Help me navigate the myriad of Drupal hosting options

October 3, 2012 8:32 AM

Need to find a reliable host and occasional support for a Drupal site for a non-profit. Questions abound!

I work for a non-profit and thus far we've been leasing a Drupal website from a web developer for a fixed monthly fee. This fee includes hosting and tech support, although I maintain the site on a daily basis and only call the developer if something on the site is not working as it should. The designer is now moving on and will be completely out of the picture so our organization needs to take on responsibility for hosting, management, etc. I have a few questions:

- what kind of hosting should I be looking at? The developer suggests Rackspace Cloud but at $200 per month, that's actually more than we're paying him now. What are my other options for fast and reliable hosts? I assume I need managed (cloud?) service as there is no one here to do anything other than updating content, etc. I've googled a bit and see things like Bluehost for $20 bucks a month and wondering what the difference is between what I get for $20 per month on Bluehost vs what I'd get at Rackspace for $200 per month. Is there an in between?


- the developer is going to help us get the site set up on the host of our choice but, as mentioned, we're then on our own. In the past two years, I've "broken" the site once or twice (very minor and fixed by developer in a few minutes) but if that happens again, I'll need someone to fix it. How would I find a person to step in a do that along with solving any random technical problems I might have with the site in general? Ideally, I'd like to have that person lined up now in case of problems and not have to scramble to find someone when a problem happens. Is MeFi jobs a good place to go for this?

Thanks!

posted by gfrobe to Technology (2 answers total)

have him look into dreamhost; I use them and recc them to my clients (and sign them up to get referral fee).

Dreamhost has "one click" installs of Drupal, so if it's a relatively stable and static site, run the one-click install, reproduce the site there, and don't worry about it, just do page updates (new content or whatever) and let DH take care of the other updates.

This assumes a not HUGELY custom Drupal setup with all kinds of bells and whistles, but if the dev is suggesting this action it likely isn't.
posted by tilde at 8:39 AM on October 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also bear in mind that Dreamhost has a free plan for 501c3 non-profits, so you could roll some of your budget into paid support from a freelancer or staff training. (I'm not necessarily recommending them; I have used the free plan for non-profit sites in the past and everything worked fine, but the sites were mostly really simple brochure-ware. I don't have any particular experience with their one-click installs or tech support.)
posted by bcwinters at 8:49 AM on October 3, 2012