anyone know a good cheap webhost?

[reubert]

I'm starting to think about my hosting requirements for my next release.

Currently my website has had consistent traffic of between 10-20GB a month for the past year. This is with just a 10mb file (Chopper). My current project is looking like it will be in the 50-100mb range. If my experience with Chopper is anything to go by I can expect data rates of up a terabyte in the first month or two and something like 50-100GB per month after that.

Any one know of a good cheap web host that has plans catered for such traffic? I'm at a bit of a loss at the moment.

Cheers,
David

[Najdorf]

a terabite... c'mon :P... 20k downloads are a lot in one month :)

no, i don't know, but when you find out please tell (heh, I'm a free rider :))

[kodex]

I use wbws.net (think thats it), works great, good speeds, cheap. Let me know if you go with it

[Jake]

I have wbws.net too. They used to be more lenient in bandwidth with their old owner Martin, but he sold the business to a new guy. The new guy will still give you a deal if you ask but its more expensive for me than before.

They have very fast support and can normally fix things for you (like PHPBB breaking)

[Najdorf]

which plan do you use? the plans listed dont seem to have enough bandwith for reubert.

I use ipowerweb,

http://www.ipowerweb.com/

its cheap, gives you 50 gigs transfer per month, good speed, fully featured, decent support, but it's certainly not enough for the traffic for reubert.

I dont know if you still can get a .mac account and host the file there ?

[reubert]

a terabite... c'mon :P... 20k downloads are a lot in one month :)

This makes for interesting reading: http://www.majicjungle.co.nz/usage_200312.html

Thanks for the links... I'm thinking it would be great if some of us could get together and pay for a dedicated server. 2 3 or 4 people splitting the US$70 a month or so makes it quite affordable. As long as major releases were staggered enough there wouldn't ever be data limit problems.

Would anyone be interested in doing this? Or does anyone happen to have a dedicated server with oodles of bandwidth they would like to share?

[Jake]

Later this year I would be when my new game is finished, but now its overkill for me.

[EvolPenguin]

I'm willing to split a server, and I don't need much space at least, not yet ;).

Alex

[Najdorf]

how the hell did you get 28347 hits in one day?

I'm jealous :ninja:

[aarku]

Don't know if they have a plan more catered to your needs or not, but www.1and1.com has been inexpensively been supplying me a reliable site for about a year now.

-Jon

[DavidJJ]

how the hell did you get 28347 hits in one day?

I'm jealous :ninja:

Hits do not equal visitors. One of my older website designs had about 30 little GIF files (before I started doing everything in CSS) along with the content etc on the page and generated, alone, sometimes 2,000 hits a day. My current art website gets about 8,000 "hits" each day, that is, 8,000 items are downloaded from my site on a daily basis.

But back on topic ... I'm a senior web designer and have found that for my own sites, my wife's sites and our freelance clients, I recommend http://www.dreamhost.com. Their service is outstanding, plans affordable/scalable and inexpensive, and they have all of the services expected these days. And I've been using web hosts since 1996. None better so far.

[OneSadCookie]

Still, they only affordably supply 500MB/month.

Hostik seems to have the best price/transfer out there, $99 for 2000GB/month, but they seem to have a poor rep on the WebHostingTalk forum.

Why is this difficult? Surely there are hundreds of shareware developers out there who have similar requirements. Why isn't there a host that caters to this?

To DanLab, Ken Drycksback (sp?), etc, how are you managing?

[reubert]

how the hell did you get 28347 hits in one day?

I'm jealous :ninja:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031215081147831
Amazing what being listed on a single site can do for your downloads.

Interestingly enough, my current host finally got back to me today, and said that they don't have a problem with 100GB+ per month.

How they can afford to host without limit is beyond me, I was waiting for a reply saying I was crazy, but there ya go. So for $25NZ I can get 15mb hosted without limit, as I have now, and for $60NZ I get 75mb unlimited, so I'm happy.

