HostMySite.com Has The Best ColdFusion Hosting

Posted May 12, 2008 at 8:30 AM

Tags: ColdFusion

Over the weekend, someone asked me for advice on ColdFusion hosting, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to really get the word out there - HostMySite.com has the best ColdFusion hosting. I have been hosting ColdFusion sites with them on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) and have had nothing but an awesome experience. As always, their support team is outstanding - it is quite exemplary. I never have any issues that go unresolved for more than half an hour; and, between their email support and their phone support (which never rings more than once before someone picks up), I know that I can always get a hold of someone immediately who will make my problems go away. Of course, with their uptime and scheduled maintenance, my problems are few and far between.

If you are interested in knowing more about HostMySite.com, get in touch with my man, Rob Matera, at (888) 660-4678 <rmatera [at] HostMySite.com>; he's a great guy and will be more than happy to answer any questions you might have about their service.

Now, I haven't always hosted with HostMySite.com. As you might remember, when the ColdFusion 8 beta came out, HostMySite.com was offering FREE ColdFusion 8 beta hosting accounts to developers looking to practice their ColdFusion 8 skills. I, of course, jumped on that opportunity. This was my first experience with them; there were a few glitches here and there with some of the security setup, but what I found out from this was that their support was world class - I was on a FREE account with them and was still received top quality support. I was so pleased with it, in fact, that when they started offering full ColdFusion 8 hosting, I signed up for a single domain account to continue my research and development testing (cf8testing.com). After a while, I was so convinced that they simply had the best ColdFusion hosting around that I switched all of my hosting services over to them - and, I haven't looked back since.

But more than just offering great ColdFusion hosting services, HostMySite.com is a huge supporter of the ColdFusion community in general. The free ColdFusion 8 beta accounts were just the tip of the iceberg; right now, they are a Gold sponsor of CFUNITED, ColdFusion's largest conference. Last weekend, I had the pleasure of talking to Crystal at the HMS booth at cf.Objective() where HostMySite.com was a Bronze level sponsor. I know that they offer free ColdFusion hosting to ColdFusion user groups (including the NY CFUG) and other "community" sites. It seems that everywhere you look in the ColdFusion world, you're sure find HostMySite.com there as well, helping to make ColdFusion possible. I don't know about you, but to me, it just makes sense to get behind a company that is so enthusiastic about getting behind my technology.

So, in conclusion, HostMySite.com is the cat's pajamas. I highly recommend them for anyone looking for top notch ColdFusion hosting with unmatched support.

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Reader Comments

+1, True

I too have been on both VPS and dedicated plans with HMS, and everything Ben says has been true for me as well. Great company.

Now Ben, I think using "The Best" in your title is a bit strong and subjective. Obviously you've had a good relationship with HostMySite.com and there are a number of other "Best In Class" ColdFusion hosting sites out there.

I've used several different hosts (for ColdFusion and otherwise) and have settled into using CrystalTech.com (http://www.crystaltech.com) for both my personal as well as client hosting needs. They too have treated me with the utmost respect and have top-notch customer service even when I only had a $3 monthly account. They too offer ColdFusion hosting plans to accommodate most anyone's hosting needs.

Just thought I should at least throw another "Best In Class" ColdFusion site into the mix for consideration.

Loved their customer support, too, absolutely top-notch, but they allowed their shared services to get pretty bogged down. After running several months with very spotty uptime on weekends and little effective remediation from HMS, I eventually moved to CrystalTech. Still on a shared host, but for the past 9 months everything just runs and I'm very happy with it, but the customer service is not nearly as snappy or efficient as HMS was.

Very glad to hear that their Virtual service is excellent, though, as I'm now dealing with the timing of that move for some of my work and I would be happy to be an HMS customer again if I had control of my own server space. I will certainly keep them in mind next time I'm looking, on both Ben's recommendation and Joe's (big M-G fan here!)

@Steve,

Fair enough. It's always a subjective expression. If I tell my girlfriend, "you're the best", obviously, I haven't had to date every other girl in the world to say something like that :) So, yeah, really the sentence reads, with context, "HostMySite.com Has (in my experience) The Best ColdFusion Hosting."

But thank you for bringing other top quality solutions to people's attention. It's good to know that CystalTech is also very good.

no subdomains
no directories above the web root
...errr...these two bug me about HMS

DK

@Douglas,

I know there are no subdomains on the single account, but they will point a number of domain names to the given directory and you can use server-side scripting to parse the URL. I know not a great solution, but it is what I played around with.

I've been using HostMySite for years now and I'm so glad I switched. If for no other reason their customer support has been impeccable. I've also found their price point per features is extremely competitive. While I don't have a VPS with them I do have several business sites using their shared hosting and I'm a very happy customer.

Aside from those 14 year boys dressed in 100% white suites they hired to hand out water at CFUnited 07 (they scared me), big thumbs up :)

My HMS experience has been the same as jfish. Good customer service. Willing to try just about anything to solve my problems, but in the end, shared servers were VERY unstable and my uptime was not good at all. I constantly had customers sending me email notifying me of a site outage. I'd call HMS support and they'd have it running again in a few minutes, but really...should I have to call??

After trying for months to get things worked out (they moved me to a couple of different servers that supposedly had fewer apps running) but I finally had to find a more stable solution. I'm now happily running along w/ 99.9% uptime with a different hosting co (more expensive). The customer service isn't as good, but when the server just works, I don't really need much customer service.

Somebody please tell me they've fixed the shared server stability problems. I'd be willing to try again with a new customer if I had some reassurance.

I will have to say I didn't have great luck on the VPS. It was a huge pain. My VPS was never setup correctly so I just dumped that idea. I spent a huge amount of time and it never really "worked". One of my friends uses the VPS though and hasn't had many problems.

We do have 3 Dedicated servers with them and they are pretty great. I am a control freak and I get worked up a lot, but overall their support staff have been great. The customer service people and the techs are always very nice; even the couple of times I had to call in the middle of the night. My site tracking we have shows we have been up 99% for the last 2 years so that can't be too bad. We moved all of our "in house" servers there a couple years ago. It's so much better to not have to worry as much :)

The only thing I would suggest if you go with them is make sure when you call or IM they know you are a dedicated server customer and have all the account information handy. They seem to take them awhile to find my account sometimes, or maybe I am impatient.

Overall though they are pretty great dedicated servers.

(We run REDHAT ES , MYSQL and Coldfusion)

The Galactic Empire uses both HostMySite (HMS) and CrystalTech (CT).

We've found that HostMySite has a slight edge support wise, and their VPS offering is a bit better.

Pricing wise, they're relatively the same, one may offer more bandwidth in exchange for storage and vice versa... you need to figure out what you want more of.

Feature wise we find CT's Control Panel way more powerful. Very fine grain control of mySQL and SQL Server 2000 and 2005 Databases. You can control CF scheduled tasks, perform database restores and backups all completely from the Control Panel (vs Enterprise Manager).

E.g. HSM supports CF scheduled tasks, but you need to contact their support team to set that up for you.

The Sith believe in maximum control over their destiny; so in our case a more powerful Control Panel is favored over faster support.

CT's support is fairly strong though. When you email their support team, the automatic reply tells you the avg wait time for a response - last week we needed some help with an orphaned DB user. The automated response said 29minutes, but the actual support person got it done in 15mins.

So how fast do you really need a support person? For the Sith, as long as it's done within 2hrs we're fine.

@Darth Sidious - Thank you that cheered up my day lol.

@Ben - Glad everything is going great for you. Unfortunately I experienced extremely poor stability on their shared plans (to be clear this was shared...NOT a VPS).

http://www.chapter31.com/2007/08/22/hostmysite-not-quite-as-stable-as-id-like/

The shared JRun instance seemed to be restarted an average of 4-6 times per day, and that was just what I noticed! The restart time (before error) was also quite short for those running site with long(er) startup times (using a framework etc).

Anyway, glad the VPS is running smoothly.

I have to agree that Hostmysite really supports the CFM community and I have seen them at a variety of shows. On the down side a good friend of mine had major issues with his VPS server, eventually closed his account, and migrated. Not sure if it is their virtual server platform or configuration, but I have seen vmware's solution work very well under a pretty heavy load.

Sounds like CrystalTech is very good, has anyone had experience with Hostek?

http://hostek.com/plans-reseller-hosting.asp

have a great week everyone

@chris
I've been with Hostek for a couple of months and so far they've been excellent. In my experience, their customer service has been super responsive. Another 3 things I like about them:
1) They're on CF8 (like HostMySite)
2) They give you space for directories above the web root
3) They have ISAPI Rewrite on their Windows servers, which (like mod_rewrite on Apache) enables you to have SES urls without the "index.cfm"

The caveat is that I haven't been with them for that long, but so far so good.

