It's been almost 15 minutes since I registered..

**Jack Matier** · 03-19-2008, 10:20 PM

Currently signed up for the basic package to try this baby out (though I plan to upgrade as soon as I do away with the other hosting companies). I'm loving H-SPHERE 3... it is three right?

Previously I've been hosting on hostexcellence but have received downtime with emails and they can't seem to keep up with software updates. That's slightly concerning. Overall the layout of the control panel was ugly as sin but it did a good job and I have no real bad complaints there. They treated me well. Their control panel is H-SPHERE2.

The other was lunarpages... which are good and speedy but honestly, cPanel is hell to manage effectively... I mean, addon domains being created inside of a domain, and then the subdomains being made in the same directory as the main domain makes file management for specific domains to be hellish. (seriously, that's in the "Primer" chapter of DNS and BIND). It's not how it's meant to be.

Moving on, I've been looking for something else, something better... I tried dedicated with 1and1 and theplanet as well. 1and1 was slower than a snail enjoying the molasses at the north pole and theplanet is 'nice', but.. I can't afford them and can't manage my own server either. $200 a month for testing isn't price effective for me. I'll be experimenting at home with freeBSD for that (why freeBSD? I have an affinity for freeBSD, that's all)...

Rambling on..
I came here... and thus far the atmosphere is great and H-SPHERE is a breath of fresh air. I do have much work to do, I haven't even tested the speed of things all that much (though ftp came up really fast)... and I realize that it's all very premature.. but I haven't had this great of a feeling from a host in a while... LiteSpeed based web servers.. his inner geek smiles, LOOVE IT.

I only have 1 single tiny request/question.. which is more made because I seem to have everything already. I'll ask it elsewhere though.

...and post my updates here.

**ManagerJosh** · 03-20-2008, 07:43 AM

I'm glad to hear you are having such an excellent experience with Steadfast. Enjoy the rest of your day and thanks for your testimony

**Jack Matier** · 06-22-2008, 02:34 PM

3 Months in:

The shared hosting environment is good. I have thusfar upgraded to one with more space and resources (bronze I believe). It should be noted that I'm still on web5 (not good or bad, just a note).

Network uptime/speed continues to be excellent with exception to mail which is sometimes a bit sluggish and at one point, non-responsive, I haven't experienced these things in the last week and a half, so maybe it's already been worked on/taken care of. MySQL is responding fine as far as I know. Response to tickets continues to be excellent. These guys actually read what you write and don't give canned responses.

I am finding that if there is a website that sends an e-newsletter to just short of 500 people, their shared hosting isn't really the place to do it. To that end, the first time the my email script did a burst of 500 emails, my account was deactivated. I talked to a tech about what I could do to lighten the load, and have taken the steps in doing so, but still, this shared hosting I'm on isn't a place with dedicated resources at hand.

I'm not a fan of account deactivation, since it's really a scary thing for the clients clients. Emails start rolling in to me, "What's going on?" "help! the site is down".. "This better not happen again". I can see why it happened in this case and am partially even glad it did. It's a matter of management and if one account is going to try and take all the resources, well I wouldn't be happy if my sites were affected. Shared hosting is just that, hosting that you share. That said, it would be A+ if instead of disabling a whole account they block the script or even just the domain and mail/phone the account holder.

At some point I will move to a managed dedicated server with steadfast using interworx on the server, which will probably be when I finish my next project. Right now I can barely afford the lower end shared hosting. For now I'll have to go with a virtual server environment for the pure reason of a few dedicated resources. It's a pity as I was liking shared hosting on web5, in an odd sense I'll miss it.

I recommend steadfast to anyone who is looking to host a site and namecheap for their domain management. Why? It's a good idea in case you decide to terminate a host then you can just do a redirect to another, without needing to worry about a transfer... When recommending steadfast, I still do err on the side of caution since I've only been with them for ~3 months, which isn't a long time for a host... But at the same time I really do expect great things to come from this company and the way they run things.

**BusyDad33** · 06-27-2008, 05:51 PM

Sounds like you are having the same experience most of us have had! Congrats

**risingsuns** · 08-08-2008, 03:54 PM

I do the same thing you do; host with Steadfast, and register my domain names with Namecheap. I've been with steadfast for over two years and have no complaints thus far.

**Jack Matier** · 07-25-2009, 03:37 PM

1 year, 5 months (March 2008 - August 2009)

So my dedicated didn't pan out for the reason's that I can't afford it and that I didn't go with Managed and I think ended up messing the server around a bit more than I wanted. I made some grave decisions concerning a financial endeavor and ended up with next to nothing (actually owing). It's back to shared hosting while I dig myself out.

That's not to say shared hosting here isn't fantastic. I'm running my scripts here at speeds 10x faster than bluehost and about 2x the speed of a MBP (Purchased 2008). I've always felt that difference but never put it down to numbers.

Bluehost: 0.02
Steadfast: 0.002
MBP: 0.0034

In the end, when I regain financial stability I'd be really interested in obtaining a server that's managed by an IT professional, in Canada and is interested in lowering their power consumption in the world.

The downside is that Steadfast is in Chicago. That really breaks my heart, and that hasn't happened to me with 7 other hosts I've experienced.

Peer1 is apparently good but the only services now in Canada where I can rent a server from is in Toronto, and the only control panel they have is Plesk. I just have the feeling that their IT staff stick to within the boundaries so much based on what has been decided by headquarters. A good thing because it means there's a lot of testing. But bad because it's means they will likely never experience litespeed or any other similar technologies that will make machines blaze.

Strip and optimize. Repeat.