Thread

...well actually, that’s what I need to know. I have a friend who I’m building an EE site for and his current host (Namesco) are as much use as a chocolate fireguard so I’m recommending he moves away.

I’ve used A Small Orange in the past and they’re quite good but US based, but I wondered if there’s a known ‘good’ host for EE - preferably UK based, but not major if it isn’t. Bit of an open question, but worth an ask.

Well, the obvious suggestion is EngineHosting, so I might as well get that out of the way.

I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even know that existed. I’ll get my coat.

You didn’t? Never seen Nevin (their CTO) chime in here every now and then? Well, suffice to say, they are certainly among the very best in the hosting industry, perfectly tuned to serving your EE content, and still reasonably priced. I personally recommend them without hesitation.

United Hosting would be my recommendation. Very reliable servers and just as importantly, outstanding service.

We’re not connected with them in any way. We’ve just been happy customers for the past 4 years.

Cheers

Dry

I’ll second EngineHosting…Have never had a problem and always great, responsive service. And, they know EE inside and out.

Thanks for the replies guys. Quick question about EngineHosting - we have a live website at the moment which we want to keep up and running until the new site is done. If we buy hosting with EH, are we OK to build the new EE site then change nameservers on the domain and change paths (etc) once it’s ready?

The question being, do I get access to the site to view/build without needing a domain name I guess!

Yes, they’ll furnish you with a something.pmhclients.com URL, and you can make the DNS switch whenever you’re ready.

Brilliant. Cheers Ingmar, I’ll get him to sign up 😊

I don’t know how your experience is Ingmar, but there is the issue of latency in Europe.

I have have two sites hosted with EE hosting and yes, it is very, very reliable, but opening the site always takes a second extra, causing the site to clearly build up all visuals.

Also, the invoices do not really comply to the rigorous European standards and SFTP is slow from here (Holland)

That said it is the safest and most reliable way to host EE, if only for the reason that your not alone when having issues with EE.

Wouldn’t it be time for a good European mirror (Or something like that, I’m totally oblivious to hosting techniques)?

Being, as I am sure you are aware, situated in Europe myself, I have not noticed such issues, neither for HTTP nor SFTP traffic. I actually moved a few customers from German hosts, and they all commented favorably on the improved response time. Also, my personal site has been at a (different) American host for years (since before 1999, go figure), and I never had any issues there, either.

I also have no legal bone to pick (if that’s an expression) with their invoicing, but then I am no tax lawyer.

It might have to do with the amount of graphics used.

If you look at this EE hosted site, you’ll probably see what I mean. I know some consider it as too much and I know Flash is one of the causes, but with almost the same setup this other site works fine in Holland, with no visible loading. In other European countries they’ll both have latency I expect.

For a standard setup differences are probably much smaller.

I’ve tried ServePath, Mosso (which showed promise, but didn’t - in my experience anyway - live up to the hype), and am now very happily with Rackspace 😊

There are a lot of factors in the “latency” of pulling up web sites, including how well your own ISP is connected or its peering connections with other major providers stretching across the Atlantic (or Pacific for our client base in Australia, Japan, etc.).  While we have a rather nice sized base of clients in Europe and Asia, and we do detailed monitoring using multiple 3rd party monitoring company’s, with monitoring locations globally, its not practical of course to monitor the endless collections of ISPs and routes packets can take. 

While the idea of building out a similar infrastructure as we have here, in Europe, has some appeal, its a major undertaking, will cost at a minimum of several hundred thousand dollars to start, not counting hiring of staff.  Based on our focus and business model would also require two locations as a primary and a disaster recovery/off-site backup location too, as long distance fiber across the Atlantic to one of our existing US locations is cost prohibitive at best for an operation of our size.  Currently the investment costs would be higher still because of the weak US dollar compared to the Euro, and the return on investment time really does not make it a practical option at this time for us.

In all honesty though, looking at the number of happy European based clients, many of which we have had for many years, I am not sure the latency issues are typical enough for us to venture down that road in the near future.

Something to consider for your actual large file (flash, video, audio files) would be to off-load those to Amazon S3 storage, setup a sub-domain like media.yourdomain.com and use the Amazon S3 European location.  This would provide a closer repository for large static content with a respected company, and leave the dynamic content to be powered from our infrastructure as you currently are doing. Amazon S3 Scroll down to the Europe pricing for storage and bandwidth costs.  It could at least be worth a test run to see if that assists in what you are seeing, though I would be curious to see if others in Europe are seeing what you are when hitting the site you mentioned above.

Let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to private message me as well here in the forums.

I am very happy with http://www.siteground.com/ and their staff (US based) but then again my needs are for small personal site with not a whole lot of traffic. But I do have to commend their support…I don’t think I have ever waited more than 15 min. for at least a response on the ticket (even at 3-4 am when I felt like ‘experimenting’...ehmm 😊).Running on shared hosting. I have heard good things about Rackspace and Dreamhost.
All the best!