Deciding On A VPS And What Package To Get

[finnegan]

I was looking over two choices here: Storm on Demand vs KnownHost, the latter which is mentioned a few times on this forum.

I've always been with SOD simply because of the live chat and phone support you get. KnownHost doesn't seem to offer this, although it's a little cheaper than SOD in terms of pricing. However, I've always suspected speed issues with my SOD sites before...although I'm not sure if it's just my imagination or not. Does anyone have experience with these two companies?

In addition to this, how does one decide upon a package when going with a VPS?

 

[CCarter]

I know StormOnDemand from LiquidWeb, I love them. I don't know KnownHost, it's an unknown to me.

With VPSes one click upgrades are a must, so start with the low package and just upgrade as you need. We got over three dozen servers at Linode, an upgrade for us is extremely simple, but there is obvious downtime, max 1 hour.

There isn't a way to guess what to go with when starting out until you start hitting big traffic numbers which force you to upgrade.

 

[Ryuzaki]

KnownHost doesn't seem to offer this

They offer live chat and phone calls (neither I'd use) because their support ticket system is on fire! Every time I send one in, they get back to me within 2-3 minutes, and generally have the problem solved in under 10 minutes.

Knownhost offers one-click upgrades, as CCarter mentioned. I had to upgrade several times the other night while going viral. I'd click go, click pay, and within a couple of minutes my upgrades were live. Zero down time.

 

[finnegan]

Ok, I'm prolly gonna go with KnownHost since it looks like a better bargain, even though there is no live chat or phone support for tech questions (I asked).

Do you think it's worth it to get an SSD drive?

 

[built]

Ok, I'm prolly gonna go with KnownHost since it looks like a better bargain, even though there is no live chat or phone support for tech questions (I asked).

Do you think it's worth it to get an SSD drive?

Their email support is awesome. Responded within 10mins for every question I had.

Best support hands down. Really happy with my upgrade. If you can afford an ssd why not. I went with VPS-2

 

[Ryuzaki]

@finnegan There was a discussion recently with this exact question:

https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/whats-a-better-option-vps-2-vs-ssd-1.1575/

Here's what I had to say about VPS-2 over SSD-1:

I'm talking about general website operators here, not SaaS owners:

For the typical user, the bandwidth and storage are going to be important because of the little amount of optimization going on, and thousands upon thousands of duplicate images being generated, etc.

For the advanced user, I'd rather have that RAM than the extra CPU power. RAM is going to be the bottleneck when you start traffic leaking. If you know you'll get consistent traffic without large spikes, then the SSD would be fine, but I know built, and he's going to get big blasts of traffic.

Not to mention that with this BuSo affiliate link and using the coupon BUSO15, you can get 15% off lifetime on VPS-2 or higher. You can get the same on SSD's with BUSOSSD but again it's SSD-2 or higher.

Of course, if you can afford the SSD level with enough RAM to handle traffic spikes, no reason not to go for that.

 

[klix]

I used to be a mod at a big IM forum. One of the staff who had a lot of projects recommended me a gem of a hosting company called Hudson Valley Host. I would call them "medium-size". Not small so they're not going anywhere, but not big that they market themselves and pass the cost on to you. Been using them for 4+ years.

Check out their Managed VPS Plan 2. 3GB of ram, 3TB transfer, and 2 ips (though they are in the same block). Costs $30 with them vs $45 on knownhost. And that's just their front-page offer. When you stay with them, you will get emails with amazing savings. Sometimes they offer quality dedi's (unmanaged) for cheap, e.g. this is the email I got recently

 

[finnegan]

Went with KnownHost VPS-2 and I'm happy with it so far. Not sure why but my sites are loading faster than they ever were on an equivalent package from Storm.

Their tickets system is fast too.