kuemerle5 Posted August 2, 2011 Report Share Posted August 2, 2011 I'll try to make this short and sweet:Well, my next billing cycle is in sight and unfortunately, my services will not be getting renewed. It pains me to do this, but alas my time in the shared hosting world has come to an end. The next leg of my web hosting journey carries me into the world of low-end VMs as I crave more control and expand my knowledge of Linux servers while remaining on a small budget. As such, as much as I wish MDD had these types of sub $10 VMs, I must move my patronage elsewhere. But I cannot think of a better company (hosting or otherwise) who has better staff, support, personality, and attitude than MDDHosting. From giving straight-up, uncensored information to it's customers through tough times with servers to a nonchalant company Twitter account and informative blog by the owner, MDDHosting has gone well above and beyond the call of duty for a web host. In the end, the customer is always the bottom line, and MDDHosting, in my opinion, always did whatever they could to keep them happy. I can only hope the next hosting company I buy service from has 1/10th of the greatness and values MDDHosting has. My time at MDD has been outstanding and I will always be grateful to the community for all of their help and expertise. If Mike allows it, I would love to continue offering help and advice on the shared hosting forums. All the best luck to Mike and the rest of the awesome MDDHosting crew! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted August 2, 2011 Report Share Posted August 2, 2011 I'm sorry to hear that - if you do need any help on the shift out I'll be happy to help as much as I can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Posted August 2, 2011 Report Share Posted August 2, 2011 As such, as much as I wish MDD had these types of sub $10 VMs We've decided not to offer VPS with that level of pricing because there is no way to provide what we consider to be a quality service at that price point. Many providers with a VPS price point such as that will lack some or all of things like backups, reasonable process limits, server management and support, etc. It really comes down to getting what you pay for, and these types of cheap VPS servers are ideal for more control, limited testing, or as a "playground" type box, but are almost definitely a step down in terms of server resources when compared even to our basic packages. Especially when you consider the additional overhead of running the "whole server." Suddenly you need resources for email, mysql, ftp, ssh, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuemerle5 Posted August 2, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 2, 2011 We've decided not to offer VPS with that level of pricing because there is no way to provide what we consider to be a quality service at that price point. Many providers with a VPS price point such as that will lack some or all of things like backups, reasonable process limits, server management and support, etc. It really comes down to getting what you pay for, and these types of cheap VPS servers are ideal for more control, limited testing, or as a "playground" type box, but are almost definitely a step down in terms of server resources when compared even to our basic packages. Especially when you consider the additional overhead of running the "whole server." Suddenly you need resources for email, mysql, ftp, ssh, etc. Yep, a "playground" box is exactly what I'm looking for. I also accept the fact that most of these providers will not have support to the level that MDD offers, but I feel in my specific case, that's what will be needed to learn how administer a web server box (just some good 'ol Google searches and endless trial and error). Taking this into account, 99.99% uptime or daily backups are not terribly important to me due to the box's "non mission-critical" application. This is mind, I see most companies offer either Xen or OpenVZ environments. Do either of you suggest one over the other? I am kind of leaning to the OpenVZ for the "burstable" RAM feature which I don't believe Xen offers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Posted August 3, 2011 Report Share Posted August 3, 2011 I totally understand where you're coming from with this one. If I were you, I would use an MDD VPS for production and one of these $10 VPSs for playground-ish type things. For a cheap VPS, I would take a look at AlienVPS. Look up some reviews on WHT. For a provider offering prices like that, they're pretty good. I'm going to order a tiny VPS from them to play around with . Mike: You should think about offering unmanaged VPSs. It would appeal to a lot of people coming from WHT, and you don't have to offer it at a price like AlienVPS does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael D. Posted August 3, 2011 Report Share Posted August 3, 2011 We offered unmanaged VPS for a while, but that always ended up in people assuming we would still fix things for them (i.e. manage their unmanaged VPS) which would result in anger and potentially negative reviews. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fshagan Posted August 3, 2011 Report Share Posted August 3, 2011 Yep, a "playground" box is exactly what I'm looking for. I also accept the fact that most of these providers will not have support to the level that MDD offers, but I feel in my specific case, that's what will be needed to learn how administer a web server box (just some good 'ol Google searches and endless trial and error). Taking this into account, 99.99% uptime or daily backups are not terribly important to me due to the box's "non mission-critical" application. This is mind, I see most companies offer either Xen or OpenVZ environments. Do either of you suggest one over the other? I am kind of leaning to the OpenVZ for the "burstable" RAM feature which I don't believe Xen offers. OpenVZ is usually less expensive. I think its fine, but there are some Xen advocates who insist you can't oversell a Xen server (and others point out it is entirely possible to oversell Xen). Budget VPS generally are either oversold, or the host is operating at a loss and ends up in the Dead Pool. Or the network is slow. Or ... etc. But for playing around and learning, they are fine. I usually have one or two I'm playing with (although I let all of them go when I lost my "day job".) I like OpenVZ, and I like the SolusVM control panel the best. You can reload your OS and reinstall everything really quickly, which is important as you are learning. Many hosts will have a number of templates/images available with different OS and features. You will end up reinstalling frequently during the learning process! There are some great tutorials on line, but make sure they are for the OS you have, and recent enough that they are applicable. If you start adding services, you get very close to a managed VPS price. Take your $10 VPS, and add cPanel ($15 a month), backup service ($10 a month), add another cheap VPS to avoid name server "single point of failure" issues, or other things often included with a managed VPS and you quickly get the price up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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