Choosing the right hosting company for a Drupal powered website (and a short list of hosting companies to avoid like the plague)

A good hosting company is hard to find, especially when you are building dynamic websites like Drupal. I have worked with scores of server companies over the past several years and have accrued a list of hosting companies to avoid.

Building up this hosting company blacklist is a story in and of itself, and the process of searching for a half decent shared hosting solution has taught me more than I ever wanted to know about the many ways that server companies can suck.

In general it’s not a good idea to take the leap and set up a hosting plan before talking to the developer that is going to be building your site. Though it is always a good idea to do your own research, Drupal sites have certain requirements that you (and your potential hosting provider) may not be aware of. As Drupal has gained in popularity it is becoming less common to run into hosting providers that don’t allow Drupal to function properly, but you still shouldn’t make assumptions. For example a couple of years ago I was using Godaddy shared hosting for my sites, but then when I decided to convert my old flat file sites into Drupal I received a rude awakening: Godaddy did not allow scripts to create temporary tables. At the time I didn’t even know what temporary tables were, and I certainly didn’t think to ask about them when I signed on for their hosting, but I very quickly learned just how important that little detail was… Temporary tables are required in order for Drupal’s search capabilities to work. I called Godaddy to request that they change this policy, but they were not willing to budge on the issue. I wrote a letter to the management warning them that they were going to lose clients if they didn’t change their policy; I then proceeded to open an account with one of their competitors (BlueHost). Within a few months I checked back and discovered that they had started to allow temporary tables, so I decided to test their servers again (I had not yet closed my account at this time.) However, I was in for a second rude awakening, Godaddy restricts the size of database file you can upload to 2 megabytes. The database that I was using was 4 megabytes (which is small in comparison to many Drupal databases I have dealt with). Their only solution was to have me ftp the database file to the server and to wait for them to install the database for me. Obviously this is not an acceptable procedure for a web developer who is simultaneously working on multiple websites. Again I tried to get them to change their policy but to no avail. I closed my account and moved on. I don’t know if they have changed their policy or not.

The next server company I tried out was BlueHost. Now BlueHost seemed like a promising company. Their support staff is friendly, they allow temporary tables and large database uploads and their prices are reasonable. However, within a few weeks on their servers I started running into a new restriction: Script time limits. BlueHost has a policy of shutting down your entire account for a minute any time one of your queries takes more than a certain number of milliseconds in a minute. I had never thought to count the query time for Drupal, but I quickly started paying attention when my site started to disappear several times a week. I had just left a cheaper company that didn’t profess to be Drupal friendly and I had not encountered this problem with them, so I knew that these restrictions were not required in order to have a working server. I called and talked to management and requested they reconsider their policy. They were friendly, but they said that they couldn’t change their policy. So once again I began to look elsewhere for hosting.

When I found Hostican hosting I was optimistic. The man that answered the phone was very friendly and enthusiastic, and he assured me that they didn’t have the policy of shutting down sites based on query time, but rather based their restrictions on CPU which he assured me was rarely an issue. I closed my account with BlueHost and moved over to Hostican. Within a month, I ran into an unexpected bump in the road when I found myself unable to send or receive emails through my new server. I called repeatedly to try to get help for the issue, but the operator’s response was to insist that it must be my fault. Somewhere during the two weeks of calling about this issue I began to realize that this wasn’t just a small company, this was some guy running this out of his house. Now while dealing with a small company was an appealing idea after the bureaucratic nightmare of Godaddy, I soon began to realize that there was definitely such a thing as too small. By too small I mean no matter what time of day or night that I called I always got the same person, and as he began to recognize my voice his annoyance became less and less subtle. To top it off it was only after encountering this problem that I came to realize that he was outsourcing his tech support to some company in India and was not dealing with his server directly in most cases. I doubt that they would have ever taken responsibility for the problem that I was having if I had not done a test on my own to determine that my ip for my house had been blocked by the server. It was only after calling and specifically insisting that they unblock my ip that they actually did anything. It turns out that I was right, and as soon as they unblocked my ip my email started working again. That experience soured my feelings for Hostican, and later when I started having other problems I started searching for hosts yet again.

The next company I tried was AN hosting, and like I said in the beginning of the article I used to recommend them, but even the best company is only as good as its current owners, and their new owners ruined the company.

I have dealt with a number of other companies on behalf of clients, so to wrap up I will leave you with a short list of Server Companies to avoid like the plague:

Godaddy - Restrictive server policies, inflexible, they are a great domain registrar and I continue to use them in that capacity but as a hosting company they leave much to be desired.

AN hosting – Tech support outsourced to Ukraine… need I say more?
SiteGround – These guys are infamous… just google “Siteground Sucks” and see what you find. (This is in fact a really good way to test out what people think of a hosting company.)
Ipower hosting - These guys are a mess. They don’t allow their clients to use wget or lynx for cron jobs (which Drupal happens to need) their administration backend is chaotic, their tech support hold times often last for an hour or more, once they even lost all record of a transaction that I had spent over half an hour on the phone with them making. Avoid them. They are nothing but trouble.

StartLogic - Long hold times, uneducated staff, unstable servers, ridiculous downtimes. There is even a site dedicated to talking about how much StartLogic sucks: http://www.startlogicsucks.com. That my friend, is a very bad sign indeed.

HostIcan - The last time I tried to get a hold of these guys (which was when I was trying to close my account) they didn’t answer my call, they didn’t respond to their instant chat, and I didn’t receive a response to my email for several days. I’m sure he is a nice guy, but I don’t want to deal with some individual who is trying to jerry rig a server company out of his garage with the help of Indian outsourcing.

HostGator - I couldn’t even get them on the line to ask them the preliminary questions about their hosting. If I can’t get to a representative within 15 minutes I look elsewhere. If they aren’t on the ball to get your business in the first place just imagine the joy of dealing with them once there is a problem.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of bad server companies. Bad server companies far outnumber the good ones. And don’t believe the saying “you get what you pay for.” Paying a high price doesn’t protect you from an incompetent company. In fact most companies offer vps and dedicated servers, even the worst of the worst companies, and they will charge you royally for the frustration they provide. I personally have had a good experience with Inmotion hosting, and unless they get bought out I intend to stay with them and recommend them to my clients. I say this while knocking on wood and whispering a secret incantation said to ward off evil spirits and corporate buy outs.