Pre sales question...

[opentoe]

I am currently with a shared hosting service that is driving me nuts. They have been overselling too much and service has gotten lousy. I have been with them for many years. I've done nothing with my domains basically except host some pictures for my family and stuff like that. Just recently I started an SMF forum. Within 2 months of starting my forum I had my hosting company shutting me down saying I used too many resource points and need to upgrade! I told them I'm just running a forum with no scripts or jobs running, that's it. They basically responded with prices on upgrades to their other service. They are trying to lock me down and force me to pay more money. I have been told by many people a shared hosting service can handle multiple forums very easily on one account. Is this true with MDDHosting as well? It's all text based, PHP...that's it. Also with my current hosting service I'm able to setup more domains (shared resources) with my account. Kind of like a reseller account. Is this possible here? Does each domain get it's own cpanel or something? How are the added domains controlled? And one more final question. Does MDDhosting oversell? I see on your reseller accounts you have overselling enabled, which means plugging as many people as you can on a box and hope things run smoothly. How does this affect me?

 

Thank you.

[Michael D.]

I wouldn't blindly say 'a shared account can handle multiple forums' but if the forums are small or have little traffic it's quite possible. There are certainly large forums out there that need a dedicated server or even multiple servers to power them.

 

You can add more domains as addon domains but with a shared account you would only have one cPanel. If you needed multiple cPanel accounts you would want to opt for a reseller level package which is essentially the same thing, except you would have access to WHM to create your own cPanel accounts as needed up to the limit (25 for basic).

 

Beyond that, any provider oversells - we do as well. The issue you're facing isn't overselling as much as poor server management. It is possible to oversell without problems just as it's possible to not oversell at all and still experience problems.

 

We do have a 30 day money-back guarantee so if you sign up and end up not happy, just cancel at any time within the first 30 days and we'll provide you a 100% refund of the hosting cost.

[opentoe]

I wouldn't blindly say 'a shared account can handle multiple forums' but if the forums are small or have little traffic it's quite possible. There are certainly large forums out there that need a dedicated server or even multiple servers to power them.

 

You can add more domains as addon domains but with a shared account you would only have one cPanel. If you needed multiple cPanel accounts you would want to opt for a reseller level package which is essentially the same thing, except you would have access to WHM to create your own cPanel accounts as needed up to the limit (25 for basic).

 

Beyond that, any provider oversells - we do as well. The issue you're facing isn't overselling as much as poor server management. It is possible to oversell without problems just as it's possible to not oversell at all and still experience problems.

 

We do have a 30 day money-back guarantee so if you sign up and end up not happy, just cancel at any time within the first 30 days and we'll provide you a 100% refund of the hosting cost.

 

Well, let me ask this then. My forum has 1200 users right now, and really only 100 or less are really active every day. Bandwidth for last month was 4GB, and usually there are 10-18 users on at the same time. Those particular stats are quite small, right? This is the kind of forum I'll be hosting and have been looking at several hosting providers and trying to make a decision fairly quickly. What confuses me is my current hosting service (site5.com) throws me red flags and shuts my forum down all the time saying I've reached too many resource points. I keep telling them it is just a small forum, no scripts are running, there must be something wrong with how you calculate your resource points. Of course they don't even listen to that and just tell me to upgrade to a $950/year account (I'm at $150/yr now) or be shut down. I just didn't want the same type of thing happening again and this is why I'm asking the questions.

 

Site5.com did also have a community based forum where people would ask questions, complain, all that. They were of course shut down. Once that happened, I knew things would just be volume, volume, volume.

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

[Michael D.]

Regular shared hosting is generally good for anywhere from 50 to 150 simultaneous users (depdends on the forum software, theme, plugins installed, etc).

 

That being said, we do our absolute best to contact you if you're using to much and to work with you to reduce it/optimize your site/etc. The only time we would suspend an account for resource usage without first working with you is if it's a reoccuring issue (i.e. happening every day, every week, or at some other very short and regular interval) or if it's affecting others on the server (i.e. we're receiving reports of issues, and traced it back to your account). Just as you wouldn't want your site slow/offline due to others - neither do they .

 

I can't really comment on Site5, their forums, policies, or anything of the like as I have no experience with them and commenting on that would be unfair to them (at best).

[opentoe]

Regular shared hosting is generally good for anywhere from 50 to 150 simultaneous users (depdends on the forum software, theme, plugins installed, etc).

 

That being said, we do our absolute best to contact you if you're using to much and to work with you to reduce it/optimize your site/etc. The only time we would suspend an account for resource usage without first working with you is if it's a reoccuring issue (i.e. happening every day, every week, or at some other very short and regular interval) or if it's affecting others on the server (i.e. we're receiving reports of issues, and traced it back to your account). Just as you wouldn't want your site slow/offline due to others - neither do they .