I've also had shared hosting w/HostMySite and had no complaints. The only reason I left is that it was too much space for my little sites and couldn't justify the cost. With Hostek you can opt for less disk space than HMS for under $10/month.

I've had an incredible experience with Host My Site. In the past I've used various VPS systems with them and have now settled in with a few dedicated Windows 2008 servers. I've never used their shared hosting but with the exception of a few comments on this thread have heard unanimously good things about it.

When an adult compares hosts, three things are important.

1. Uptime

2. Support

3. How stupid their Web site looks.

CrystalTech is immediately disqualified from being a "best in class" host on the merits of #3 alone. Browsing through their site, it looks like CrystalTech doesn't offer IM support either. As a grown-up, IM support is IMPERATIVE. I don't have time to synchronously devote to communicating an issue verbally, nor the leisure to wait for the delayed and less-communicable interaction of email. Instant Messaging support (Host My Site's is incredible, if one of their reps doesn't know the solution to an issue he'll quickly collaborate with others that do) is far more effective and convenient than any other method of server support there is. I promise.

I switched the last of my clients to HMS over a year ago, and will probably never use another host again. Their "managed colocation" service at about $150 per U is probably the best deal on the hosting market today. Did I mention it includes the same level of support as all of their dedicated plans?

Lesser-known-facts about HMS.

1. They have an incredible support information center. http://www.hostmysite.com/support/

2. All of their female employees are hotties that wear really tight-fitting business apparel at most

3. Their support team is cumulatively 10x more knowledgeable and adept than all other hosting support teams in the world combined. That might sound subjective, but it's not. I did a study.

I am thinking about going back with HMS. I though that they had wonderful support. I am currently hosting someplace else, and I am shopping for some host where I can host my flash remoting(CF backend) project.

I might contact the person who you say "Rob" to see about getting my site back up.

@David

Are you sure about your #2 statement? Haven't you been to their office location and seen ALL of their female employees?

Am I the only CFDynamics customer here?

Oh, I've done more than just seen them.

(I've seen them from various angles).

I have been using Crystaltech for years and am truly satisifed with their services. Their support is great and their control panel and stats are super too.

I used to use a company called Dataride.com (now Implex) but their support was absolute rubbish.

I am slightly upset that HMS and Crystaltech DO NOT allow adult hosting but can fully understand their reasons for not allowing it. Hopefully though in the future the traffic from these sites will warrant the use of a dedicated server where content won't be a problem :)

PS... The hotties at HMS are welcome to send photos through to YourHottieOfTheWeek.com :P

@Paolo,

From what I have been told by people at HMS, there is not adult policy. It came up in conversation once and I was told that as long as nothing illegal is happening, you can put any content on your site that you desire. That might not be "official", but it is what I was told by people on the inside.

Hmmm... that's strange as I contacted them personally and they tried to sell me their dedicated plan which in the beginning stage of my application dev and testing is just way too expensive.

Their AUP states:
"
...We specifically reserve the right to refuse to provide the Service to customers or End Users engaged in the dissemination of material that may cause us to be subject to attacks on our network, or that while technically legal, run counter to our corporate principles. This type of content may include, but is not limited to, racist, pornographic, hateful material or those which create customer service or abuse issues for us.
"
So I'm guessing this means that if the content doesn't cause any disruptions of service it should be ok.

Like I said earlier - I understand where they are coming from given the nature of the adult websites out there. It's just frustrating for me because the application I'm building is actually a massive CMS - the content just happens to be adult content. So to find a host that will let me run it is a but tricky.

But I will try them again... :)

Cheers.

I've been told the same thing as Ben. I've been running my adult site "LadiesLoveHotWhiteChocolate.com" (Hot White Chocolate is my rapping/stage name) for over a year now and most employees at HMS are subscribers. I've even heard that they have HWC night and the entire staff takes a 15 minute break together to check out my site.

@Paolo,

Yeah, I think its probably just a clause they throw in just in case. Like when you walk into a store and there is a sign that says, "We reserve the right to refuse service." That doesn't mean they WILL refuse service - it only means that just in case, they can do something if they want.

@David

Hahahahaha - Classic!!

@Ben

The reason for my apprehension is due to an episode I had with Crystaltech. They had something similar in their earlier AUP and I ran an adult site there successfully for over a year.

Then one day I noticed the site was showing up a page not found error and when I checked they had deleted all my files and database (basically terminating my whole account)!!

Sure I learnt a lesson in backing up that day - but the way they handled it was unprofessional and that burnt me a bit hence my fear of vague AUP's :)

@Paolo,

OH MY GOD - that is extremely unprofessional! I don't think any company should do that without at least issuing a warning. That would be a HUGE deal breaker for me, just as a reflection of the professionalism.

Hey,

Thanks for all of the positive notes! It's good to hear great feedback!

Just to confirm. We do not allow adult content on our shared servers, but we don't necessarily police the servers looking for it either. If it comes to our attention then yes we will contact you regarding the content, and maybe even take the content offline. The actions are on a case by case basis really. A VPS is still technically shared which is why we recommend dedicated, but you are 'less likely' to hear from us about it. A dedicated server would be best.

Keep posting the good stuff! We do read these :)

Hi Ben

I resurrected this to find out if you are still happy. I have found that HMS support has really deteriorated in the last few months (since the takeover). In addition I am experiencing regular downtime periods in the order of 5-9 hours on my VPS whenever they apply any maintenence. And they do this in the middle of the week. I'm looking around for someone else now.

Richard

@Richard,

I am sorry to hear about that. Things have been running quite smoothly for me. I actually haven't needed to contact support at all in the last few months.

You should harass them, maybe they'll upgrade you for free or something ;)

Opposite experience for me, support has been excellent. Yesterday I wanted to transfer 6 domains to HMS from various places (Yahoo Small Business and Go Daddy) and they replied to my ticket and initiated the transfers in under 15 minutes.

VPS today is down for 11 hours. I raised 4 support tickets. None were answered. I eventually got through to support on live chat. They said a server update had gone wrong.

Maybe it's because we're based in Europe....

@Richard,

That sucks!

You can see some monitoring reports here for a blog I run

http://www.wormly.com/site_uptime/hostid/13073

Todays stats are not there yet

Yeah i have noticed that also. The tech guy deleted the partition on our production server the other week. We lost about a day of info and it upset our customers pretty badly.

We asked them to help tune our CF server and they set the JVM to 32 MEG lol. When we questioned it they got a more senior person to look at it and he asked who the heck set it to that? We emailed back that thye had :)

It has been a little spotty lately. We have to too many sites on the server to change hosting at this point but we might have too soon.

We ordered a VPS from them and they never actually got it working so we just decided against that idea.

Let me know who you decide to go with.

https://siteuptime.com/prem_statistics.php?Id=7937&&UserId=10029

Overall for the Last 3 years with our dedicated sever it's been pretty good.

Just this past month has been a real bear, but they did fix it.

@Jeff and all

I don't want to turn this into a "knock HMS" thread, I just wanted to know about other peoples experiences, but thanks for all the info, and thanks Ben!

I'm looking at SoZO at the moment as an alternative

It almost certainly has to do with you being in Europe. I remember mentioning on a support call that I was passing through Paris and wouldn't be available by email and then hearing a score of muffled snickering in the background of the phone call. Host My Site definitely hates Europeans.

In fairness, a friend of mine had said that he had had a few issues with his HMS VPS (during the early Server 2008 phase) and that HMS's support had been lackluster, but really, he was a developer and not a server administrator and so they were doing most of the setup and configuration for him. For free I might add.

Personally, I don't really get why you'd go with a VPS instead of a colocated server. It's only 150-ish per U so you can get away cheaper than some VPS configurations with 80x the horsepower and freedom from worrying about parallel or host conflicts.

If I remember correctly, Hyper V standalone is pretty close to free if you have legitimate reasons to virtualize, and you can get copies of 2008 Web for under $400 a pop (Note: A single CF 8 license can be installed across all virtual machines on a single two-processor-or-less server).

I wasn't trying to either that's why i went back and posted our up time like Ben did :).

Sometimes bad things happen. It's the nature of computers, but like I said they did get me back up and running.

@dave - em isn't the reason you go with a managed VPS because you dont want to be bothered with System Admin?

