Where do people host their wordpress sites these days?
July 18, 2017 12:45 PM   Subscribe

I've been a Dreamhost user since 2002. In the last few years, They've moved me over to virtual servers and my sites (about 10 of them, all pretty low-traffic in the realm of 3-8k visits/site/month) are constantly getting out-of-memory errors. Their tech support has not been helpful and I'm feeling like it's time to move.

All of my sites are wordpress installs (which I recognize might be part of the memory stuff. I'm just not prepared to increase my monthly bill a ton because of it). It's been a long time since I went hosting provider shopping. Whats your default reliable hosting provider? I'm very tech-literate.
posted by softlord to Computers & Internet (24 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wordpress.com provides hosting. So does Digital Ocean. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/ how-to-use-the-wordpress-one-click-install-on-digitalocean
posted by GiveUpNed at 12:47 PM on July 18, 2017


I moved mine to 1and1.com when my WP sites on my old host got reaallllyyyy slowwwww and I saw an immediate improvement. I like it a lot so far but be prepared for a lot of "upgrade to this special offer" emails.
posted by The Deej at 1:20 PM on July 18, 2017


I've been very happy with SiteGround for a couple of sites, after having major issues with BlueHost & Hostgator (which are both part of the same company, EIG, as a slew of other hosting brands, many of them sitting in the same server farms with the same customer service teams and having the same outages together). Siteground's customer service and support is excellent.

(That said, I have one site still on Hostgator with no troubles at all for the last 18 months.)
posted by beagle at 1:37 PM on July 18, 2017


I've been real happy with Webfaction. I have a couple of low traffic client sites on Wordpress, plus my static site, plus TT-RSS, and at times Drupal, Ghost, and various other tools installed as I play with them, all on a $10 a month plan.
posted by COD at 1:44 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Met these guys at a trade show last year, was impressed. May be on the upper end of cost, but I think they have it going on:

https://wpengine.com/
posted by randomkeystrike at 1:47 PM on July 18, 2017


I used to recommend A Small Orange, when they were one of the little guys, but now that they are a part of A Large Borg-Like Assimilation and basically doubled their prices, I will be watching this thread with great interest.

Bonus points if it is ridiculously easy to move to said new hosting company.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 2:16 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


You can increase the memory at DreamHost. I did without problems. Here's how.
posted by TheRaven at 2:20 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Saeconding Siteground.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:33 PM on July 18, 2017


I've been on 1and1 since 2008 or so. Very happy, but a very light user.
posted by deezil at 2:46 PM on July 18, 2017


I've been happy with WPX
posted by neat graffitist at 3:27 PM on July 18, 2017


nthing Webfaction. I work with several of the top developer hostings, DreamHost, A Small Orange and the like. You CANNOT beat Webfaction's support.
posted by humboldt32 at 4:12 PM on July 18, 2017


It might be worth looking into reducing WP's memory usage, too. I know it can be a hog, but I also know it can be reigned in. Upgrading PHP, limiting PHP's allowed memory usage/threads (considering these are low traffic sites), and disabling unused plugins help a lot.
posted by destructive cactus at 4:17 PM on July 18, 2017


I've shifted our company WP marketing site into AWS (using Bitnami AMIs, MariaDB in RDS, and Jenkins for deploys) as part of a broader infrastructure overhaul over the last few months. It's proven pretty straightforward, and it gives you access to all the available toys of AWS.
posted by protocoach at 5:05 PM on July 18, 2017


I'm still recommending Pair. I host 25+ Wordpress sites with them with very little incident. (Once a few years ago I had a hacking kerfuffle, but I'm better now about security and enabling auto updates for my peace of mind.)
posted by Zephyrial at 6:03 PM on July 18, 2017


I've been using Verve Hosting since 2002. It seems to be mostly a one-woman show, but the woman in question rocks, and is quick to respond to tech-support requests. (That said, my own needs are modest, and I haven't looked around for anything else in years.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 8:10 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Indeed, you need to address the memory usage. You shouldn't be going over quota on a regular basis with a normal, mild-mannered site. In particular, I would look at your logs to see if you're getting brute forced, causing multiple threads and db queries.
posted by humboldt32 at 8:47 PM on July 18, 2017


Yeah, I'd expect you to be fine with this as well. Two possibilities occur to me first: on shared hosting, slowdowns can be caused by OTHER people's sites on the same server as yours. There's not much you can do about this but switch to a host that will lock down usage so bad sites don't drag you down. (I thought Dreamhost did this, but maybe not?) I personally use CyberLynk, and have been happy with them for years, but I've also heard good things about SiteGround. You should be able to tell if this is it by logging into your control panel when the slowdown happens and seeing what your usage is. (Your server control panel, not your WordPress control panel.) If it's in the Red zone, its you. If it's Green it's somebody else.

Alternatively, maybe it really is you, in which case it's almost certainly a badly behaving plugin or a database in desperate need of maintenance. If this is the case, a new host is neither necessary or helpful. There are some pretty good articles online that have simple steps to address these issues. You should be able to google "optimize WordPress" or "WordPress is too slow" or similar to find one.
posted by instamatic at 9:17 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Have a look at Aws Lightsail - a cheap and easy way to get started
posted by JonB at 10:27 PM on July 18, 2017


Have had great experience with Webfaction and very bad experience with WPEngine.
posted by johngoren at 12:13 AM on July 19, 2017


Response by poster: Probably once a week i get a message like this:

" Your DreamHost VPS, xxxxxxx, has just exceeded the memory allocation that you've established. If left unchecked that behavior could begin to negatively impact the VPS services of every other customer on your server.

As a result we've had to reboot your VPS, effectively restarting your virtual machine. You may experience several minutes of downtime while your services come back online.

Based on the usage pattern that we've seen today, it's clear that you'd be best served by either working to reduce your memory footprint or simply increasing the amount of memory available to your VPS."

Since all of these sites are pretty low traffic (though they each have a set of plugins and are on wordpress), I'm more inclined to move to a hosting provider that charges a flat rate and doesn't meter memory usage than spend a ton more time tweaking and/or paying another $15/month to bump up the memory max.

I am also open to the concept that I'm doing something else wrong. I have WP-Optimize plugins in each of the installs that optimize the DBs automagically.

@TheRaven: I'm not sure if its my PHP installs getting maxed out or if its the sum total of all the running sites thats bumping up against my limit.
posted by softlord at 1:51 PM on July 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Day behind, but I've been with Vervehosting since 2001 and have had no problems with them. It's a great small company that answers any questions quickly.
posted by SuzySmith at 9:02 AM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


softlord,

Upping the memory is simply treating the symptom. You have something causing you to go over quota on what should otherwise be a low impact site(s).

I'm still inclined, and more so now with your message from DH, to think you're being brute forced. That causes multiple threads and DB queries and those all add up to a large memory footprint. I would start by installing and configuring WordFence.

I don't think you'll find another provider that will give you unlimited memory. I've certainly never run across one. Your high memory usage has negative impacts on other users using the same box, so that's not really a feature that's offered.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:38 AM on July 20, 2017


Bluehost. I've been with them for years. First, they have good tech support. Second, they have tech phone support. (Dreamhost doesn't or didn't last time I checked). They are reliable, have a one-click WP set up. I've got a few Wordpress sites there and have had no problems whatsoever.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 11:55 AM on July 20, 2017


Response by poster: @humboldt32 i have wordfence installed on all of my sites. Blerg.
posted by softlord at 1:52 PM on July 20, 2017


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