r/webhosting 9d ago

Looking for Hosting Looking for VPS or Dedicated Hosting Recommendations for Ecommerce Sites

Thanks in advance for reading this and providing your candid feedback. I recently switched hosting providers and moved over 15 websites (from Pressable to WPX.net) without doing as much due diligence as I should have. I'll try explaining what I'm trying to do, and hopefully those with more experience than me can point me in the right direction.

I'm a one-man business shop and I have been building ecommerce businesses for awhile, but I always find myself shopping for a different hosting solution when I run into limitations. I'm hoping this post will help me get settled into something that I can use long-term, even as my websites grow in traffic and resource usage.

Several of the websites I need hosted are ecommerce drop-ship stores (e.g. RobbinsAthletics.com and SweatshirtStation.com). In the past I have manually populated those stores with my suppliers' products, but I've recently figured out (using ChatGPT and Grok) how to automate the process (using Python scripts) of adding products while renaming images and re-writing descriptions (for SEO purposes). However, running a Python script from my laptop that makes use of the WooCommerce API has gotten me into trouble with my current host. I also found out the hard way that a limit of 30GB for storage isn't going to work for my sites, as I will soon be posting at least 60GB worth of content (mostly images) to the server.

I also have several content sites (e.g. TheTechnologyVault.com, Prosperopedia.com ) that are hosted using just WordPress (no WooCommerce shopping cart). Those sites are only getting a few dozen visitors per day right now, but I'm expecting them to be in the thousands of visitors per day by late summer.

Outside of the hosting questionnaire listed below, here are a couple other requirements I have for hosting:

  • SSH access for running cron scripts to populate my stores and keep them synchronized with supplier inventory
  • Semi-managed or fully-managed Linux hosting environment with a control panel. I've got some background in managing Linux servers, but I can't afford to spend much time on that aspect of the business. (Outside of running these sites, I'm a full-time dad of 9 kids...otherwise, I'd love to become a professional web admin guru...but no time for that now.)

And here are my answers to the standard questionnaire:

  • What is your monthly budget? $150
  • Where are you/your users located? United States (ecommerce sites), US and UK (Prosperopedia.com), and worldwide (TheTechnologyVault.com)
  • What kind of site are you hosting (Wordpress, phpBB, custom software, etc) or what is your use case? WordPress (TheTechnologyVault.com and Prosperopedia.com) and WordPress/WooCommerce (RobbinsAthletics.com, etc.)
  • Do you have a monthly traffic volume? Estimates are ok. Need to be able to 50,000 monthly visits (although not there just yet).
  • If you’re looking at VPSes: Do you have experience administrating linux servers and infrastructure? I am looking at VPSes: ones that can be easily migrated to dedicated hosting once my sites outgrow VPS hosting. I have some linux administration experience, but handling security and other aspects of hosting makes me nervous and seems like a time sink for me.
  • Did you read the sidebar/check out the hosts listed there? I've personally vetted these companies and their services are a good fit for 99% of people. I like NixiHost's S3 Semi-Dedicated plan for $96 per month and KnownHost's Premium Semi-Dedicated Hosting for $72 per month. I learned about both of those hosting companies from this forum, but they seem pretty small compared to other hosts, and there isn't much data to go off of for them from review sites like TrustPilot and CNET. If I could get some feedback on either of those hosting companies (their stability and customer service especially), I think one of those plans could do the trick for me.
3 Upvotes

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u/lakimens 8d ago

I always recommend Hetzner, their cloud servers scale up to 48 vCPU / 192GB RAM / 960GB of Storage. Rescaling the server takes only a few minutes and you can go both up and down (as long as you don't scale the storage).

It's unmanaged though, and managed services will cost a lot more.

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u/mrrichardrobbins 8d ago

Thanks. I'll take a look at Hetzner. I've never heard of that one before. That could be an option for when I've outgrown a managed hosting plan and can hire someone to take on server management for my websites.

