Take the 2-minute tour ×

Possible Duplicate:
How to find web hosting that meets my requirements?

My website (a soccer portal, containing Joomla and SMF) in the last months has grown so much that the shared-hosting service I bought about three months ago has decided to rescind our contract and pay the remaining nine months (since the contract is for one-year).

I already searched on the net and on stackexchange too, of course, but I didn't find a solution to this problem.

The website's load is about 280'000-300'000 hits/month. That's about 10'000 hits/day. This is the main reason they rescinded the contract: we exceeded the number of processes allowed: no other reason exists.

On the web, I read they all say that "if you use a lot of resources, you need a dedicated/virtual server" (something like a VPS). Ok, so I've searched for a VPS, but I've found they are all too expensive! The cheapest I've found (on this Q&A board) is Linode, that's about 20$/month. That could be a very good solution, but I've still some doubts.

My question is: granted that some friends of mine are system analysts, so I wouldn't spend any money to administrate the server, can you suggest the cheapest and most basic hosting/server solution (I mean VPS, dedicated-hosting, shared-hosting, cloud...) for my problem?

As I've already said, our website uses two technologies: Joomla and SMF, so we need the most basic solutions. We don't offer emails to our users, we don't need subdomains, we don't need special technologies as Zope, Tomcat and so on. The most basic: PHP/MySQL. And if exists CPanel, just for ease. Linode is the best I've found, but do other solutions - according to my parameters - exist?

Thank you very much.

share|improve this question

marked as duplicate by John Conde Mar 4 '12 at 16:35


If you're getting that kind of traffic the cheapest solution is not what you'r looking for. They'll either shut you down because you're consuming too much resources again or else the server will be so oversold that your site will crawl because it can't get enough resources to function well. –  John Conde Jan 27 '11 at 17:42
So you're saying me that the cheapest solution won't fit for my portal. But just to use Linode as reference, I'd need the 30$ or 40$ plan. Would be that OK? –  Markon Jan 27 '11 at 17:59

2 Answers 2

up vote 1 down vote accepted

If you are not needing a database, then you can go with Yahoo. I, however, would suggest using godaddy's basic plan. There are some that are cheaper, yes, but what you get with them is the ability to pick up the phone and talk to someone in about 5 minutes. Make sure you get Linux based hosting.

share|improve this answer
I've specified in the question I need PHP/MySQL. –  Markon Jan 27 '11 at 18:01
Great! Then goDaddy would be the right service. –  Keith Groben Jan 27 '11 at 18:03
GoDaddy is cheap and it seems very good. Unluckily I don't have 15 reputation, so I can't vote your answer :( I'll wait for other answers, then I'll choose the best. :) –  Markon Jan 27 '11 at 18:10
Not a problem, I'm just glad to share my info. I use mediatemple now, but that is because I use grid service. For what you are looking for, goDaddy is the best place to start. –  Keith Groben Jan 27 '11 at 18:14
I've seen the Economy plan and it seems it will fit for my portal, won't it? –  Markon Jan 27 '11 at 18:22

If you are getting 10k hits daily, I have no idea why you can't spend $100 a month for a decent dedicated box. You can easily make 50 times the money of the server by advertising in your site, if you are getting the kind of traffic you are claiming.

Check our hostgator, they are the best in terms of prices and offer the best linux hosting so far in my experience.

share|improve this answer
Actually, hostgator is a good idea. Unluckily (or luckily!) the portal has grown exponentially so while we didn't use ADS in our website (to offer to our users a better experience, without ads/popups, and so on...) we're now forced to sell a banner/ads-area of our website. But in the meanwhile we've to buy a new hosting-plan, since as I've already said our host rescinded the contract. We've just 3-4 days left. Since I don't have 40$*12 (about 500$), I cannot but it now. But be sure I'll think about hostgator ASAP, when I can cover that cost. –  Markon Jan 27 '11 at 19:43
