ServInt one month review: Outstanding

Unlimited Shared hosting & Unlimited Disk Space from $5.95 - Dreamhost
Solid Managed VPS with 4 IP's from $60 - Liquid Web
Lightning Fast Dedicated Servers & 1GB RAM from $149 - Liquid Web
#1 Domain Registration with WHOIS Privacy - Just $9.95

This VPS web hosting review was started by rn701 on 2009-12-11 11:12:41:

Switched from a 4CPU/4GB $230/month dedicated server to ServInt "Signature VPS" (45 GB Disk, 1.5 TB bandwidth, 1.5GB/3GB burst, cPanel/WHM, $89/month) on Nov. 5th. It took about five hours from online order to turn-up.

We have a few Drupal websites and a couple of static "brochure" sites, and traffic had fallen off to about 100,000 page views per month on the main site and maybe 150,000 or so total so we could no longer justify a dedicated server.

We get spikes in traffic from time to time, though, so I was concerned about going to a smaller VPS server. Thankfully, I have been amazed that the performance is so much better with the ServInt VPS, even under load, which is a puzzler to me. Guess their network is a lot better than my previous provider. (In fact, I could probably downgrade to their $49 "Essential" package, but I’m hoping traffic will pick up again and I like having the extra headroom for spikes.)

We have had zero resource, performance, or compatibility problems. The CentOS LAMP stack is up to date and already had all the packages and add-ons we needed (and more) installed and configured. ServInt appears to regularly update everything with patches and security updates. They also take nightly backups at no extra charge and I believe they have options for site or file restore from different cycles, but so far I haven’t needed that.

We have full root access and your usual SSH and SFTP clients work fine. (You have to log in with a user account and SU for root SSH.) I am not a *nix or web developer person, so having cPanel and WHM included are a huge bonus for me in terms of administration. I was able to automagically move all my sites with the pushbutton cPanel account move function. There was zero drama and site moves took only a few minutes each.

WHM also has the ConfigServer Security & Firewall package installed, which my previous server did not have. This is a nice bonus and is relatively easy to configure for a little extra peace of mind.

There is also access to the Parallels Power Panel (which I don’t believe was mentioned in the turn-up email but was mentioned in their support forums). It’s a nice front end to check the status of your server, resource usage, etc. I believe you can reboot from it, too, but I haven’t had to do that. It also has a nice file manager and a Javascript SSH tool which are handy (although I use WinSCP for drag-and-drop convenience most of the time when doing major surgery on the Drupal CMS).

ServInt also has a "customer portal" where you can check your account and billing status and your server status and bandwidth usage. That is also where you access their support ticket system, which is one of the best I’ve seen.

Support has been outstanding in every way. I’ve only had four or five tickets and they have all been handled quickly, like 15 minutes or less in most cases. I have called twice and got someone on the phone both times. In all cases, ServInt’s support people have been responsive, knowledgeable, and refreshingly polite.

The only drama we’ve had so far involved a network outage on Sat. morning Dec. 5th. Apparently a network hardware problem put their entire network offline, affecting all servers hosted at their D.C. data center for about two hours. They later said this is the first time anything like that had happened since 2004.

They have done a failure analysis and offered assurances that their failover setup will be modified to prevent a similar occurrence going forward.

While it was going on, their customer service sites were also unreachable. They were clever to post updates on Twitter so customers would know what was going on. At one point they thought everything should be up and running, but a few of us were still down. We communicated via Twitter with detailed info and they were able to track down the problem segment and fix it ASAP. (I called once early on and only asked one question: "Is it my end or yours?" They said "ours and we’re working on it" so I got off the phone quickly to let them work on it.)

They were incredibly responsive and communicative during the event, and have apologized profusely to their customers. Stuff happens, and their response was as good as you can expect from any hosting provider.

So anyway, that’s a long review but ServInt appears to be a well-managed company with the resources and expertise to deliver what they promise. So far I would highly recommend them.

Thanks to everyone here who helped me narrow down my options that eventually led me to ServInt.

Join in on the original post at Web Hosting Talk, read more web hosting reviews or view our top web hosts.