I have nad nothing but problems with hostmysite! Both PHP and Cold Fusion services are fine, but tech support is completely frustrating.

Here is an example of my latest dismal experience.
I called and wanted to migrate from CFMX 6.1 to CF8
The tech support person said that they would migrate the code (copy it) to a new server, and said ok, just let me know the new IP.

Then I get this letter.
Subject : (#T6360944) CF Migration
Hello,

Thank you for contacting HostMySite.com! This message is to inform you that a support ticket has been created for your account xxx.xxx
The ticket number for this issue is T6360944. We will continue working on your ticket until we have resolved the issue. If you need to contact us to inquire about the status of this issue or to supply us
with any additional information that you feel may help us to better assist you, please reference ticket number T6360944.
We will contact you soon.

Regards,
Technical Support
http://www.HostMySite.com

Then I get a second email 12 hrs latter:
Ref: xxx.xxx

Hello,

Thanks for contacting HostMySite support. Sorry for any confusion, however, your site is already on a ColdFusion 8 server. Are you experiencing any issues with your site?

We look forward to your response.

--This is quite odd, since the first support person could have also seen this. But it gets worse.

I get another letter:
Ref: xxx.xxx
Hello Daniel,
Your website has been moved over to the new server, and you can check that at the following IP address: http://76.12.205.48 Once you give us the okay, or in a few days, we will repoint the domain name to go to the new IP address. As soon as that has taken effect, we will disable the account on your old server. If you have any questions please let me know.

Thanks for using HostMySite.

Regards,
Jack Green
http://www.HostMySite.com

--Gee thanks Jack - This really makes my day.

I have to say that of the 5 or so domains I have setup at host my site - all of them require extensive communications with support, and most often these have gone about like this above.

I recommend AISO.NET for Cold Fusion or PHP, it is a smaller company but you can work with the same support person to get stuff working...

It gets worse still:
Last email I get a few hrs later informs me that the site has indeed been migrated, but upon checking I can see that the old code was migrated from days earlier - here is the lame email:

Hello Daniel,

The issue with your captcha may still be version related. After I spoke with you, I checked a couple other things, and the old server you were on (the one that the domain resolves to now) is not running Coldfusion 8. It had been installed, which is what I was seeing, but it is actually running Coldfusion 6.1 still.

All of your content had been uploaded to the new Coldfusion 8 server that Jack had sent the information for, the reason you were not seeing the content is that the index.cfm page was not set to take precedence over the under construction page. I changed that in IIS and the site can now indeed be viewed at http://76.12.205.48 as Jack had stated.

You can FTP to the new server with that IP address and your existing credentials, so you may want to try uploading the registration page to the new server. It looks like the captcha is not on the current registration page, so I cannot test this myself by copying it over. If the site does work properly on the new server, you will just need to repoint the DNS with the current name servers and let us know when it is complete.

I apologize again for the confusion, please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks.

Regards,
Zachary Hanson
===
Once again Host My Site fumbles support - Cannot tell what version of Cf is running on thier own servers.

It gets worse still. Not only was older code some migrated, but the default page was not set, the 404 custom error messages I had set up on the CF 6.1 server were not migrated, I had to call in to have them fix these issues.

Upon further testing I see that the Verity search engine was not migrated at all from the old server, and the CF sechedualer was not set up.

Clearly when running a Cold Fusion Server and performing a "migration" support should look at all of these things including custom tags if any, and make a check list with the client, rather than promising a migration and delivering only a partial and un usable amount of support.

I wish I could say this was an unusual experience for me but it is the norm at Host my Site to need to call in several times to fix problems.

I have about 30 sites hosted on CrystalTech and just started trying out HostMySite for a failry mid-sized client.

First of all CrystalTech hosting isn't that bad, I do experience a lot of down time on most of the sites though. I think they have very spotty customer support, but tend to lean towards bad. Typically they seem fairly defensive in their responses, i.e. not our fault, it's someone else on the server causing the issue, etc. Also, I had an issue with a client and copyright infringement. CT Legal was a joke. (i.e. client wasn't at fault, but CT had a knee-jerk reaction)

HostMySite, seems to have better customer support, but with my limited experience trying to move a mid-sized client to them has been nightmarish to say the least. We have now been moved to another server, because my "time-out" issues weren't being caused by my site, but someone else on the server. Yet the problem timeouts and server crashes are still occurring on the new server (This site was previously on CrystalTech, but we decided to move them to HostMySite due to CT's bad customer support).

I'm still looking for a decent CF provider, hence I found this article when searching Google.

I recently left Crystaltech myself to join HMS. I was happy with Crystaltech - very happy. There was just one feature that HMS had which CT wouldn't allow which caused me to move.

Initially there were a few hurdles in setting up my site but HMS's support were always willing to help. Admittedly, sometimes I would have to wait 12 - 48 hours for a response from their support staff but perhaps this has to do with me being in South Africa and that most of my tickets were filed on the weekends (although this shouldn't make any difference in my eyes).

Anyway - since getting everything up and running with them - I am happy and running nicely on a CF8 server. My only qualm is that I can be guaranteed that once a day my site will go down with the following error:

"Database exception caught!
Error Executing Database Query.
Detail: [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]SHUTDOWN is in progress.
"

I have a generic error handler that mails me when website errors are encountered and this error prevails at least once a day on average.
It is frustrating but something I can live with. So far :)

But overall HMS's service is good.

Just an update since I posted my opinions on 18 Sep 2008. Issues such as long outages during maintenance slots have since disappeared, and the stability of my VPS has been excellent. I'm encouraged to think that this has been a result of HMS looking at issues they had, and addressing them which is of course a good sign from any ISP. It's also worth noting that issues/expectations you have with shared hosting are different than with a VPS.

Hi - I'm reviewing the best hosting companies that offer ColdFusion 8 and have so far shortlisted 3.

No 1 - http://gearworx.net
Very competitve price. As low as $156 for 2 years!!!! and $1000 for 2 YEARS for VPS!!!! Good user reviews too.

No 2 - http://www.hostmysite.com/hosting/coldfusion/

No 3 - http://www.crystaltech.com/coldfusion8.aspx

I dont know if my categorization is correct or not...but would like to see comments from you all. I may opt for Gearworx.

@John

I'm with you as well, wondering if I should go with Gearworx or HMS. I'd love to hear some feedback about Gearworx's VPS ColdFusion offerings.

Just an update on my experience with HostMySite.com.

I was finally able to have my problematic site moved to a new shared web server and database server and everything seems to be working better. I still get an occasional crash (seefusion timeout), but it runs a lot faster.

I got to say, that I'm a little disappointed with how their technical support handled it. It's the same "It's not our fault, it must be your code, until you can prove it" mentality.

Here's a tip, I created a simple CFM page that had a average query in it. and I dumped the query result (Nothing else, just the cfquery and a cfdump). I would reload the page and you could see the amount of time it took to perform the query. It was across the board from 90ms to 40000ms or it would crash. This definitely wasn't my code, it was their DB server. So, if you are having the same problems, do this little test to see if your results stay consistent. If not, then you know it's their server.

I would like to second the request for reviews of Gearworx VPS offering. I stumbled upon them recently when researching hosts. I was set to go for AHP Hosting but with the awful pound - dollar exchange rate at the moment I have begun looking for cheaper options.

Gearworx seem to offer a really competitive and feature packed service.

Anyone use them and how have you found them?

I'm also going to checkout HMS although when I last checked I think they were quite expensive on the VPS front.

About HMS VPS Coldfusion 8 Plan.

It seems to me that HostMySite VPS 512mb CF hosting plan is useless. I'm only running CF 8 and MySQL and a very small DB and all my resources are being used.

I would recommend not even selling this plan to anyone.

After setting up CF and MySQL on the VPS 512mb plan, they told me that the lower price plan will not work. Now I have to move to the higher plan and start over.

Don't waste your time with the 512mb plan!

A classic bait (AKA 512mb) and switch (AKA 1gb) after you sign-up.

When you say all of your resources are being used, do you mean you're experiencing slow performance or that resource monitors report high-utilization?

If you load CF 8 and MySQl on a VPS HMS with 512mb it will use about 90% of you memory. 90 percent before any web traffic, web mail, stats, or adding any data to your DB.

I think it goes without saying that if you're running a production server of ANY flavor (VPS or dedicated) with only 512mb of RAM you're almost always going to want to manually configure the allocation of resources to the applications that run on it.