I'm still keen to have a proper server at some stage, maybe closer to release, or when actrix decides they made a mistake. So I might get back to you later Alex and Jake.

Cheers,
David

[funkboy]

David, are you planning to release your next game as shareware? What price point are you targeting? (if you want to reveal this information)

[reubert]

Yep, shareware. I'm still not sure on the price. It really depends on the number of levels I can ship with the game. $15-$20 probably.

It's still at least 6 months off, but I said that about 3 months ago. As I get better at modeling and texturing etc. It should help, but by far the majority of that time will be level building.

I reckon the actual code base is about 80% complete.

[cybermonk]

I've been thinking about going with www.canaca.com. They have 200GB/month for 4$ and 600GB/month for 17$. Doesn't sound bad :)

[sealfin]

I'll chime in with a third recommendation for WBWS.net; I've been using their hosting for three or so years and had only a few minor problems* for that time.


(*although I seem to fare quite badly as far as billing is concerned – I've had three or more invoices bounce before because they decided my hosting was for the year 1969...)

[Skorche]

What ever you do, do NOT get .Mac.

I've had an awful time with it. iDisk is always uresponsive. To upload a couple of megs takes several minutes even from my connection at school. The email is down once every month or so, and it always takes the longest out of my three accounts to check. My free pop address is more reliable usually.

[Carlos Camacho]

>www.1and1.com
I've heard of thsi company a lot. I'm surprised you've been getting good support for so long. I've ONLY read bad things.

My advice:

A dedicated server would be good if you can find four dependable people. Keep in mind at under $99 you will need to manage the server. We are talking about Linux at this price and keeping on top of everything that goes with a dedicated server can be a full time job... I KNOW! If you can find 4 good shareware devs to go 1/4 on the cost, then I highly recommend: http://www.ev1servers.net/ You won't find a better low-cost dedicated server company that offers the same.

BTW, at $99 you can also get FreeBSD installed at Ev1Server's. which should make you Mac evs more at home.

Another route to explore is a VPS, as I did with iDevGames:
http://www.powervps.com/

You can get their $89ish plan. In a sense, you are getting a dedicated server plus "almost" fully managed. I think this is a great way to go if you don't want to spend time on system admin.

If you want to get quotes on hosting, go to webhostingtalk.com.

Finally, keep in mind that many low-end dedicated servers may come with gigs and gigs of bandwidth, but the reality is, with their lower-end CPU, RAM, and network card, you are not likely to ever be able to get what is "due to you."

Also keep in mind that most regular hosts that offer 50GB+ or other very high specs with a plan do what the industry calls "overselling." Simply, they are gambling that not all their customers will utilize their account's resources. If they are very good, most users will never notice. In the long run, it catches up to them in most cases though. That is why many hosts are gone within a year IMHO.

Why is this difficult? Surely there are hundreds of shareware developers out there who have similar requirements. Why isn't there a host that caters to this?This would be a nice niche. Perhaps some day.... :D

[bmhrules]

http://microswift.com/hosting.asp If you are just bandwidth intensive and dont need much storage space, they will customize the package for you to your needs. (I was able to get 10 bucks off mine per month.)

[MarkJ]

Go Daddy (http://www.godaddy.com) is big, reliable and reasonable. Around $35/year for 25gigs bandwidth/month and half a gig storage space. Caveats are no ssh, only ftp. I use it for any one-off sites.

[zerolives]

I think segment publishing is the best webhost on the planet. www.segpub.com.au.

Full disclosure: I'm friends with the owner, but only knew him, and later became friends with him -because- of the great webhosting. They'll work with you on almost anything.

[ThemsAllTook]

I recently needed to find a new host, and I went with DavidJJ's suggestion of DreamHost in the first thread. The cheapest plan they have gives me plenty of disk space (for the moment, at least; I can forsee potentially needing to upgrade in the future), more bandwidth than I'll ever need, SSH access, all sorts of handy tools for managing the site, and plenty of other cool stuff. It's been an excellent provider so far, and I'd highly recommend it.

- Alex Diener