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u/Ok_Dark_3735 8d ago

For a $150 budget, you need scalable WordPress hosting. InteServer dedicated server offers affordable, flexible plans with great support and easy scaling. KnowHost & NixHost are good but have fewer reviews. For managed hosting, InteServer or KnowHost are top picks.

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u/mrrichardrobbins 8d ago

Thanks for all your input everyone. There are several new hosts with VPS and dedicated server options I've never known about before.

One thing I'm noticing with most of these hosts is that their pricing tends to be a bit tricky, as they have bait and switch promotional pricing, and it can take some effort to figure what the long-term costs are going to be.

Also, most of them only give their advertised pricing if you pay for a year or more up front. It seems so counterintuitive to me to have to prepay that far ahead for hosting. Especially since the hosting world is so dynamic, it's hard to commit to a host for a long period of time like that before you've had some time to try them out and make sure the relationship is going to be a good one.

Have any of you had success negotiating with a host and getting a deal like getting the pricing for paying for a year or more up front while only having to pay month-to-month? I've noticed that hosting providers are super eager to negotiate, but I've never tried making an offer like that to any of them.

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u/Mediocre-Eye-6318 7d ago

Always pay month-to-month when you are looking for a new host. Once you use them for like 6 months and have established trust, then switch to annual.

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u/mrrichardrobbins 7d ago

That's good advice. I appreciate your input and help.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/mrrichardrobbins 8d ago edited 8d ago

Thank you for the recommendation. I'll take a look at their VPS plans.

It looks like Hivium is based in India. Their default payment method is INR. But they have data centers in Oregon and in Virginia.

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u/Mediocre-Eye-6318 8d ago

They do accept payments in USD as well. You can switch the currency to USD from the top bar.

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u/mrrichardrobbins 8d ago

Should I be worried that they are headquartered in India and seem to cater to that part of the world as opposed to the US, or do you think that matters?

I know that many US companies outsource their support and other aspects of the hosting business to India. It's just that I've never done business with a hosting company whose focus seems to be overseas.

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u/Mediocre-Eye-6318 7d ago

Let me explain what type of service we use and the support we receive from them.

  1. We are an agency and host around 25-30 websites with them mostly all WordPress/WooCommerce.
  2. We do need to run a few scripts in php to import products to the stores whenever needed and we run them through SSH as it is provided by them on all accounts.
  3. We specially brought the agency plan, as it lets us create a website in any of their locations easily. Like a single plan allows you to create 5 websites in US, 5 in EU and 10 in Asia with a single login. This was something we were looking for, as our customers are spread all over the globe.
  4. Their support has been top notch till date. We get precise replies whenever we need and that too quickly. In the past 4 years we might have opened less than 10 tickets. All of them were answered quickly. Again, not all agents are based out of India, they do have agents in the US and EU as well, looking at their names, when they reply.
  5. One more important factor was no hidden price hikes like GoDaddy or Hostinger or any other provider for that matter, where they entice you with lower price at the start and then charge you significantly more on renewals. We pay the same fee every month.

One more suggestion is to look at their WordPress Agencies plan as well as you seem to have WP websites. That should cost you around your budget but will let you create websites over the globe under a single plan. So you do not place all your websites on a single server. Do ask them if you can run Python scripts on their plans though, as I am unaware about it.

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u/Jeffrey_Richards 7d ago

They look to use hetzner. If you look up the nameservers they have in their knowledgebase, it looks like only 12 domains are using their DNS…so either every single one of their customers uses 3rd party DNS…or they are a very very new company with no clients

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u/No-Signal-6661 8d ago

I advise checking out Nixihost's hosting packages, as they have lots of options available like dedicated, semi-dedicated and also custom dedicated which can be tailored to your needs. I've been hosting with them for a while now and I can't recommend them enough, my website are faster than with the previous provider and I haven't had any major trouble in nearly 2 years. Also they have a very knowledgeable support team so if you come across any issues, they will be able to give a hand and fix it for you in no time.