Both MySQL and ColdFusion let you throttle and limit the amount of RAM they consume. If you're looking to free up more memory for a mail server or other purposes (by the way a 512mb VPS probably isn't the best candidate for a combo web/app/database/mail server jack of all trades to start with), you should do the research and configure it proportionally to your goals.

Obviously ColdFusion and MySQL out of the box will use a good chunk of RAM, that's how server applications work. VPS is a solution for projects/clients that want better performance than shared hosting and can't afford to go dedicated. That's why they're smaller portions of hardware capability, they're cheaper. You can't expect the world for a few hundred dollars a month.

It is time for you to change the sticky note stating that HostMySite is a great company

Agreed. Change it to say they are the absolute best hosting company.

@Ben, Tom, John

Previously - I stated:

"The reason for my apprehension is due to an episode I had with Crystaltech. They had something similar in their earlier AUP and I ran an adult site there successfully for over a year.

Then one day I noticed the site was showing up a page not found error and when I checked they had deleted all my files and database (basically terminating my whole account)!!"

This is incorrect and I'd like to set the record straight. This was not Crystaltech I was hosting with at the time. It was in fact a company called DataRide, now called Implex (www.dataride.com).

Crystaltech on the other hand was a great company with great service and the only reason I ever left was due to the fact that I couldn't run adult advertising or even mature content on my websites.

Of the three you mentioned (gearworx, crystaltech, HMS) I can honestly say that HMS and Crystaltech are on par. Crystaltech has a better support response time than HMS, but HMS has a few features that trump Crystaltech too - such as not paying for DB backups. (Crystaltech charges $5 everytime you need to do a backup)

If it wasn't for the adult content issue, I porbably would have stayed at Crystaltech as I was very happy there. With that said though, I am also happy I moved to HMS as their service is great.

I would not recommend Gearworx though. I had numerous issues when setting up my account with them (like Database creation and FTP account creation not working as well as other issues with their "Plesk" control panel).
I spent 9 days with them and immediately moved to a different host.
Even after I told them to cancel my account - they didn't seem to be slightly bothered by it or enquire as to why I was cancelling - almost like it was expeected, or a regular occurance.

So ranking position 1 and 2 would be a tie for Crystaltech and HMS.
Gearworx would have to be 3, but I highly recommend you avoid them.

** Note **
These reviews are based purely on the shared hosting plans of all three companies. Nothing relates to VPS.

@Paolo

"Even after I told them to cancel my account - they didn't seem to be slightly bothered by it or enquire as to why I was cancelling - almost like it was expeected, or a regular occurance."

Your cancellation wasn't "expected" or a regular "occurrence". We don't inquire that's just policy but you do have the choice to provide us with factual information as to why our services are poor or what we can do to better our services. Either way, the end result it the same; you're moving on.

Sure, I admit that your account had issues with the following:

Website hosting query after activation (DZT-785902) - Bug in Plesk, resolved through ticket by providing correct information.

MS SQL Database setup issue. (MFY-661804) - account related information and how the control panel works.

RE: Database Restoration from Backup (WJG-903908) - resolved by using Parallels support.

FTP Accounts on new domain (QZA-524163) - resolved by providing information on why the FTP username and password can't be both the same.

Cancel Web Hosting (DAC-755861) - resolved and refunded.

But you have to keep in mind that setting a website takes time, effort and requires that you overcome the learning curve involved with your new web hosting account. Our dual platform isn't for the faint of heart and requires a certain level of knowledge. That's why we don't get bent out of shape if you decide to cancel. It doesn't work for everyone but the reality is that we have plenty of customers that are happy and were willing to put up with us.

In some cases, the help docs will provide more than adequate information to get your website running. In some other cases filling a help desk ticket and working with us patiently works too.

There is also the matter of customer expectations. You're approaching a new provider with a certain pretenses of being like a certain other host without allowing yourself to be acclimated with the services and support. I'm guessing that you might have been setting yourself up for disappointment. I recommend that you approach with caution and let them do what they do, then judge after they've failed.

Your tickets were answered by me personally and I did my personal best to get your website running. Was is acceptable to not have your account setup within 9 day? No. However, I did have to escalate your particular SQL related issues twice to Parallels and everyone in the industry knows that Parallels runs on a different time table, which is often frustratingly slow.

I'm sorry it didn't work out. Best of luck to you!

@ ben or other gurus out thier
I am currently on probibly the worst coldfusion hosting site period. I dont know im still a newbie. The host begins with a G ( yah i know )- dont want to promote them. I hate them to but --. I keep getting this error-- JRun closed connection. Im on a shared server, with their best plan, and a dedicated ip address. it happens randomly once or twice a day. it dosent seem to be becouse of server load becouse it not a high traffic website. the error only last like a min or two but its their---. Is it my coding or their server. Is this just jrun restarting.
Hey ben you need a donation section - like buy me a latte' !_!.
I would most definitly. your real world genius is invaluable.

Hi James,

That message is almost certainly caused by the CF server instance being restarted. The poorer hosts tend to restart CF many times per day due to resource problems and other sites on the shared server causing issues.

I had the same problem with a host I was using. Looking at the logs would show the log header repeated through the day which inferred the server was being restarted many times.

This is a very annoying problem with sites that utilise application scope caching as the site has to reinit many times per day which leads to the site taking a while to respond while it initialises.

Definetely change if you can..

Well finally I found a place to say my word about HostMySite;

First of all I would like to thank them and apologise to them at the same time; as I have been with them for more than 2 years but lately I was jumping between plans including Linux, .NET then .NET Pro then CF+ (I would explain why in a minute)

The big thanks to HostMySite is for their Support (responsiveness and cooperation;not necessary the technical knowledge which wasn't bad a t all) have been so wonderful that I can say they turned the HostMySite into HostMyHAERT.

On the other hand the apologies to them as I am leaving them after all the excellent support I had; thought the reason I am leaving is mainly the price although it is competitive for the features they offer but not necessarly ever one needed!.

If HostMySite reading this then please I need to suggest something as I felt you were as friends more than only service provider

suggestions:

1.Breakdown the packages to less features then cost

2.Why not support Flex on shared servers is really the feature going forward for ColdFusion as Silverlight for ASP.NET.

3.I would love to see Sub-Version standalone plans; or offer ColdFusion on Linux (as you used to before) or may be SVN on windows anyway that we can use it in one plan rather paying for two plans

4.The ability of using SQL 2005 Express and you might restrict it to one database as not every one needs full-blown SQL servers as in my case as developer and fan of experimental and challenging technologies but yet love friendly support (as you offer).

The reason I am leaving them might be clear as of my suggestions above; is bit pricey since I needed combination of requirements that they didn't have for the price as some other hosters

Any way finally I am settling on choosing ColdFusion as my web technology which my dream to become as my job one day; I currently do C# server side in banking and some times ASP.NET.

Any one tried CFML on Railo and if which hosting?

Thanks.

On June 21st - June 23rd, 2009, HostMySite was hit by a cyber attack. An unknown party gained access to the shared hosting services using a ColdFusion exploit and modified numerous cfform.js JavaScript files across multiple domains so that ColdFusion pages which employed the CFFORM tag also loaded a hidden iframe which then attempted to load a bloodhound virus. HostMySite was unable to immediately fix the problem and after several days finally moved the domains on the effected server to another unaffected machine. One of our clients was one such affected domain. I write because HostMySite has not disclosed the attack to its customers, even though its customers' workstations may have been infected by the virus. If you did not see the attack in-progress, and call HMS support, you would not have heard about it. For a period of two days, multiple sites were serving viruses along with their standard web content. Did anyone else experience problems during this period?

My site was one of the ones that was attacked. I'm still waiting for some sort of information release by HMS. My local machine was infeced with the Bloodhound virus.

Hostmysite.com used to be excellent but because of their rapid growth the customer service quality has deteriorated.

It is my understanding thus far that HostMySite has no plans to disclose the attack to its customers or the public. The real question is, how many other attacks have they kept secret? On a side note, four weeks ago I found one of our HostMySite ColdFusion sites was serving raw ColdFusion code to the browser. Apparently ColdFusion wasn't processing the IIS requests and IIS was just serving the ColdFusion source code for the world to see. This problem also went uncorrected for several days until HostMySite finaly moved the domain to another unaffected server. Although their customer service is responsive, the lack of disclosure and accountability has become a serious concern.

Mike - Thank Goodness someone else brought this up! I thought I was the only one!! 3 of my sites all went down on the 21st and I spent almost a WEEK trying to get them sorted out and up and running again!

