I am currently using Lunarpages for VPS hosting. I have not been 100% happy with them and I need some help.

I use to use their $5.95 hosting package and one day (a few years ago) they just shut my website down. I called in and they said I needed to upgrade my account. Needless to say I am using their VPS account, have been for a while now. The cost is $45.00 per month.

I run a small tennis website. The website has two parts.
1. The main site - 5,000 page views per day
2. The Forum - 30,000 page views per day

The website has no videos and is really not that image heavy just a lot of text. The forum really only gets 100-200 posts per day depending on what is going on in the tennis world. All in all it does not seem like my site is such a large site that it needs to be on a VPS, I could be wrong.

I have not been on the Control Panel for my site for over a year. I went in today and the Control Panel is gone and they are charging money for it now. I am not paying the extra money so I have no Control Panel which is crap, that is not what I paid for or was I notified it was changing.

So my question is this... Does it sound like I have the type of account that needs to be on a VSP? I have some very inexpensive advertising on the site that does not quite cover hosting costs and I make no other money on the site, I just do it to help others play better tennis.

To be honest, I have no clue if I am being ripped off or not. I am not opposed to moving my site to another hosting company at this point in time, especially if it can be done cheaper and still have good up-time.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,

Scott Baker
removed

you should try a different web hosting. i had a forum on one of my old web sites (a year ago) and i would pay just $5 dollars a month.

Was the forum heavily used? Anyone know if SMF forums chew up more server usage (whatever that means) than say, phpBB3. They are all php based so I assume they are all pretty similar.

VPS or no VPS, I would personally choose to be on a VPS than not, for a host of valid reasons. A cloud would be even better. I guess my question would be, was the server side or bandwidth usage an issue for your host? If you could get to your stat's you could at least find out what the driving issue for them was.

There are certainly a great many providers that would want your business as we would, and not leave you out in the cold with no cPanel or access to an admin panel. Their request of $40/month is more than average to get most anything in a VPS plan, any where. Our cloud plans start at about $6-$8 a month like your current provider use to charge.

Read your host's TOS and or AUP and find out what they can remove/add without you specifically agreeing to. I would definitely contact your host and get an reason and a resolution to your situation. Who knows, you may be entitled to a refund should you find it necessary to move else where as a break in their TOS/AUP agreement at the time your accounts plan was modified without your consent.

If so, and you have not gotten satisfaction, sounds like it time to move on, really!

Regards.

From my discussions with them (when they throw information my way that I do not understand) it sounds like it is not a bandwidth thing, it is more of a server thing.

I specifically remember them saying I was using up 3% of a server when I was on what you are calling a cloud plan, and that was way too much.

My website is so small, it has to be the forum that is just throwing things out of whack. I just want to know what my most reasonable solution is and that I am not being raked over the coals. Lunarpages was amazing for me when I was on a much cheaper plan and there was virtually no downtime. I have had a lot of down time on their VPS and I think I am ready to move to a new host.

I started looking into GoDaddy but I cannot email them to ask them these questions. I think I need to call. But I am, not sure what all information to give them.

I should back up a step. What is a cloud plan? Is that the basic plan companies offer or is a cloud plan something different.

I would love to get the stats off of my webpage, that is what I went to the CPanel today, but sadly it has been removed...

Here is a good read on everything related to cloud hosting...
http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed....cloud-hosting/

It isn't the basic plan, basic would be 'shared hosting' which you were likely on at first.

Thanks guys.

Knowing what I have thrown down in here thus far, does it seem like a forum my site with a site my size would need to be on a VPS? Any recommendations on hosting companies?

Thanks!

Considering you don't have much graphics I wouldn't be happy with how your current host has treated you and would definitely change.

Here is a live chat of me talking to a HostGator service tech...

Your question is, "How will HostGator handle 4000 page views per month?"

(10:55:06 PM) System: There are currently 9 people in front of you and 79 chat technicians assisting customers.
(10:55:35 PM) System: There are currently 6 people in front of you and 79 chat technicians assisting customers.
(10:56:05 PM) System: There are currently 1 people in front of you and 79 chat technicians assisting customers.
(10:56:13 PM) Joel Hu: has entered the chat.
(10:56:15 PM) Joel Hu: Welcome to Hostgator Live Chat.
(10:56:18 PM) Joel Hu: I will be happy to assist you with that.
(10:56:33 PM) Jared: Talking about shared hosting
(10:56:43 PM) Joel Hu: 4000 page views should be fine if the media is nominal.
(10:57:00 PM) Jared: Yes it would mostly be from a forum with very little graphics, mostly just text.
(10:57:34 PM) Joel Hu: Yeah, it would be fine. Very much so. It could probably handle 4000 in a day if people werent clicking in a mad frenzy.
(10:57:41 PM) Jared: Alright, thanks Joel!

As you can see, even on just shared hosting it would work fine. If you do end up going with HostGator you should use the coupon code in my signature to (just about) get the first month free.

Hi again Tennis4you, I did not mean to imply your hosting was using a cloud server, I was just saying you would be more comfortable with a Cloud hosting account knowing that as your website demands increase so does the resources of the cloud server, as your website demand goes down the server automatically removes extra resources back to where it was to start with.

If it would be of any help to you, should you decide to leave your current host, we could move your current website for your at no charge should you decided to use one of our web hosting plans! Don't get me wrong, a shared web hosting plan as your most likely had before should be fine for your needs as you have explained them too us. I also believe the part you said about what was causing your web host to stress was "Server Side Resources" as I indicated before, but as you said it was 3%.... standard is any where from 1.5 to 3.7 in high demand,.... but 8.0 and 12.5 and above is very high, but still with the correct server management a workable situation, just a very busy production server.

Let us know how, or if we can help!

Regards.

I can suggest you to find another, much cheaper VPS hosting account with less resources. Or you can contact your web hosting provider and ask it to offer you smaller VPS account.

Originally Posted by Madman340

As you can see, even on just shared hosting it would work fine. If you do end up going with HostGator you should use the coupon code in my signature to (just about) get the first month free.

Actually, the OP is talking about 35K page views per day, which is quite far away from 4K a month.

Originally Posted by ldcdc

Actually, the OP is talking about 35K page views per day, which is quite far away from 4K a month.

I saw the same thing - query Hostgator about 35 thousand page views per day - I'd love to see their response.

Originally Posted by ldcdc

Actually, the OP is talking about 35K page views per day, which is quite far away from 4K a month.

Oh wow lol, shared hosting might not be the way to go then OP.

I'd recommend OP to choose VPS hosting account for such purposes.
There are many web hosts, just do a search.

You haven't been ripped off. Anyone could not expect a cheap VPS hosting to be reliable enough. As you know only a cPanel license costs $15/month. A feature rich VPS with 1GB or RAM or more could not be priced at less than $35 - $40 per month.

Just to confirm what has already been said, a reliable VPS won't be priced as cheaply as shared hosting. If you have a decently sized package, and it hasn't given you any problems, you're getting your money's worth.

Merry Christmas

You can try a different host for sure. If your forum was inactive for a while that could have been the concern. Forums are notorious for being invaded by bots and getting spammed a lot. This drains usage A LOT and could have been the underlying issue.
Solution would have been to update to new versions of the forum script to prevent bots from coming in.

Have ever tried Cloud hosting service?
It can be a good option to run web sites and have 100% network uptime.

Originally Posted by WebhostGIANT-Rob

Have ever tried Cloud hosting service?
It can be a good option to run web sites and have 100% network uptime.

Can agree with Rob that cloud hosting service is becoming more and more popular. there are many advantages using cloud hosting services.