{"id":2403,"date":"2018-11-03T02:05:40","date_gmt":"2018-11-03T00:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=2403"},"modified":"2018-11-03T02:16:30","modified_gmt":"2018-11-03T00:16:30","slug":"simple-hosting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=2403","title":{"rendered":"Simple hosting?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ENIAC\"<\/p>\n

All I want is a simple website!<\/p>\n

OK, I have a website, and you’re probably reading this on it.<\/p>\n

But I want a simple<\/i> website. Since 2006, I’ve had a server hosted with Asergo (previously EasySpeedy)<\/a>. It ran a lot at one stage. Huge mounds of organic food found new homes through its circuits. Today it’s not so busy, but stands ready, waiting to handle any imminent Slashdot Effect when my latest masterpiece goes viral. Except it never does, and I’m basically paying for a private jet when I could make do with a rusty bicycle.<\/p>\n

In other words, a bog standard WordPress hosting offering will do just fine these days.<\/p>\n

Moving from total control of my own server to a tiny hosted offering seems limiting, and its kept me from moving for a while. But gradually I’ve come to make peace with it, and will make do with a tiny instance offering limited functionality.<\/p>\n

So what am I looking for?<\/p>\n

* a reasonably new version of PHP
\n* a reasonably new version of MariaDB, or similar
\n* perhaps even hosted locally? Other sites I help with that host locally have made me wary, but there must be some good ones out there?<\/p>\n

Space (my current server feels like it’s got backups going back to the dial-up days, so this will be a good chance to clean up), bandwidth etc. are all much of a muchness, as most offerings give some flexibility here<\/p>\n

Let’s look at some of the options.<\/p>\n

As a starting point, seeing as another site I manage is hosted there, 1-grid. They’ve gone through some wobbles. At first part of Web Africa, the hosting division got spun off into Gridhost, which then got renamed 1-grid.<\/p>\n

1-grid<\/a>
\n* R89 a month
\n* Unlimited MySQL databases
\n* PHP 5+. Really? What does this mean? PHP 5.6 and PHP 7.0 reach EOL in about a month… I happen to know PHP 7.1 is available, but sites really need to publicise this stuff!
\n* No mention of MySQL version. The instance I manage has the venerable but still supported MySQL 5.5, with no mention of possible upgrade.
\n* But, the dealbreaker. A measly 5GB storage. The next tier, offering 50GB, is R219 a month.
\n* Another big dealbreaker – they charge an extra R519 for SSL, for one domain only!<\/p>\n

Hetzner<\/a>
\n* Hetzner were one of the first locally to move to MariaDB, a major plus in my books (yes, I know I work for the MariaDB Foundation so perhaps I’m slightly biased)
\n* Another plus is they offer Lets Encrypt SSL with all hosting packages
\n* R99 for 5GB, 10GB costs for R149 a month
\n* However, they only mention MariaDB 10.0, which, while a version above MySQL\/MariaDB 5.5, is still quite old. In discussion with them, they do offer MariaDB 10.1, but again their website lags with no mention of this.
\n* PHP 5.6 and PHP 7.0 only.
\n* Only offer Debian 8. Debian stable is itself already pretty venerable when it comes out, and Debian 8 came out way back 2015. I don’t need cutting edge, but Debian 9 came out in Jun 2017, so this makes Hetzner’s offering a little on the old side.<\/p>\n

Ok, moving internationally. I moved my domains to Gandi<\/a> a few years ago. They offer a Simple Hosting service as well.<\/p>\n

Gandi<\/a>
\n* Unusually, they offer Percona Server as a MySQL equivalent. Based on MySQL 5.7, which came out at about the same time as MariaDB 10.1.
\n* Support PHP 7.2
\n* 20GB for ~R45 a month (a discount as I have domains with them)
\n* In price, space and up-to-date software they absolutely blow the local offerings out the water
\n* They also offer a free 10-day trial.<\/p>\n

Their Simple Hosting seems to be just that, really simple, not offering as much as the full CPanel or KonsoleH services offered by 1-grid and Hetzner but hey, I did start by saying I wanted a Simple website. <\/p>\n

I spend way too long investigating the governments of Luxembourg and France to decide which of the two server locations to choose, but in the end I’m sold (I chose Luxembourg for those interested).<\/p>\n

Except I’m unable to sign up, as their interface isn’t working (I tried on three browsers) and I cannot actually sign up. I contacted them a few months ago, pointing out inconsistencies in their documentation (the site mentioned MySQL\/Percona 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7 being the latest available version in various different places). The site still lists MySQL 5.6 as the latest release in at least one location.<\/p>\n

So not exactly getting a good feeling from them either.<\/p>\n

Am I destined to keep paying for my jumbo jet hosting, as it least I know it works?<\/p>\n

Any personally recommended hosting suggestions?<\/p>\n

Related posts:<\/p>\n