ServerADay.com
Recently I needed new hosting. I was paying way too much over at HostGator (who later ripped me off!), so I quit and began the search for new hosting.
At first I tried to get a VPS (virtual private server), which is basically a chunk of a real server. This was great until some idiot on my server kept doing SOMETHING that brought the server (including my sites) to its knees.
After that I realized that I didn’t want to have to worry about anyone else screwing up my sites. If they were going to be screwed up, I’d be the guy to do it.
I looked high and low for cheap dedicated servers. Most cheap ones were $60 or so from companies that had just sprung up last month. Reliable companies seemed to have them for $100-300.
Then I found Server A Day. They’re part of OLM.net, who has been hosting for a LONG time. Over 10 years. Every day they offer one configuration at a fantastic price.
How fantastic? Here’s my server:
P4 1.9ghz
18gb SCSI hard drive x2 (one for backups)
768mb RAM
100mbit port
2500gb bandwidth per month
$25/mo
This isn’t a high end server by any means, but it is many times faster and better than shared hosting like dreamhost.com. I also have full control over it and can even run my own nameservers (nerd stuff).
This deal is significantly better than the daily deals ever are. Here’s how to get the best deal:
- Check the comments. They often offer freebies for buying one of the last few, or for signing up for a year.
- Check on Fridays. In the comments section they post side deals that are usually better than the main deal.
- Ask them for what you want. If you want today’s deal but you need a second hard drive, often times they’ll just give it to you if you ask before ordering.
- Ask for a custom deal. This is what I did. I posted in the comments exactly what I wanted, and they posted a side deal that matched it exactly.
- Pay for a year in advance. They knocked off $5/mo and gave me an extra 256mb of ram for doing this. There’s no disadvantage really because they will prorate your refund if you decide to cancel (you probably won’t).
The one caveat is that these are unmanaged servers. That means that you have to do EVERYTHING yourself. I’m not a linux guru or anything, and I was able to figure it all out by searching around online. Then again I’m pretty technically inclined and I enjoy stuff like that.
If you order one, tell them Tynan sent you. They jumped through a few hoops for me and I appreciate it.
I think low end hardware servers are overrated these days. If you are going to spend this much, then you might as well opt-in for a VPS. You get the same full control, except that you get burstable hardware which is of a much higher grade than what you got.
Check out slhost.com - you get a dedicated VPS, but it’s also managed for you if you need help. E.g. you can’t figure something out and don’t have time - shoot an email. I’ve emailed at all times of day and night, and got personal resposnes in 10 minutes EVERY time. I have 3 accounts with them.
Check WebHostingTalk.com for VPS benchmark thread and compare to other VPS.
They also have deals posted on WHT forums.
And notice that their servers come with control panels as well. Especially my fav - Plesk
And another benefit of VPS is that it’s much easier to “upgrade” the hardware on them. If lets say you are outgrowing the setup, all the hosting provider needs to do is just allocate more RAM/space for you. If there is no more space on the server, they can simply move your entire VPS in minutes to another server. Eventually you might even have just your VPS taking up entire server.
Actually I had a VPS at SLHost first. Overall it was much slower than my server, and several times it went down totally because someone else on the server had pegged the CPU. After this happened three times, I decided to go dedicated.
Their support was also totally useless to me. I had some questions that should have been very basic to anyone who has configured a server (now that I’ve done it I could answer the questions within a few seconds), but they kept giving me dumb stock answers.
Control panels do make things easier, but I personally prefer not having one. They don’t do things quite as cleanly as could be done if you do it manually.
Tynan
That is so weird. I have a completely opposite experience. I’ve ran that benchmarking tool myself every 3 hours for a week straight (cron) and averaged out the numbers and they were amazing.
And support had fixed some pretty complex problems for me a few times. And I consider myself an advanced user, I know linux pretty well and I just couldn’t figure certain things out, and they did it for me without questions asked.