WordPress MU

Hi,
Has someone here any expereience with ix hosting? They offer unlimitted space ofor $13?

I never heard of them, but 3,000 GB/mo transfer for $13/mo is damn cheap.

BUT!

The first thing I do when checking out a provider is to read their "Terms of Service".

The first thing i found redicilous is this: "Subscribers of IX Web Hosting’s services are prohibited from storing or posting adult content, or links to adult content, through the subscribed service.". No, can't host http://hippoporn.com/ there.

But that likely don't apply to you. What does, and what IS very distrubing, is this:

"It is acknowledged that any single account is entitled to utilize the server resources, within reason, up to what is allotted or by what is physically available. If resources become scarce, IX Web Hosting reserves the right to limit users of the affected machine to a lower limit to preserve the effectiveness of the service for all users. If a particular user is in extreme excess of what the average users of the machine have in use (actually used) of their resource allotments, that customer may be asked to remove content, cut resource usage, or relocate to a dedicated service provider. This policy only applies to web sites that are considered to be abusive in service, disk space or resource consumption and where it is evident that the "fair-use" of resources among customers has been breached, particularly in regards to disk space, bandwidth or CPU processing power utilization. Additionally, web sites that are found to contain either/or no html documents, a large number of unlinked files are subject to warning, suspension or cancellation at the sole discretion of IX Web Hosting."

And this - in summary - completely rules out using IX Web Hosting for WordPress MU hosting. Their solution to a MU becoming popular would be:

"If a "Fair-Use" breach occurs, which's determination is solely up to IX Web Hosting, subscriber may have to remove files from or reduce access to subscriber's account to an extent as determined by IX Web Hosting, in order to restore full serviceability to other subscribers affected by the breach. In any case, the subscriber will be notified of any actions that IX Web Hosting may have to take."

So, you get a mail "Oh, people started using your blogging service, so we just deleted it, it's just gone, we hope you have backups, good luck setting it up at a new provider, have a nice day".

Seriously: There is no such thing as a Free Lunch. If you're offered one then there's likely some small text saying "free lunch means a glass of water, if you want bread then you must pay" or something like that.

Unlimited space, eh? Well, at the point where your MU is using more than 10 GB of space then you're probably using CPU/etc to the point where IX Web Hosting's going to cut you off. So f**k that.

I really recommend that you consider other alternatives after reading IX's terms of service.

I have a lot of servers at http://ezzi.net/ and I find their network (and service) excellent (check out their peering agreements), and dedicated servers start at $60/mo, but hey, that's just my personal preference. There's likely other providers out there who are good.. but regardless: I'd go for a dedicated server provider rather than shared hosting for WPMU.

hostgator.com folks. Rock on.

Same thing applies to hosting, as it does to the real world.

If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

This host is "lying", or falsely advertising, but getting away with it because of their TOS. It's a dirty, disgusting practice these days.

A) They offer you something they know 99.999999% of the accounts that signup will never use. Most websites take up less than 100M of space, and use less than 2G of bandwidth on average. They know this, and bank on it.

B) If someone actually "does" use their account as advertised, they can shut you down "just because".

When searching for a host, avoid examples of the above. You'll thank yourself in the long run.

Some hosts that I have had experience with, or have good friends that have had experience with:

- Jumpline.com (VDS/VPS ~$20 a month)

- ASmallOrange.com (various)

- MediaTemple.com (various)

ASO is who i switched from, and they have excellent service, i'll vouch for that.

But the quality of their servers is questionable. Unfortunately after recieving reports that my site was down far too frequently I had to can them.