Hosting Options: Web Hosting Hub, Arvixe, BlueHost

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I was going to host my site with Concrete5 but now that option is no longer available I am looking into other hosting vendors. Has anyone had any experience with Web Hosting Hub, Arvixe or BlueHost (all listed under the Concrete5 Market place under budget hosting)?

Does anyone have any other recommendations? I am most concerned with with server response time and the responsiveness of the support team. As such, I am happy to look at hosting vendors that cost more than $10/month.

Thank you.

 
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
Web hosting hub is particularly awesome with concrete5 at the moment. They have a dedicated support guy who knows concrete5 and are writing their own howtos

Best wishes
Pecked out on an iPhone
ArianArvixe replied on at Permalink Reply
ArianArvixe
Hello,

My name is Arian from Arvixe. If you have any specific questions about our services or if I may assist you in any way at all, please feel free to PM me! If you would like, we could give you a test PersonalClass/BusinessClass account for a few days for you to try our services. To learn more, please see our Concrete5 page here:http://www.arvixe.com/concrete5_hosting...

Thank you,
Arian Jahansouz
Liaison Director | Arvixe Web Hosting, LLC.
pvernaglia replied on at Permalink Reply
pvernaglia
I have been very happy with hostgator.com, I have a lot of clients hosted there
krr replied on at Permalink Reply
krr
I have been a Bluehost customer since long before I discovered the wonderfullness that c5 is. :) I have been very happy with them, only needing to call tech support perhaps 1-2 times year; half the time to let them know I was seeing an issue re: server performance, the other half to get some help with an issue *I* had created. Never did I wait any longer than 1-2 minutes to get *very competent* tech guys on the phone - as a long time Linux user, I could tell that they were not reading scripts from a screen, and had a solid understanding of the OS.

Lately though I have begun to have the feeling that it is time to look around in order to be ready in case I have to move my business elsewhere - reasoning for this is further below.

First, for the record, I have 5 separate accounts at Bluehost, hosting an average of 8-9 sites per account. IIRC, with the exception of perhaps 3-4 sites, these are all using c5. There are also 4-5 instances of SMF, and a couple of Coppermine installs. None of these sites experience anything near "heavy" traffic. The busiest receives perhaps a few hundred SMF posts per month, with maybe 50 regulars who check in daily.

On to reasons why I am 'up in the air' about Bluehost at the moment:

Last year sometime, I noticed that the cPanel File Count on one of my accounts was flagged as getting too high (>50k). On looking into it, I found that the main reason was that c5 nests uploaded files in a directory structure that is several layers deep, 3+ layers of folders for each image (I have never figured out quite why this is). I spoke with Bluehost tech support and was told that if the File Count got over 200k, they would take action. So I shuffled a couple of sites around, and keep an eye on that number, and that has gone well.

More recently, however, I have personally noticed and also read online where people have begun questioning/complaining about site response times/uptimes with their Bluehost-hosted sites. There are also a larger than regular number of complaints about people being CPU throttled. Between what I have seen and experienced before (with other hosting companies), it makes me uneasy when this happens.

In addition to the slowness of late, I have noticed a change in not only the look but also the responsiveness and the functionality of the cPanel and Simple Scripts installer/updater associated with my BH accounts. While the cPanel styling change is no big deal (even tho' it was just fine before), it is indicative of someone "messing about" with a system which has proven itself reliable and user friendly for several years in its former iteration (and "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is true all the way). This is echoed by the fact that there are some usability issues with cPanel and also with SimpleScripts, which is not showing upgrade potentials properly, and has quit working when an Uninstall attempt is made.

Last, I called BlueHost tech support tonight. I waited for several minutes and never received an answer. That, to me, is most worrisome. I do not know if the same old tech support guys are there, but if they aren't, I would like to know who hired them, and sign up with that company. :)

So the speed issues, the problems with the cPanel and SimpleScripts, and my first-ever phone frustration seems to be telling me that it is time to begin a change away from - at at the least a beginning to rely less upon - my long time favorite and often recommended BlueHost. I hope more than you know :) that this is temporary and clears up in a week or two, but most of what I have been reading indicate that these issues have been regular over the past 3-4 months now, and I have seen no good reasoning, or even a response, from someone within the company anywhere that I have looked.

In fact, that was why I called them tonight...
jcushman replied on at Permalink Reply
I thought I would pass along that we switched one of our C5 sites (currently building it out) over to webhostinghub from dreamhost. While I understand it's early, the difference in speed is unreal. For now, I highly recommend webhostinghub, and the documentation they have on C5 is the best I have seen from a hosting provider.
johnpaulb replied on at Permalink Reply
johnpaulb
Hello all,

I wrote the C5 tutorials for Web Hosting Hub, please let me know if you have any questions or issues.

You can view them here:
http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/edu/concrete5...

-John-Paul
Rushing replied on at Permalink Reply
Hey John, I moved a client to webhostinghub from dreamhost recently, and the speed was great... at first.

The account was just suspended the second time in a month because of "resource" issues. This is very frustrating for me and the client. The email is also suspended.

I only have a couple addons installed, like the C5 Discussion Forum, and some calendar one (can't see now, because it's suspended).

I've never experienced my C5 sites just being shut down (though I know C5 isn't the most efficient), and this is one of my smaller sites. There's no way for us to debug the issue with the account suspended, either. Last time it was suspended, it was due to the Autonav block, which apparently exceeded memory limits ...yeah, the Autonav, probably the most commonly used block next to the Content block. This also wasn't triggered by any changes to the templates or content, it just started happening. The support team said there wasn't an evident DOS/bot attack in the logs, either.

Please help...
johnpaulb replied on at Permalink Reply
johnpaulb
Hello Rushing,

Thank you for contacting me. I am happy to help, but would need to look at this account specifically to narrow down the problem and solution.

Please direct message the domain name of the account to me, and I can touch base with our Systems team and determine what's going on.

Thank you,
John-Paul
dgreer replied on at Permalink Reply
Rushing,

I too have received account resource overage messages from Webhostinghub. Did you ever resolve your problem?
johnpaulb replied on at Permalink Reply
johnpaulb
Hello dgreer,

I never heard back from Rushing, so I assume it was resolved. I would be happy to look at your site if you want to private message your site name to me.

Typically turning on caching is a good solution, but it depends on your specific site.

Here is a link to a simple guide I did on Working with speed and cache settings:
http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/edu/concrete5/get-started/cach...

I hope this helps,
John-Paul
gmurillo replied on at Permalink Reply
I'm using bluehost for many years ago, and in the last two year I'm disappointed because of several issues. Regular problems with sending mails, rejected by other servers. Bluehost said that's because of budget server that shares with many people, solution upgrade to more expensive plan. Problems with amount of files, is necesary to see wich files to delete, because of they send warning mails about suspend the account if don't resolve the situation. We have a little site, and we don't understand why need to delete files each every time. No concrete version 5.7 to install, only 5.6. In other sites i see that's posible to install 5.7.
I ask to arvixe hosting, and they said, that not have the problems mentioned above, and they have the 5.7 install option. I think seriously to migrate to arvixe, for a less price, I have better conditions and maybe, according to google compares, a little less performance and support in arvixe.