It was SO frustrating working with HostMySite on this issue. They kept skirting around the issue and trying to make out as if it was something else. They kept telling me the problem was the symptom (e.g. DSN not working) rather than the cause (the bloodhound virus).

I actually managed to get a screenshot of the injected Javascript on one of my webpages. Even after showing them this they remained silent saying they were looking into it! Only when I specifically showed them the modified source code did they (half)acknowledge there was a problem. I had to follow up with them for more than FIVE days to get everything up and running again. Only once I contacted them through their live chat did they speed up the action.

And like Mike said - they never notified anyone about the problem. Only after prodding them and prodding them and asking them specifically if the problem was javascript being injected and the system being infected with the bloodhound virus did they acknowledge. Thank goodness my anti-virus picked up the trojan attack otherwise I'd be screwed right now.

Very unprofessional service from HostMySite. I had such good faith in them until this incident and now that good faith has gone straight out the door. You can not understand how frustrating it is to feel helpless with no one responding to your support tickets. I have FULL transcripts of every email ticket and screenshots of the affected site, so they can't deny it either.

At this point I'm just happy to have the issue sorted out and don't even want to waste any more time trying to get answers from them. The whole issue has just left me drained.

One good thing has come out of all of this though. I have found two other great Coldfusion hosts since that episode that I'm currently piloting my sites on and things are going great:

1)Hostek.com
They have a $5 CF plan which I thought was too good to be true. I thought what the hell, whats $5 and gave them a try. All I can say is WOW! They are faster than HMS and besides anything else $5!!!! Compared to HMS's $30! And support's pretty decent as well. I was able to get a test version of my site up with them within 2 days. And you'll be glad to know they fully support Sava / Mura CMS. HostMySite does not.

2)KickAssVps.com
I took a $35 VPS account with them specifically for setting up a dedicated box for open source Coldfusion (Railo) websites, running MySql and Railo (this is a first for me - I always used to use MS SQL and CF8).

Although they took some time with the Railo setup as it was new to them, they fully accommodated my needs and they allocated a support staff to my ticket who worked on getting Railo 3.1 (which is fairly new) integrated with the VPS as quickly as possible. I now have a VPS box with 1GB of RAM (more than enough for Railo,which uses almost half the memory CF does) and 10GB of disk space for $35/month - not bad.

In summary there are definitely a few more feasible options available now other than the typical Crystaltech / HMS / Gearworx options.

Do your homework and you'll find good deals. I have been forced to show around LOTS due to the nature of the content of some of my websites and can honestly say I have experience in most of the hosts you all are dealing with.

HostMySite deserves credit for being a good host in the past. But this last incident and their higher prices have expanded my horizons for the better and I'm in the process of moving to a new hosting family :)

Another thing I should have mentioned... I FTP'd into my site a few months ago and on accident clicked the root folder. Once I was in the root, I was confused that I could see all these different folder names. I had no idea which folder was mine so I started opening random folders.

I was able to open every customer's code folder. That's right. If I chose to be evil I could have simply right clicked and selected delete.

I called HMS to let them know and they responded with. "Oops." They did end up protecting the folders but I seriously couldn't believe I was able to navigate like that.

I really wish Hostmysite.com would step up their game. Perhaps since they got bought out by Wachovia they let their attention to detail slip.

Also, unless you get a manager their support staff is rude.

@Paolo,

As I noted back in May 2008, CrystalTech has been very solid for me since I left HMS, so give them a look as well.

- jfish

@jish.

I agree - I never had a problem with Crystaltech. I had to leave them only because they didn't allow adult content. :)

@Paolo ... aha, well, can't help you there! :D

HostMySite.com is the best ColdFusion web hosting platform that I have used. There technical support is like no other. I usually have someone on the phone by the 3rd or 4th ring.

However on occasions I do receive NULL pointer values from the database... but I worked a simple hack to get around that. I do recommend them by far... you should seriously try them. They are a little pricey considering PHP and other free languages but the will win you over with technical support.

Jody, out of curiosity what was your solution for the NULL pointer values? I've noticed that happening on our development server and my theory is that it's ColdFusion attempting to reuse a datasource connection after a MySQL ( or other db ) has been restarted ( the error happens once, on the first serve directly after a db restart ). Short of wrapping every query in some kind of try catch I haven't come up with a real solution. Thanks.

@David

For the most part you are correct.

Being that the website that I developed is very simple and doesn't have a lot of functionality.
( It's Just a Hotels Website ). I came up with a solution to grab the current request and store it in a variable.

I then pass the variables through a cflocation which redirects the page with the same request until the page returns the data.

If you have a lot of information being submitted I suggest trying something very simple and thats to store the submitted variables into an array and then store that array into a session variable and then do your refresh of the page automatically
then pass the values from the array to the DB query... Trust me it makes more sense in my head and coded out... ( I will code something and then post it or a link to it for you to see as an example )

Okay here is another solution for you...

Assume that you have this type of blog. Okay.

Now assume that you do receive null pointer values it would be a lot easier to pass the information back into the form and have the user just hit submit again... you could even have an alert box that says... ( Click Here to Submit Form ) and once its clicked just auto submit the form using javascript or just have a javascript code that automatically submits based on if the data returned null values or not.

*( once again I will code a quick example and post it or a link to it on here for you)

* Quick Note.... If your content doesn't change I highly suggest you to catch your pages. Catching can be your friend if used properly.

I apologize if this doesn't make sense as I wrote it very quickly but the code will make a lot more sense once it is written.

Jody: No, that all makes perfect sense. Thank you.

I'm actually running all dedicated servers so this won't be an issue in production luckily. I was just curious as to how you solved it. Great solutions.

Thanks again.

I just received a mail from CrystalTech.com this morning that might explain that huge downtime a lot of us experienced at HostMySite a week ago.

Considering that HMS did not offer us any explanation for the WEEK of downtime, I will take the liberty to speculate and say that this was probably a possible cause.

Before I paste the mail contents from Crystaltech, let me just state that the owner of this product, CfWebsStore, provides a fantastic service and this should not be any deterrant from using her software. Just the fact that this mail was issued shows that the author is proactive in maintaining solid and reliable code.

Here's the mail:

"
Dear Customer,

We wanted to make you aware of a potential security vulnerability in the popular ColdFusion shopping cart application CFWebstore that allows someone to upload a shell script to a vulnerable site and gain root access to the server. The blog post below gives more details and mentions that there has been a recent outbreak of attacks on servers running this application.

http://www.cfexecute.com/post.cfm/cfwebstore-file-upload-vulnerability.

We'd like to point out that we have already taken steps to minimize the potential for compromise to the server itself. However, we suggest that you take a look at the following blog post to better protect your individual website from this type of attack (it is from the developer of CFWebstore):

http://blog.cfwebstore.com/index.cfm/2009/6/30/A-Code-Snippet-to-Help-Protect-Against-Attacks.
"

Thank God people towards the end of the comments started pointing out how bad they are. When I first saw Ben Nadel comment I thought, "What the hell is talking about, they are the worst?" Then I realized that they use VPS's or dedicated servers, so they are in the minority of Coldfusion sites that are hosted. I guess HMS does a good job with that. The majority of Coldfusion sites are on shared hosting. This is where HMS has been a disaster.

The entire year of 2009 so far has been nothing but compromises. This is just a tidbit from the other day.

"When: 7/9/2009
What: Important information regarding your web server
Impact: High
Details:

This morning we identified a security issue regarding an elevation of privilege on the Windows server that hosts your website. We have identified the vector of the attack and have remediated the issue. We have also removed the injected code from all affected sites. All sites have been moved to a new server installation and all sites have been brought online. All steps have been taken to ensure the integrity and security of customer data.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you and your customers. Thank you for your patience and understanding."

The Good: They have been TRYING all this year to fix everything.

The Bad: It's not working!

30 clients all over the US, all hosed. Keep in mind many don't even use a database, so HMS "It's a SQL injection attack" doesn't apply here.

Peace and Love

@Bobby,

Like you mentioned, I have a VPS. I am happy to report that it has been great even since I posted this and the customer service continues to be very fast and helpful.

I cannot speak to shared hosting. I am sorry that you are having such experiences.

Here we go again with HostMySite and the seefusion ThreadDeath errors. We've been dealing with this all day long on a client's shared server.

Again, The HostMySite tech said "I looked at it and it seems to be working for me."

Well, I've been getting about 5-10 error message reports from the server all day long since his reply (I have it set up to cfdump and e-mail me the errors). I created a new support ticket and have been e-mailing every single error message to them all day long.

It's been 7 hours and still no reply. I'm sure I'm pissing someone off, but I'm going to keep e-mailing these until something happens.

