New host & painless transfer needed

[mlsred]

Hi

I'm in need of a new host..

I am currently with siteground on a Professional VPS server.. I think I was suckered into upgrading because they kept telling me that my SMF site was very busy and that I should upgrade. I don't think my SMF site should cause this many problems.. it is active but at most there is somewhere between 80 & 100 users online at anyone time.

I'm still not happy with the performance, my site has had a number of issues but mainly I get some slow page load times. I've done everything I can to improve this but it seems ok for a few days and then starts to slow down again. So I have had enough.

My requirements are as follows:

I have about 6 domains that I want to host but only one that has any real activity (http://www.psoriasis-help.org.uk/forum/index.php)

All my sites are registered elsewhere but point to the siteground account.

This main site is a Joomla front end with a SMF forum but I also have Coppermine.

The spec for the account I'm on is:
Disc Space      20GB
Bandwidth      250GB
CPanel control panel    
Fantastico Script Auto-installer    
Burst RAM      2GB
RAM guaranteed   640MB
Linux Based   Centos 4

More details here: http://www.siteground.com/vps_basic_features.htm

I'm currently using about a 3rd of the disk space and have never exceeded the bandwidth limit.

My SMF stats can be found here:

http://www.psoriasis-help.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=stats

Could you host my sites?

I'm in the UK so is time difference and getting quick support an issue?

Can you transfer & setup my sites, databases, email accounts i.e. everything from siteground to yourselves? I have cpanel access and can do a full backup.

Anything else you need to know?

Thanks in advance

M

[Jason]

Hello M, Thank you for your inquiry.  I'll respond section by section below.  If you have further questions or want to talk pricing, feel free to PM or email me directly if you don't want it posted here.

I am currently with siteground on a Professional VPS server.. I think I was suckered into upgrading because they kept telling me that my SMF site was very busy and that I should upgrade. I don't think my SMF site should cause this many problems.. it is active but at most there is somewhere between 80 & 100 users online at anyone time.

Eighty to 100 simultaneous users on an Joomla/SMF/CPG heavy forum could be fairly resource heavy on a shared environment.  If they had on you a true VPS, I wonder how many other clients also were on that box.  Regardless, Charlottezweb only provides Shared or Dedicated servers and does not do VPS or Reseller accounts. 

That being said, I just looked at your forum right now and I have clients with larger sites that are on Shared servers.  When I do that, I always discuss with them what that means.  I don't overstock my servers so if I put a site that is going to require some serious resource usage (cpu load) on a shared box, it's always with the caveat that if it does get to be too intensive, we'll discuss other options.  I've never had to do move anyone because I do a pretty good job with managing the types and specific clients I have on my servers but it could be a possibility.  Also, just because I have defined package levels, the sites that require a lot more "power" to run them are always on custom plans.

If you're paying them what it appears on their site, we could do something custom, likely save you some money and provide you with the resources to ensure your site doesn't run slowly due to hardware limitations.

My requirements are as follows:

I have about 6 domains that I want to host but only one that has any real activity (http://www.psoriasis-help.org.uk/forum/index.php)

This main site is a Joomla front end with a SMF forum but I also have Coppermine.

All of this is fine of course.  You can setup those additional domains as parked or add-on domains.  They won't have their own cpanel logins separately. 

The spec for the account I'm on is:
Disc Space      20GB
Bandwidth      250GB

More details here: http://www.siteground.com/vps_basic_features.htm

I'm currently using about a 3rd of the disk space and have never exceeded the bandwidth limit.

We'd have to work out a custom package level for sure if you needed that sort of disk space and bandwidth.  This is in order to cover the accounts that I would not be able to install to that particular server in the future to ensure nobody experiences slow-downs due to having too many accounts sharing resources.

My SMF stats can be found here:

http://www.psoriasis-help.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=stats

I think I have to be logged in to view them but from looking at your general stats, it's active but we have some here that are bigger.

Could you host my sites?

Sure, we'd have to discuss custom pricing based on your needs. 

I'm in the UK so is time difference and getting quick support an issue?

I host plenty of clients who are located around the globe.  I am upfront about support in that anything that's on a single-user level (i.e. you need help with something only impacting your site) comes through me.  That means that there will be a window overnight (EST) where I'm not going to respond to general support requests.  That doesn't mean the servers aren't being monitored and supported, it just means that single-user issues won't be worked.  If a service or server went down, that gets immediate attention 24x7x365 regardless of whether I'm available or not.   (I still get paged on all outages, it just doesn't mean I have to be reachable for it to get fixed).  I think most of my clients are very happy about response times but it's certainly possible given our difference that if you posted in the morning your time that it would be several hours later before I responded.  To not hear back from me within a day is unheard of -- I'm usually online for the majority of the day.

If you require phone support or have the need for guaranteed responses within 5-10 minutes, for example, then I'm not going to be your best choice.

Can you transfer & setup my sites, databases, email accounts i.e. everything from siteground to yourselves? I have cpanel access and can do a full backup.

Sure, if you can do a full backup and put it where I can grab it, that shouldn't be a problem.

Anything else you need to know?

I think we've covered most things although my only other option/suggestion depending on your budget may be to move to your own *true* server at some point.  That's the only way to know for sure that you really are getting all the resources available to you.  I have a small number of clients who have their own boxes (or share 1) and that's worked very well.  However, I would say upfront that I don't deal in wholesale on something like and I don't cut corners so I would definitely not be your cheapest route on that.  I stand behind the quality and performance of them however if you do want to go that route.  I don't think you're necessarily at the point where you need to do that yet but if you have the budget, it's a nice option.

Hope that helps!