Finding a cheap PHP5 host

I’ve been looking for a hosting provider that would give me PHP5 at a decent price. NETsite have already upgraded to PHP5, but they’re somewhat expensive, demanding 111 DKK (about 15€) a month. There are plenty of other Danish hosting providers that will give me much more space for far less money.

Finding someone who can provide PHP5 is rather difficult. Neither FastTech, Webdomain, freepaq, NeedHost, nor Dkx can provide a PHP5 solution… At Powerhosting I could buy my own server and then get PHP5 on it, but it would be more expensive than staying with NETsite.

At ComSupport Gruppen they are waiting for official Debian of PHP5 — but those packages have been stalled for over six months now… It’s a bit unclear why Debian hasn’t got any PHP5 packages by now, especially since Piotr Roszatycki uploaded them a couple of months ago. But apparently they weren’t acceptable to the ftpmasters. But instead of working on getting the packages acceptable things just stopped :-( I think that’s rather sad… Debian is about to release Sarge, and having PHP5 in it would be a nice plus, especially if it would mean that people would upgrade to it.

12 Comments

  1. Kristian Kristensen:

    I’ve got a suggestion (as always). How about using TextDrive (http://www.textdrive.com/)?
    You get shell access, 300 mb, 3 gigs of traffic per month, 3 domains, mysql databases, you name it! And they support a whole slew of software including php5.

    I would definitely give them a look! :-)

  2. Martin:

    I’ve got a suggestion (as always). How about using TextDrive (http://www.textdrive.com/)?

    That sounds like a very interesting hosting company indeed! Very OpenSource friendly and with tons of features. The only downside is their 3 gigabyte trafic per month limit — I’ve exceeded that some months.

    I’ve contacted NEXCEES.NET because I once agreed to let them use my PHP tutorial. So I hope to have a new site up soon hosted by them. Feature-wise they have all that I want and more to.

  3. einar fredriksen:

    web10.dk provides php5 and is so cheap that it is practically free..

    http://web09.talkactive.net/phpinfo.php

  4. Martin Geisler:

    Thanks for the suggestion of Web10, I didn’t know about them.

  5. Sastro:

    This is the very best :

    Disk Storage - 4800 MB
    Monthly Bandwidth - 120 GB
    Free Domain Registrations - 1
    FULL Domains Hosted - 3
    PHP4 Support
    PHP5 Support
    MySQL Databases
    97-Day Money - Back Guarantee
    .
    .
    .
    etc

    Price for a year $119.40
    Promo Code : —
    Discount : $89.40

    So, u just pay $30 and so for next year.

  6. Sastro:

    Sory, i forgot to put the link. Here it is.

    http://www.dreamhost.com/shared/comparison.html

  7. Martin Geisler:

    I must say that it’s a very impressive setup! That’s ten times the space I have now… enough for hosting my photos online. I’ll have to think about it.

    One of the problems is that it’s only been five months since I moved to NEXCESS and they’re hosting me for free. They’ve also been very helpful with all my support questions, setting SSH up for me, etc. So I’m kind of attached to them…

  8. S:

    Stay far, far away from Dreamhost. They fail to ever mention their EXTREMELY strict CPU time quotas and frequent downtime, which crippled my site until I moved.

  9. Palle M. Hansen:

    There are many hostingproviders but i can difenetely reccomend tjekking out http://www.webhostpriser.dk for an easy list of suppliers. Thats is, if price is the most important factor.

  10. Martin Geisler:

    Thanks, that’s a nice link. I’ve since then switched to DreamHost as my main host and I’m very happy with them: hosting with no silly limits so I can have as many domains/users/databases/… as I want.

    This blog is hosted at Nexcess, though, and they are also very nice. The most impressive thing about them is their tech support: when I’ve written to them, then I’ve always gotten a reply within minutes. Highly recommended too!

  11. Lars:

    Please don’t just look at price vs. features. Depending on your sites purpose consider the level of support, service and guarantees. These factores are imposible to list in a price comparison site. One way is to check this is contact some of the hosts references, and ask them if they are satisfied.

  12. Martin Geisler:

    Hi Lars, yes, asking for others experiences is a good idea. I looked at abusiness and was surprised to see FTP access listed without mentioning SSH? As you must know, FTP is not a secure protocol (username and password is sent unencrypted over the wire) and should not be used any longer. I would not consider a webhotel without SSH.

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