpconsulting.com]. and get in touch. Because I

User-mode Linux virtual hosting, $20/mo

[Omega Hacker (6676)]

We're starting up a company called pdxcolo.net, which will provide true virtual machine hosting in the form of User-mode Linux [sf.net]. We're currently building up our infrastructure, and are currently seeking beta testers.

For $20/mo (post-beta), you'll get:

• Roughly 64MHz worth of an Athlon XP (peaking to a full 2x00+ proc if no one else is using it that instant)
• 64MB of RAM
• 2GB of disk space (OS is not counted against that)
• 10GB of transfer per month
• Install anything you want, you have true root on the box
• Ch

65535.net

[D3TH (15279)]

There's a new provider that a friend of mine turned me on to. They provide Linux and BSD hosting, exactly what you're looking for, and more. Their prices are very reasonable, and they even offer lifetime shell accounts if that's what you're interested in. I can often get support via AIM or MSN messanger, and the support offered so far has been amazing. I have a custom-tailored package, so I'm paying for exactly what I need, and nothing more. The storage and bandwidth limitations are more than fair, and buyi

Watch out for...

[kruczkowski (160872)]

Watch out what else the company hosts. We bought into candidhosting and some domains block our IP range becouse cadid hosts 95% porn.

Just something to think about when you get your IP. See if they will tell you the class the IP is in and check to see if it's on a black list.

good unix hosting

[alsta (9424)]

www.svs.com

Probably the cheapest in town. Plenty generous quotas and bandwith. Check them out.

Biased opinion.

[GiMP (10923)]

I run GrokThis.net which you might find interesting.

You can get a reasonably priced account with MySQL 3, MySQL 4, and/or Postgresql 7.3. It comes with an independant webserver, we offer Apache 1.3 and 2.0; however, you're welcome to run another webserver such as Roxen if you wish. We also provide support for mod_perl, HTML::Mason, and Apache::ASP.

Re:phpwebhosting.com - $9.99/mo

[eddy the lip (20794)]

Some of our clients have been using phpwebhosting for minor needs over the past year. We've never had a problem or complaint, which is more than you can usually say.