# So who is your go to production provider?



## Lee (May 10, 2017)

I am talking personal needs here, you have something important who do you choose?

I have moved about a lot, not through bad choices per se, just because a provider appeals more than the existing. Looking back I would say the only provider that has been a consistent part of my hosting needs is Digital Ocean.

I have dumped the majority of the LET plans, the only one left is BuyVM, but the more I think about it I am not even sure now I need them for what I was intending.

Bottom line is that for my needs DO fits them all. Flexible plans, good locations, snapshots, backups, decent monitoring and alerts, auto ssh key set up, volumes and so on.

So I am beginning to think I will just stick with Digital Ocean from now on and migrate everything over. Without logging into to check I am sure it was 2013 I started using them and no, well no notable issues overall.

I am really becoming much more content creator than server tech, not that I would claim to be proficient in either.


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## WasNotWSS (May 10, 2017)

I don't have a single go-to- it really depends on the design and need of the build, and now that I've said that, we can all skip repeating that!

For a VPS where I don't want to have to worry about it spinning a disk and not being noticed (or cared about), I tend to go to Inception these days. Anthony spends as much time on his machines today as thought he's still his honeymoon. He spent two full days migrating his NAT user accounts from a deadpool provider- that's dedication.

Speaking of dedication- for dedicated hardware, I'm still kind of undecided, but Hetzner for things worthwhile, and OVH for cheaper projects.

As a corollary of the penny-pincher perspective, or "CheapyOptionButStillNotSummerHost": Virmach. Sure, they're a CC reseller, and don't sit there waiting on you hand and foot, and charge for account changes, but if you are buying off the value meal menu, you should expect that. Their KVMs are pretty solid. I abhor OVZ, but a dedicated IP at NAT pricing? Yeah, I might use that for something unimportant.


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## maounique (May 10, 2017)

Lee said:


> I am really becoming much more content creator than server tech, not that I would claim to be proficient in either.



Same here, however, my content is not strictly related to hosting.
I am not hosting anything important outside, I have own colo servers or I keep things at home. I have good net, big UPS, low power servers, static IP, finally... I only host Tor and similar nodes outside due to the necessity to spread out geographically and across providers to make tracking more difficult.


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## AuroraZero (May 10, 2017)

I generally go the dedicated route and carve up my own now a days. If I need something in an out of way place, I check Inception, and wishosting. They both have been solid to me thus far, and have good guys running them. I have had BuyVM in the past, but the lack of locations is limiting sometimes. I have some colo running about and few I am in a RTO situation with, but all in all for VPS I check those first.


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## CenTex Hosting (May 10, 2017)

What specs are you needing on a Server. Not every provider is the same. Yes they could have the same hardware, but the network and the staff make up the difference. A lot of the posters on LET are just one man shows. Depending on what your budget is you may need to bump it up a little and get a provider that has support and so on.


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## MannDude (May 10, 2017)

Yeah, I hate to say it but DigitalOcean has served me pretty well.

For budget providers I've always fancied BuyVM, SecureDragon, Hostigation and RamNode. I only have personal services running with BuyVM, SecureDragon and DigitalOcean right now, though.

If I were to have some project, a big project, that required beyond 'normal' uptime requirements and accessibility then I'm not entirely for sure who I would choose to be honest.


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## jarland (May 10, 2017)

Lee said:


> I am beginning to think I will just stick with Digital Ocean



<3 Have some time on me.

I keep a healthy amount of stuff at DO and it's definitely one of the places where I set it and forget it (aside from updating, etc). Another big one for me has been OVH's SSD VPS. They're nothing fancy but they have snapshots, and I treat the servers like cattle. If I lose one I won't even get out of bed over it. It's been great for significant redundancy deployments where all I need is a box running something simple and replacing it takes like 5 minutes.

In general that's the direction I've been going in, keeping deployments so simple that it really doesn't matter where they are. Of course, MXroute is all Incero because that's my bread and butter.


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## Jonathan (May 10, 2017)

Can't imagine why you use DO


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## HBAndrei (May 10, 2017)

My go-to providers, in no particular order: OVH, AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr.
_*Actually, on second thought, that's a pretty accurate particular order I'd hit them, and filter based on needs/prices._



Jonathan said:


> Can't imagine why you use DO



DO is great, it really is. Although, I would like to see them follow Linode and Vultr in increasing some specs.


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## Darwin (May 10, 2017)

OVH and online for dedicated servers and digital ocean and buyvm when I need a vps or two.


