What hosting do you recommend for dedicated hosting?

[LT2018 0]

What hosting do you recommend for RETS Pro and why?  Do you know of any specials currently?

[RETSPRO 111]

Obviously I would recommend "us" if you're just needing to host a few sites and not needing a 3:am live chat fix for something - otherwise if you need something more robust and 24/7 humans to talk to then there are plenty of more expensive hosting providers out there to choose from.

If you are looking for a VPS then you will need to be aware that YOU are still responsible to login to it and then recompile Apache to your desired specs and then also add in your own firewall/settings yourself just like you would on a dedicated server......something most people are not even aware of when they are getting started with a VPS.

We currently lease bare metal servers from a couple of the cheapest bare metal providers out there, and since we do all our own IT setups ourselves we are only relying on them for the hardware support and Not any Software/OS support so no-need to have 24/7 support for anything other than confirming power outage issue or some other issue preventing the server from connecting on their end. We also buy Cpanel licenses from a License Vendor and with a Cpanel License you can actually submit "server related software issues" as a Support ticket directly to Cpanel and they will then login to your server to solve that FOR FREE!   -  So no "managed server fees" required if you can get your own VPS or Dedicated servers configured yourself and running with Cpanel License.

If anyone is wanting to go with a VPS and or Dedicated Server then please be aware that you will 99% of the time still need to recompile them to beef them up from their default settings to be able to handle larger RETS data transfers or it will simply time out or run out of available memory. This can sometimes be managed via local php.ini file but not always, and in some cases you will need to open up a specific TCP (port) to be able to connect to the RETS Servers. To be able to Open TCP ports then you will typically need a firewall installed and we use the FREE one called "Configserver".

SO - a quick summary on this topic;

For all the above reasons we started offering FREE 60-days of hosting on our servers with any purchase so that everyone can get started on their project the same day they make their purchase. Then once we determine what is needed to be able to manage that RETS, we can make recommendations so that you are not over paying for hosting you don't actually need - in fact many customers are running off of shared 10 to 20 dollar a month Godaddy and Bluehost etc. All depends on what you want to do.

I typically recommend a cheap dedicated server and cpanel license on a server with at least minimum 4+ gig ram and 140+ gig SSD drive (processor type/speed isn't as important as Memory and SSD don't go with old 5400 or 7200 speed hard drives as they are 100 times slower than SSD).

 

We also can take care of setting up any servers/vps OS to be compiled to handle the largest RETS and install the firewall etc for a flat one-time fee of $100 for those out there that need this done for them -

So that's my 2 cents on this - anyone else wants to weigh in on this?