 

I can't really comment on Site5, their forums, policies, or anything of the like as I have no experience with them and commenting on that would be unfair to them (at best).

 

Just hearing that comforts me. My forum was blindly shut down with no notice or anything. And they even said due to the technical nature of this problem you cannot call or email for help, you must only go through the open ticket. It was like I was a cattle being funneled for slaughter. Right now my site has 30 active users on it right now, and it is only 2 months old and growing. I may even have to look into a small VPS possibly. I don't know, it is hard to know what to do. Me giving you those stats, would you recommend a shared hosting account? Here are some more stats....maybe will help in answering me.

 

For the month of January

Unique visitors 4.661

Number of visits 19.202

Pages 839,595

Hits 1,460,466

Bandwidth 4GB

 

Also, thank you.

[Michael D.]

Just hearing that comforts me. My forum was blindly shut down with no notice or anything. And they even said due to the technical nature of this problem you cannot call or email for help, you must only go through the open ticket. It was like I was a cattle being funneled for slaughter. Right now my site has 30 active users on it right now, and it is only 2 months old and growing. I may even have to look into a small VPS possibly. I don't know, it is hard to know what to do. Me giving you those stats, would you recommend a shared hosting account? Here are some more stats....maybe will help in answering me.

Bear in mind we do not provide support over the phone, but only tickets. Also bear in mind that you can open and respond to tickets via email with us (i.e. email to support and a support ticket are one in the same).

 

That being said, we do tend to be fairly quick with our support.

 

For the month of January

Unique visitors 4.661

Number of visits 19.202

Pages 839,595

Hits 1,460,466

Bandwidth 4GB

 

Also, thank you.

The statistics are essentially meaningless beyond whether or not you get enough disk space and transfer - you could have a site with 5 visitors per day that causes issues or a site with 10,000 visitors per day that works just fine. You could transfer 1TB/mo without issues or you could transfer 5gb/mo and be using too much CPU/RAM.

 

Ultimately, so long as you're being accurate with your simultaneous users on your forum and the other information you've previously provided you should be fine. Again, ultimately, if you're not happy you can always cancel and get a refund within your first month. 30 days should be plenty of time to get a feel for whether the service will meet your needs or not.

[opentoe]

Bear in mind we do not provide support over the phone, but only tickets. Also bear in mind that you can open and respond to tickets via email with us (i.e. email to support and a support ticket are one in the same).

 

That being said, we do tend to be fairly quick with our support.

 

The statistics are essentially meaningless beyond whether or not you get enough disk space and transfer - you could have a site with 5 visitors per day that causes issues or a site with 10,000 visitors per day that works just fine. You could transfer 1TB/mo without issues or you could transfer 5gb/mo and be using too much CPU/RAM.

 

Ultimately, so long as you're being accurate with your simultaneous users on your forum and the other information you've previously provided you should be fine. Again, ultimately, if you're not happy you can always cancel and get a refund within your first month. 30 days should be plenty of time to get a feel for whether the service will meet your needs or not.

 

All the info I've given you was right out of the stats page. I'm being told I will need a VPS eventually, when the forum out grows a shared service. The thing is, I don't know when the forum will flatten out. I'm still getting new users everyday and more and more people are on it on a daily basis. I'll keep on searching and try to get as much info as I can. I think I'm also talking to you on webhostingtalk. I went there for help. I don't mind about no phone support. I never really used it before, I was just using that as an example that my current service told me I couldn't call or try to get chat support or anything. A decision I need to make, soon.

And thank you.

[Michael D.]

All the info I've given you was right out of the stats page. I'm being told I will need a VPS eventually, when the forum out grows a shared service.

If the forum grows you'll eventually want a VPS [or] dedicated server but I couldn't tell you when that would happen. I know you can go from Shared -> Semi-Dedicated with us at 100~150 simultaneous users and be good up to 300~350 simultaneous users on that platform. Again these are estimations and are not set in stone, they're just based off of my experiences in the industry over the years.

 

The thing is, I don't know when the forum will flatten out. I'm still getting new users everyday and more and more people are on it on a daily basis. I'll keep on searching and try to get as much info as I can. I think I'm also talking to you on webhostingtalk. I went there for help. I don't mind about no phone support. I never really used it before, I was just using that as an example that my current service told me I couldn't call or try to get chat support or anything. A decision I need to make, soon.

Sure.

And thank you.

You are welcome.

[Guardian]

yeah a Regular shared hosting is good for a set of 100 simultaniouse users but if more then need to conisder. IF its the forums you are usign then you need to make sure of the futrure, what I mean is that definitely a forum will eventually grow depening on the content provided so with the regular you would be at a disadvantage so its always good to think for the unexpected