Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014?

Posted by mhoad on Friday November 21, 2014 @10:29PM
from the ask-hn dept.

I am doing some pro-bono work currently with a number of NGOs who all seem to have horror stories about their web hosting platforms. I have moved some of them onto a simple VPS with DO for now but would like a better long term solution (i.e something managed).

The main problem I am having at this point is that given they are NGOs money is a big issue and finding something that would work with their price range and isn't at the Godaddy level is proving to be a bit of a challenge. I have also tried approaching WPEngine and a few others to see if they were able to arrange discount pricing for NGOs but so far have not had any luck.

I would love some feedback from you all as to what you would recommend out there. In terms of requirements I would need somewhere that will support SSL (so they can receive donations without PayPal) and a platform to handle their e-mail as Google Apps isn't an option for various reasons at this stage sadly.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated and would be helping a very worthy cause.

( 8 comments | 8 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014? by codegeek on Saturday November 22, 2014 @12:05PM (#8645991)

I recommend http://www.asmallorange.com

We use them for a dedicated server and their support is awesome. They are also not too big like the godaddys and seem to care about their customers. No affiliations, I just like them a lot.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014? by crazypyro on Monday November 24, 2014 @04:46PM (#8654922)

Someone mentioned to me in IRC that they are owned by Endurance, same owners of HostGator and a bunch of other hosts. Not sure this really affects anyone's opinion.

I have a 35/year personal site hosted there.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014? by toomuchtodo on Saturday November 22, 2014 @01:28AM (#8644966)

> I have moved some of them onto a simple VPS with DO for now but would like a better long term solution (i.e something managed).

> The main problem I am having at this point is that given they are NGOs money is a big issue and finding something that would work with their price range and isn't at the Godaddy level is proving to be a bit of a challenge.

These statements contradict each other. If money is an issue, you're going to have a hard time finding someone to manage an environment that small.

S3 + Jekyll are out if you need SSL. Have you thought about Docker containers on Digital Ocean with Cloudflare in front of the site (free tier comes with SNI SSL)?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014? by hackertoolbox on Saturday November 22, 2014 @04:34PM (#8646727)

> S3 + Jekyll are out if you need SSL.

Isn't this possible with cloudfront?

https://www.google.com/search?q=s3+website+sshl&ie=utf-8&oe=...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014? by mhoad on Saturday November 22, 2014 @11:42AM (#8645910)

I'd like to be able to hand the project off at some point and fear that much beyond a basic hosting setup will really limit their options in the future due to too much perceived complexity.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014? by hackertoolbox on Saturday November 22, 2014 @04:26PM (#8646712)

What are you going to host? static site or dynamic site, or just a wordpress site? How is the traffic of this site?

Some tools suggested from previous HN discussions:

http://www.hackertoolbox.com/tags/cloud%20hosting

http://www.hackertoolbox.com/tags/email%20hosting

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014? by triggerworlds on Saturday November 22, 2014 @12:45PM (#8646104)

Check out Zoho Mail for an alternative to Google Apps email interface [1]. Has worked pretty well for me when handling several non-proit email platforms. It isn't as pretty of an interface as Gmail or google, but I have found it to be reliable and cost-inexpensive.

[1] https://www.zoho.com/mail/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Best Web Hosting Options in 2014? by jlees on Saturday November 22, 2014 @02:21AM (#8645046)

Is Heroku sufficient? It doesn't have the email aspect but there are plenty of standalone options there. It abstracts away a lot of the headache from custom VPSen, as long as the sort of thing you want to host is supported. AWS OpsWorks could be an alternative.

[ Parent | on HN ]