Seriously, their support is a joke. I really wish there was a decent hosting company on this planet.

@Doug

I've been working with Coldfusion since 1996. The only company that has been flawless for us is edgewebhosting.com.

I read threads all over the place and I'm surprised how little I hear people mention edgewebhosting. The clients I have at HMS usually have already signed up there, so I have to work with their sites there. Anybody that asks me for a recommendation, or that they just tell me to choose the company, always edgeweb.

Way back in 1996 I was with a small company that went out of business in NY, but since about 2000 I've been happy with edgeweb. They are a little more expensive for their shared accounts, but in my opinion this is a case where you get what you pay for. I know they always have a booth at that CFUNITED if you go.

Hope it helps!

@Bobby Svengal

Thanks, I will check them out. Money has never really been the issues for the hosting. HostMySite was a little more expensive than CrystalTech, but it seemed like everyone was recommending them. I've moved two clients over and I got to say that I'm not going to move anymore. Both clients are having the dreaded ThreadDeath errors and HMS doesn't seem to be able to care about it or know how to fix it.

And just to give everyone an update on my current problem. I wound up setting the Application.cfc to send HMS all the threaddeath errors automatically, there were about 5-10 an hour. We didn't hear anything from support for 2 days, so we called them up. They said that there main support guy was going to be in that evening to take a look at it. And that that they thought it was a database issue.

After another two days (with continued threaddeath errors) I received an e-mail that said "I've found the problem on the server and rectified it. If you have any further questions or issues, contact us and we'll be glad to assist you." 5 minutes later the ticket was closed and 30 minutes later 5 ThreadDeath errors came in.

I really don't think these guys know what the hell is going on and at this point I'm just going to keep sending them the errors. But in the meantime, I'm going to start looking into other hosting companies.

Sad really.

Just to follow up, for those playing along at home. I am still having major issues with HostMySite.com. The problem mentioned above is still going on and at this point, its not looking like I will be recommending them to any of my clients in the future.

The above message was posted on July 17th, this is now July 24th. That's 7 days that my clients site has been crashing, constantly. Their support is a complete joke. No communications on there part at all. You have to call them to have them respond, but even then they don't know what's going on.

As of right now, I have 2 clients with them, but I will be removing them as soon as I find another hosting company. I truly didn't believe I could find a company worst than CrystalTech, but HostMySite.com wins that title.

Hahaha - this is sooo funny!

I'm busy downloading my database and website files from my HostMySite hosting (to move away from them), when all of a sudden the FTP transaction cuts out and my connection to their Control Panel dies!!

Then your Blog Reply about them constantly being down lands up in my Inbox. So I thought it's funny that they're down as it arrives, and decide to post about it here on Ben's Blog, when his site is down too hahahahaha!

Only now, 3 min later are they (and Ben) back up.

I am actually spending my weekend moving away from them. I can't handle this sort of disservice.

@ Paolo - I feel your pain. In another life I would find this funny, but for a company who's business it is to HOST WEBSITES, it downright sad the quality of service you get.

In my 13 years of dealing with hosting companies, I can truly say that I have never dealt with such an unprofessional company, ever! CrystalTech was bad, but at least they communicated what they were trying to do. HostMySite tech support ignores me, does not provide feedback and either lacks the skills to manage a hosting company or just doesn't care enough to bother with a "squeaky wheel".

Seriously, if one of my clients had a major problem, I would never, ever, ignore them for over a week. If for some reason, I couldn't get to it immediately, I would communicate that message to them and I would be damned sure I get the problems resolved. Why, because I realize that I will lose their business. Apparently HostMySite does not subscribe to this this simple business philosophy.

BTW: since I posted my last message I have recieved over 25 java.lang.ThreadDeath error messages.

@Paolo,

I've never had a bad experience, if a problem occurs it usally resolved within 10 minutes. I have mulitplie sites hosted with them. They have excellent support but the price is a little high but you get great service for it.

@Jody,

Sure - and if you read my previous posts, you'll see that up till about 2 months ago I used to rave about them too.

But recently that's changed.

@Paolo,

I hear you P. Things do change I understand that. I use to be with a hosting company ( not giving them any advertisement )that I thought was absolutely wonderful then one day I go to log into my account to review the error log, and other various things to only realize that the server had flucked up and changed all my application.adkjflad to Epplication
boy was I peed

Jody! I filed this ( null pointer datasource issue ) as a bug with Adobe and they've fixed it for ColdFusion 9 as of this morning! Woohoo.

In reference to the hacked coldfusion servers at HMS attacks last month. They did eventually respond to customers after what must have been a nightmare time for the support and server guys. I'm sure HMS servers are now alot tighter and better for it now too. Summary posted at:

http://www.coldfusionsecurity.org/post.cfm/host-my-site-accounts-locked-after-servers-comprisedg

HostMySite rules ;)

hostmysite.com/testimonials

Shared/VPS/Dedicated - all recommended.

@Bobby: "I'm surprised how little I hear people mention edgewebhosting"

Well considering their web page says they offer ColdFusion 5 webhosting or "the cutting edge technology of ColdFusion MX", I'm surprised anyone uses edgewebhosting.

http://edgewebhosting.com/Services/Shared_Hosting/

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA. CF5?!?!? WHEN DOES THAT COME OUT. BLEEDING EDGE! SIGN ME UP.

@Tariq

Good one. I find that funny myself. Come on, you can click on Coldfusion 8 after all...

I can assure you, the out of date info on the website in this case has no reflection on the quality of this company.

I have nothing to do with edgeweb, so I don't care, but it doesn't change the fact that I've been using cf hosting since 1997, and since 2000 edge has never had a single coldfusion hosting disaster like hostmysite. That being said I've hosted at cfdynamics with success as well.

All I can tell you is try them, you'll be very happy. Edge also has a $200,000 IDS that has helped prevent them from getting owned by hackers that have had their way with hostmysite shared hosting.

BTW, I was just at CFUNITED, no Hostmysite, just Edgeweb and Media3. Edgeweb has always been a sponsor.

We've been with HMS for a few years now. Overall I'd give them 8/10. We have a VPS Pro, and a couple of shared sites (low traffic).

Sure, they mess up sometimes; but generally they fix it quickly. And they don't always come clean as to *why*, which is frustrating, but we live in such a litigious society I guess I can understand that.

Support quality has definitely fallen; the good guys are really good, but they added a lot of greenhorns recently. My biggest bugbear with support is an assumption that our code is at fault (which may be true 20% of the time). Well, they do have a lot of noobs hosted there, but I think they need to better differentiate between noobs and a years of experience!

The one thing to look out for is that they tend to overload servers, leading to outages. Our current 8-way us running at 60%+ av CPU, and we have to cap our CF/SQL memory to run in the 2G partition. It seems every year or so we have to kick and scream about overloading, they move us to a clean server, and the cycle starts again....if you can afford it, go to dedicated server(s).

So are HMS golden? Less so recently. But they are still above average. But recently...only just.

I've been shopping around for a ColdFusion VPS option for our nonprofit and this blog post + comments has been a big help. However, it's hard to get a good idea of the consensus behind the best CF VPS provider at the moment. HostMySite seems to have gotten rave reviews until this year, and their merger with Hosting.com leaves future service questionable.

Are they still the go to company for ColdFusion VPS?

AD,

IMHO, too soon to tell. What I can say is that I had an issue with our VPS yesterday. Initially a hardware NIC problem, which somehow corrupted the virtualization software. They spotted the problem without my "helpful" call, and were already working the issue. 1hr downtime had me pulling my hair out, but sh*t happens, and they were working the issue and restored it as soon as possible. So so far, I have not seen any reduction in service. In fact, now they are bigger, we may even see superior offerings - e.g. I saw a lot of new stuff being advertised, like a cloud environment. With bigger datacenters (if they are smart) they should able to be better than a smaller hosting service (more redundancy, bigger/better storage arrays, etc). FYI, I estimate we have 6-8hrs unplanned downtime a year.

I've been using www.HostNexus.com for over a year now, a few months back they had a huge revamp of their site and options!

Very cheap and i've not had many problems with them, their customer support is brilliant and their live support has never been off when i've gone to speak to them!.

If any of you are temped to sign up, use this link: http://www.hostnexus.com/104.html $50 affiliate program ;)

Paul M: Thanks for the input. I guess right now I might as well go ahead and jump in with HostMySite/Hosting.com. Even after days of searching I can't find thorough examinations of and comparisons with other hosting providers. :/

I wanted to follow up with my experience using HostMySite. First of all, I want to state that I think there quality of service really depends on the type of site you are hosting with them. Just by reading this thread you can tell that some people are having problems and some aren't. MY personal experience was horrible. Matter of fact I will not be using them for any hosting from this point on.