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## bsdguy (May 10, 2017)

Good question and I don't have an answer although I know quite some providers. maybe I don't know because I think differently, i.e. I never bet on 1 provider or vps. My dns is at different providers (typically a cheap small KVM), mail servers are double, web servers are built in a way that I don't care about a vps failing (they have multiple fronts and 1 backend but can be more backends, too, plus my fronts can stay alive for quite some time if the backend fails).

For a cheap and reliable enough vps I'd go to hostsolutions, for raw speed I'd go vmhaus, for ultracheap aruba and all in all nice (but not top) I'd go to alphahost. And, as I said, I don't need or care about high end.


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## zed (May 11, 2017)

ramnode, prometeus are my budget dependables.


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## Lee (May 11, 2017)

jarland said:


> <3 Have some time on me.



 Thanks. I saw the email before this and was like WTF... Appreciated though.


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## JonathanKW (May 11, 2017)

Darwin said:


> OVH and online for dedicated servers and digital ocean and buyvm when I need a vps or two.



Isn't OVH only overseas though? Have they built facilities/utilized facilities in the U.S yet or am I behind in the times?

I can +1 for BuyVM -- I haven't been with them very long; maybe half a year now but I definitely enjoy the services that I have received.

If I needed anything further; I could see myself getting something small-sized from BuyVM. I use to get dedicated servers and virtual private servers from Ubiquity; but I don't think they're their own entity anymore.


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## ChrisM (May 11, 2017)

JonathanKW said:


> Isn't OVH only overseas though? Have they built facilities/utilized facilities in the U.S yet or am I behind in the times?
> 
> I can +1 for BuyVM -- I haven't been with them very long; maybe half a year now but I definitely enjoy the services that I have received.
> 
> If I needed anything further; I could see myself getting something small-sized from BuyVM. I use to get dedicated servers and virtual private servers from Ubiquity; but I don't think they're their own entity anymore.



They have multiple in Canada now. I believe OVH's US one opened recently or will be opening soon.

Also buyVM is a good provider.


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## Lee (May 11, 2017)

OVH have a roadmap somewhere they are in quite a few countries now, France, Canada, Poland, UK and more coming.


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## DomainBop (May 11, 2017)

JonathanKW said:


> I use to get dedicated servers and virtual private servers from Ubiquity; but I don't think they're their own entity anymore.



Leaseweb bought them...which brings me to my regionalized list of go-to VPS providers (_disclaimer: I primarily use dedicateds these days and my go-to list of dedicated providers for production is entirely different with the exception of Hetzner_):

Singapore/Netherlands (Haarlem)/US East Coast (Virginia): Leaseweb. KVM. I've been been using their Singapore location since they opened there in 2015 without any problems, network and uptime are far superior to the others I tried before them in Singapore (DigitalOcean and a bunch of local providers). Their Netherlands and Virginia locations are also good.

Japan (Tokyo)/US West Coast (Los Angeles). Vultr. KVM. Their Japan location is very stable now and much improved over when they first opened in Japan. Los Angeles location is good and very stable. I'd pick Vultr over DigitalOcean any day because I was less than impressed by DO's stability when I used them a few years ago (New York, Singapore locations)...

Russia (Saint Petersburg and Moscow): VScale.io. KVM. See my VPSboard review, excellent stability, good network, excellent support. Vscale and their parent Selectel are the only providers I'll consider in Russia.

Italy (Arezzo)/UK (London): ArubaCloud. VMware. Very stable, excellent network in Italy. UK is also good.

Germany (Dusseldorf): Bradler& Krantz's brands ProviderService and UltraVPS.eu. KVM. Excellent stability

Germany (Falkenstein/Nuremberg): Hetzner. KVM. Excellent network. Their VPSs are good for utility roles like DNS etc.

The one thing every provider on this list has in common is stability. In the past 12 months I've opened a combined total of 0 support tickets with these providers.


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## jarland (May 11, 2017)

Jonathan said:


> Can't imagine why you use DO



I can't think of one! No but really, I often ask myself the question "Would I use DO if I didn't work there?" The answer is yes, but probably not to the degree that I do. If I had a larger scale business with higher margins I think that might be different, but I operate on the mid range of costs and the low end of margins where I make plenty of profit at scale but need more disk than I can get with an SSD-based provider at reasonable cost. Unique situation, but I did enjoy the product before I applied and that was a driving factor behind my application at least.

I still have KnownHost on my short list for managed providers too


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## ChrisM (May 11, 2017)

jarland said:


> I still have KnownHost on my short list for managed providers too



Glad to hear it!


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## Lee (May 13, 2017)

So, spent most of today looking through everything and I have got a list of what I need to move, I reckon Digital Ocean it is, 4 droplets and a cPanel VPS should cover it. Now I just need to make it all happen...


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