It seems some hosting companies I’ve been using for a long time are going through some changes, and I’m not sure if that will be for the better or not.
A2Hosting has been great for some of my sites. I liked the addon options they offered before to tailor the hosting to my specific needs. But now, that domain forwards to “hosting.com”, and those nice addons are nowhere to be found.
My beloved SkyToaster, which hosts the bulk of my sites, went through some changes and a rocky period some years ago, but they righted the ship and have been great since then. Now, though, somethings is afoot. They’ve moved sites to new servers that have “mywebserver.co” (no “m” on the end) as the domain instead of “toastserver.com”, and DNS servers are now “usethisnameserver.com”. There were a number of issues after the sites were moved, and neither I nor any of my clients received a notice that this was happening. These new server names sound awfully generic, so I wonder about them, and from what little I have gathered so far, “usethisnameserver.com” seems to be associated with Hostgo.
So, what hosting are people using (other than MODX cloud, of course) with their MODX sites? What hosting services are currently great for both regular shared hosting and VPS, with great tech support?
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UPDATE
Just found out the Skytoaster and Hostgo are indeed associated. They are both owned by a parent company, SoZo Technologies, which looks like some sort of hosting company conglomerate. It owns a whole bunch of hosting companies. Some of these conglomerates have purchased companies and run them into the ground. Not sure if this is one of them. Word is that Skytoaster and Hostgo will at some point “merge their billing systems”. Not sure if that means they will turn into one host instead of two. The pricing is pretty different between the two companies, although offerings are similar.
What are you missing at A2 (now hosting.com)? I’ve been happy with them, and they just did a major primary domain change for me for free, though in general, my needs are fairly simple these days.
When you signed up for Performance Plus hosting before, you had the option to add “Yes, Double CPU Cores, Add 1 GB RAM $3.00 USD”, which worked well for running MODX and was cheaper than upgrading to the next higher plan, which had features I don’t need.
Also, though, I’ve found tech support at A2Hosting to be good, but a little slow.
I’m biased but I have helped move a lot of people into MODX Cloud. We try to make things easy for MODX management, and take a lot of the pain points away.
I remember spending weeks going through and manually upgrading each site. Now it’s just a click in a list.
I certainly recommend that to people because it works so well. Most of my clients want hosting that includes email, though, and other features you can get through services like cPanel.
I was debating on whether to chime in or not but seeing matdave’s response encouraged me to share.
I know it isn’t easy when you need other features that clients want in cPanel like hosts. I power all my MODX sites through MODX Coud now as well, so I can’t help with the original objective.
What I have done is find alternative ways to deal with the other wants. Email? How about actual secure email through Proton using your domain name? Those kinds of “upgrades”. Or using a different but similar domain for email, powered through cPanel hosting somewhere else. So far, it has worked out but I don’t have many to deal with and know my clients needs well.
My favourite option is to have both MODX Cloud and a cPanel host. I do this for sites that are static (these are coming back for security reasons and portability) or if I need other options, like the above example. I can always install MODX with extra charges because of the time and work needed vs MODX Cloud.
Try out the best one you know, as a test for a week or month and see if everything is working for you. If that host is a no go, try the next on your list. I suggest testing yourself, if you are concerned, before putting any clients on the platform.
I used to be with MacHighway since it was Itsamac in 2006 (and powered by Mac OS X Server and Xserves), which then was bought out by several companies over the recent years with the last being Deluxe almost destroying it during the worst move ever. Then HostPapa purchased it and de-solved it and I now have space with them. They have been good so far but not everyone has liked their support. I found the one time I needed it, to be fine.
So I know about all the ups and downs of shared hosting. It can be fine one day and the next, a dumpster fire where almost everyone looses everything including the shirts on their back. Offline backups in your own possession are vital in these situations and has to be done before anything goes wrong. There is no perfect island for shared hosting, except for MODX Cloud. They have been the best hosting I have ever experienced, since the beginning and have bent over backwards in every way to keep me as a customer. That really means a lot to me, since customer service stinks at the majority of hosting companies now.