I think that before you go with them, you need to ask yourself what type of site are you hosting. If you are hosting a site that receives a decent amount of traffic (Say anywhere above 25,000 page views) then absolutely stay away from HostMySite. But if you need hosting for a relatively small site, then what the hell, go for it. Wether it's VPS or shared, I don't think it matters as long as it's a small site without a lot of traffic.

With that being said, I had nothing but problems with HostMySite and their support is the worst I've ever encountered. They never could resolve my issues (We had a site down for over a month). They first blamed the code, then they said it was the database server, then they said their top "tech" guy needed to look at it, then they said it was because we were on shared hosting so they moved us to a VPS solution, then they said they didn't know what the problem was and left it at that. That my friends is not a sign of a good hosting provider.

We wound up moving it to Hostek.com and I swear it was like going from night to day. So far Hostek has been nothing but spectacular. Now, I'm not going to fully endorse them just yet, it's only been about a month and a half, but so far I'm very happy with these guys and their hosting plans are cheaper.

I have about 40 clients hosted at CrystalTech, HostMySite and now Hostek. When my clients on CrystalTech and HostMySite need to renew I plan on moving them over to Hostek.

Hope this helps everyone else looking for a solution. This thread seems to be the #1 source for ColdFusion hosting.

Doug: I took a look at Hostek and they seem wonderful except for one problem and that is they apparently don't provide any software support, only hardware. Perhaps I have the wrong impression but doesn't that mean that they also wouldn't be able to help resolve a problem if it's a non-hardware problem related to the code or database server? Or do I have the lingo mixed up?

That sort of support, which HostMySite/Hosting apparently provides albeit not well according to you, is critical for us because our developer isn't always available at the moment. That's something we definitely hope to change down the line but for now we would need to be able to call support and have them take a look at the site itself in the event of any problems where our developer can't be reached.

Hi - After an extensive research I finally settled down for HostingAtoZ. I'm really amazed at their quality and immediate support. Very inexpensive and very nice options...I haven't tried them for huge web applications but for few of my simple websites/applications that are built on CF 8, FarCry 5.1.8 and SQL 2005. I have no complaints till now and would suggest that you at least give it a shot!

Okay, after establishing that a VPS is probably overkill for our needs and doing more research, we've settled with Cartika's shared CF offering. They seem to have a very solid reputation as a hosting company and get generally good reviews. I hope they'll hold up, and I'll check back after a while to describe how service has been.

This is great thread - thanks to all who have shared their experiences.

I wanted to share ours. We have been with CF for the last 10+ years and have tried several service providers (most shared and few vps hosting)

1) www.lfchosting.com (1999)
- shared plan CF 5 (or 4 may be, dont remember)
- slow but mostly reliable, but then had several outages and hence we left
- reasonable price

2) www.hostmysite.com (2000)
- shared plan CF5
- excellent customer support
- lot of downtimes per day (probably because of other sites hosted on the shared server)
- a bit pricey

3) www.hostnexus.com (2001)
- shared plan CF5
- unreliable with too many downtimes
- generally good customer support (only via email)
- a bit pricey then

4) www.hostmysite.com (2002)
- vps plan CF5
- excellent customer support
- lot of outages and was not satisfied
- a bit pricey

5) www.ixwebhosting.com (2003)
- shared plan CF5
- CF5, now CF7 (no CF8)
- slow, but mostly reliable, but they would not upgrade
- bad and slow customer support response
- reasonable price

6) www.cartikahosting.com (2006)
- shared plan CF6/MX
- fast servers and very good customer support
- somehow we had problems with mySQL and CF connectivity, so we left - would reconsider them
- reasonable price

7) www.ahphosting.com (2007)
- vps plan CF 8
- fast servers and mostly quick response
- experienced lot of outages and would deem not reliable
- a bit pricey

8) www.hostek.com (2008)
- shared plan CF MX/7
- unreliable with too many downtimes
- generally good customer support
- good price

9) www.hostnexus.com (2009)
- shared plan CF8
- started good, but now unreliable with too many downtimes
- generally good customer support (only via email)
- good price

After looking at this thread, we will add the following to our consideration list:
1) www.crystaltech.com
2) www.edgewebhosting.com
3) www.hostingatoz.com
4) www.sozohosting.com
5) www.kickassvps.com
6) www.gearwrox.com
7) www.cfdynamics.com
8) www.cartikahosting.com

Thanks & Regards
HP

@AD,

I would appreciate to hear your experience with Cartika Hosting.

Thanks & Regards
HP

We started off using HMS for our ColdFusion hosting many years ago, but we ended up moving to CT after many bouts of server downtime. Customer Support at HMS was good, but our site was just down too much. We even upgraded to their semi-dedicated plan, but it was no help.

After we moved to CT (regular shared plan), the up-time was much better. We would have days went by without any downtime. However, that ended earlier this year, after we moved to CF8 from CF7. I started noticing frequent downtime. It started off 5-10 minutes downtime per day, and it got worse from there. At one point, the site was down 15-30 minutes (cumulative) per day.

We requested a move to a different server, but that didn't help. Finally we upgraded to their semi-dedicated plan about 3 weeks ago. The uptime has since improved. Downtime is now about 5 minutes or less a day.

I don't know how other people feel, but to me 5 minute downtime a day is still not quite acceptable. The tech support at CT said that the problem is not with their hosting, but with CF8. He said that CF8 is really not designed for shared hosting and that they as administrator lack many tools/features for properly managing CF shared hosting.

Is this an accurate picture of CF shared hosting? If so, this is a big negative as far as ColdFusion goes. Given that a dedicated license costs a lot, shared hosting is really the only affordable way for us to use ColdFusion. But if that means frequent downtimes, we may have to look at other platforms (eg. php).

@Uly,

I was having a very similar problem at HostNexus, however after a rather heated email they moved me, no fuss, to another server and i have to say i havent really noticed any downtime at all since. Really good improvement!

After looking at Henry Parker's list it is apparent that many hosts have issues with CF. At HN we offer many types of hosting but I have to say that CF is probably the most challenging. We are finding that we have to be unswervingly strict with resource usage which often angers clients.

We are having great successes with our new line of Dual Quad Core Xeons running RAID 10 and all servers are slowly being replaced with this model.

It doesn't take much to overload a CF server and as clients load up domains problems can arise. So hosts need to continually juggle accounts around. We have new servers coming online all the time now so if any client is not satisfied they just need to ask to be moved and we'll gladly do it.

As John stated and recommended, I have very similar and pleasant experience with Hostingatoz (http://www.hostingatoz.com). I host a few personal website with them. Prices are really good, uptime and support... I have no complaints so far.

I am in touch with William C., who is the main guy over there and he confirm that they are launching ColdFusion 9 hosting first week on next month. I can't wait to test my CF 9 site live on their servers.

@Mehul,

Yes very nice people, however several downtimes per day which was not acceptable. Hence we had to move out. I am glad you are having good luck with them so far.

@Henry Parker

What good is a list when every entry is labeled unreliable? So you're saying that you offer unreliable services to your customers who want or can only afford shared hosting? Are there any hosts that offer reliable service?

I mean honestly I am starting to become a little apprehensive here about hosting for my site. Unfortunately $25 to $50+/month for a more dedicated plan is out of my price range. To start, at least, I need something cheap, hence shared hosting.

I use Coldfusion because I know it. I would love to use PHP or some other server side scripting but I just don't know the language nor have the time to learn it. I would love to find some Coldfusion hosting that is somewhat cheap and doesn't have horrid reviews from people about weekends of downtime.

@Craig,

I would sincerely recommend you to try hostingatoz. Its very simple and inexpensive to start and I'm sure you won't regret. But yes, it depends... I don't have any complaints and it may not be the case with everyone. Say in a month you have issues, what big deal! change your hosting provider. If not, you've got your best shot.

@Craig,

The reason of the post is to share experiences so that others may benefit from it. Furthermore i am not the one offering services, i am the one using their services.

Most of these service providers were reliable to start with, but became unreliable down the road possibly after having more sites or if they have some bad sites using up all the shared resources and the service provider did not have the tools to track and isolate resource allocation.

I don't believe this is necessarily a CF problem - its more of a shared plan problem and the resource allocation that each web hosting service provides to each site.

