Best Server/Web Hosting for Large Membership Site

I've been searching around for a top hosting service that can be able to take care of my complete membership/affiliate site(s) that I'm working on, but I haven't been able to find something I 100% can trust.

What is one of the best companies/services to use that can easily accommodate server space for...

Large membership and affiliate network that will have thousands of members and thousands of visitors etc.

I'd appreciate it if anybody would let me know about some good ones.

can you still run in a VPS or is dedi/colo a must?

managed: if it is as demanding as it sounds, rackspace. you can try mediatemple as well. they charge so much you'd better make that money back fast. depending on your platform, it might be worth running from a grid environment, if it suits you (utility computing, you pay for what you use); they have off-site backups included, hopefully reliable.


unmanaged: say prayer, roll dice, pick any in your budget. get off-site backups with a real solution. keep praying. Whatever you choose, ask for a trial, check the hardware config yourself and figure out if your support contract is best-effort or backed by an SLA. If they use Dell/HP/Fujitsu/Sun/Supermicro you can learn the tricks and make sure your server is properly maintained (which NONE of the hosting companies does for unmanaged accounts).

alternative: make a mix of the above - rent or colo one box and replicate asynchronously to a grid service. keep your own offsite backups and retain control over DNS records (dyndns is an idea, they refresh very fast). Once your primary box fails, restore the freshest backup to the grid account and point the DNS there. Depending on your traffic, that is when you start losing money fast (since you consume grid resources to serve your site). Stay on the phone with the primary provider until they get your box back. I can share some tips on how to handle support calls to trigger the fastest response. PM me if you need anything regarding this or you want your choices reviewed.

rackspace AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!! they suck ass

get yourself a nice dedicated from volumedrive.com, get furtherassistance.com to secure it and your set

if budget is no option, get yourself into an internap datacenter on internap bandwidth and hire a real sys admin to do your work for you

prahost is also trusted one

for whitehat sites and managed vps hosting look up


support is extremely efficient - you should be fine starting out with there basic vps with cpanel/whm and then upgrading as and when you need too...

i have been using them for the past 6 years for various whitehat projects and have zero problems with them *touch wood*

Devmishra said:

Dedicated trusted networks -

1. theplanet.com
2. softlayer.com
3. rackspace.com

For VPS -

1. Liquidweb.com
2. Wiredtree
3. Geekstorage.com

Click to expand...

Persoanlly im a big fan of wired tree but theplanet and liquid web are also really good.

Wiredtree/. for sure.

Excellent support... worth the money, as they are not cheap.