If you were to move to VPS or Dedicated, you would not see these problems, but you land up paying more.

With coldfusion shared hosting sometimes it's difficult for all providers to keep perfect up time. Cfml messed that way - even if you have an undeclared variable on your page (you may not even notice), that's enough to cause server errors and an inevitable jrun restart and pausing the hundreds of other sites on that server. I think most of these providers are missing something mine has just adopted for me after great discussion, is that if their site starts causing errors that they be notified and givin time to correct and if not corrected their account will be takin offline until they correct it. It would solve alot of this. It's realy just simple problems and communication.

@james beuthlling,

Its not a perfect world and most of us understand that. I agree that if service providers were proactive in communications and taking immediate corrective steps, it would help tremendously.

Unfortunately most service providers (not all) deal with these issues very casually and their 1st level support simply blames your site without knowing the "abc" ColdFusion and simply restart CF server.

CF8/CF9 makes resource isolation/allocation more easier for service providers. The important thing then is for service providers to have the right expertise in there who can take advantage of the new features which would help minimize downtimes.

May i ask which service provider you are using?

Thanks in advance.

(to henry) Im with godaddy,on shared hosting. I have found their support with me to be excellent, I dont mind waiting for an email response, because i prefer email, not phone. And their uptime is really 99.99 % its pretty good. I go months without errors or shut downs. The only problems i generally caused my self being a new in the game, stuff like weak passwords and being hacked and bad coding. All of witch they intructed me how to fix. Just be polite and understanding with the staff and it works out !!

Thanks James (Beuthling). I saw few good comments on this post about hostingatoz and now about godaddy. I will try them out after my current contract ends. Thanks again.

@Henry - I have to disagree with James STRONGLY!
GoDaddy is not good! They are not CF specialists and the only way you'll benefit from them is if you need hosting for a large capacity. With regards to the CF industry, they lag behind enormously and their support staff are not specialised. Also, you will find they restrict a lot of things in their CF hosting. You get what you pay for, so look at their price. There is a reason it is so cheap. Also - have you seen anyone else recommend GoDaddy? I strongly advise you to avoid them.

@Paolo Broccardo,

Thanks for the quick post. I had heard about Godaddy before a long time, and also their issues. Seeing comments from James i thought they may have changed for good. Reading your comments appears they have not. Where do you host now? Are you happy with them?

@Henry

Crystaltech, HostMySite and Hostek all have decent service, bar the occasional downtime which seems to be prevalent with all of them.

On average I'd also rate their customer service at a 6 - 7 which isn't bad.

Recently though, to my own surprise, I moved to Railo CFML instead of Adobe CF, which is open source and free.

I then got myself my own VPS box at Kickassvps.com and haven't looked back. I pay $35pm for a VPS box and host all my sites from there. I was virtually paying that for shared hosting with HMS anyway. Only difference is now my sites never go down.

They also offer Coldfusion shared hosting for $15PM.

Their service is top notch too. I didn't have a clue how to set up the Railo webserver and their technical staff actually took the time to figure it out and virtually install it for me.

Like I said though, if you have the patience to deal with support staff that are at times not too clued up, but will pass your request on to more senior ppl if need be and in their own time, then Crystaltech and HMS are good enough. (just to echo mine and other people's experiences though, HMS is known for downtime too)

Hope that helps!

@Paolo,

Thanks. I've been wanting to move to Ralio, but did not take the time to actually transition.

So thank you for sharing your setup and your experience.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Okay, while two months isn't that long of a time to judge a hosting company, I'd like to update my earlier posts by saying I'm very impressed with Cartika. I've had zero problems with them thus far and their customer service is top notch, probably the best I've gotten from any hosting provider.

- I think you would surprised how godaddy has improved their cfml, their entry level techs dont know cfml but they have more advanced techs that no exactly what their doing. And can fix any issue, they have been very helpful with me, and my less then perfect coding. And I have been with them for about 4 years. - just so you know any shared host is about 15 a month. Thats not enough to pay a good programer for breakfast. So what ever support you can get with a shared account is a bonus. And most people arnt going to go ralio - so semi private server is not an option. unless you have lots of doe to blow, and time to waist.

Bit of a late entry but notices some conversation about Gearworx and thought I'd add a comment.

Was with them early 2009 and hated every minute. It was shared hosting but I think it gave a very good indication of their customer service abilities and even their infrastructure offerings and service levels.

I wrote a post about it here: http://frieswiththat.com.au/post.cfm/web-hosting-you-get-what-you-pay-for

Since then I have moved to http://www.gowesthosting.com/ - they offer great prices and no restrictions on CFML tags and functions. Overall I'm really very happy with them and don't see myself leaving.

Like I said, late entry but hosting is always an ongoing topic and someone might find the GoWest Hosting option helpful.

@Steve, I disagree with your comments about Gearworx. I read your blog entry and all I can think is that you've taken it personal. I don't know of your experiences but, really? What's the point of telling folks that you hated every minute of it? After all, you chose them! Besides if the "initial" contact was mediocre, why did you choose to go with them?!?

I try to post positive notes about most of my web hosting experiences. I've been with quite a few, and I've had my fair share of problems but, I just move on as fast as I can. This isn't a personal relationship that I've invested in, I pay for a service, I don't get the service that I expect, then I move on. There is no point to go on a negative posting spree!

First off, I have a Coldfusion 8 VPS server from Gearworx. I've been told that they'll upgrade free of charge when they have 9 in place.

Their customer service is okay. They don't provide phone support so, what? I've dealt with fortune 500 companies that provide phone support only to place me on hold. Not having a self-served phone service doesn't demonstrate the lack of customer service. I didn't bother asking them why because I got my emails answered within a an hour.

I initiated a pre-sales conversation with Gearworx regarding the VPS prior to my order. Their response rate was decent. Was I hesitant? You bet! There is nothing worse than confirming what others have already printed on this website as well as others, but, I was pleasantly surprised at what I found out. Mind you that I purchased a larger ticket item that provides more sales to them and I'm sure that helped me get more attention. With that in mind, I'm going to go off the tangent and say that CF is not best suited for their shared hosting since its so damn cheap!

I also challenged them to answer why they have so many negative reviews on the boards. It seems that they made a few mistakes along the way that came back to bite them in the arse. The one person I was chatting with, Ben (I guess he's support manager), explained why, which I'll refrain from regurgitating here.

I have RDP access with control over the CF administrator. Again, their shared hosting provides minimal support while the VPS provides the gamut of features in CF server. The little support I've been provided from Gearworx has been fine.

Would I recommend them? Sure, if you go VPS but, that's just me. You practice due care and due diligence and take everything with a grain of salt.

Enjoy!

@John Thanks for your comments regarding Gearworx, good points too.

I did not mean to bring a negative tone to this post and have read other comments above advising people to avoid hosting companies based on their experience and others promoting the same company based on their experience.

I apologise in advance, the below comments may be a little off the topic of this post.

My experience with Gearworx was with Shared Hosting and not VPS. It did start out nicely with pleasant communications with Ben (a nice guy). As you said I did choose them, but my opinions are expressions of regret due to a lot of frustration and wasted time.

After a short period with them it all went south. Settings and configurations were either lost or overwritten or not set up properly from the start, applications on their end were not syncing Parallel systems, I was getting licensing expiry errors regarding the Parallels system, I could not add domains and data sources. Tickets stayed unattended for very long periods of time, nearly 3 months in one critical instance (this was happening for other people too not just me). This is why I had mentioned alternative was to contact them; to call them to find out what was happening and gain a little perspective instead of feeling left out in the cold - email/ticket support consisted of extended periods of silence from their end. I would have loved to have moved on quickly like you said but there was the issue of not being able to extract data from my database in a backup due to errors (Ben had to end up extracting it and sending it to me).

Over all my experience was terrible, but it was *my* experience. I know others that experienced similar - with the same shared hosting. Only toward the end when I was leaving did the silence break and I was able to find out about various system issues they were struggling through that had cause the various problems I had experienced. I feel sorry for Gearworx, I really do think they were bitten in the arse by a few things they invested in.

If VPS hosting with them is great for you, then awesome, people should take note of your comments and look into it. I have heard rumblings of services at Gearworx having major upgrades and getting better so if someone was to post about a great shared hosting experience with them then that would also be great as it would show they are listening and taking action to get things in order.

All the best with your service. I'm super happy where I am now with CF9 at GoWest and everything has been great 'out of the box'. I'm sure Gearworx is now getting back on track and heading in the right direction, all the best to them in 2010 as well.

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