Testing the Quality of Hosting Providers

JosephF

Now that I've purchased way too many shared hosting accounts on BF/CM than I'll need, how can I set each one up to test their quality (speed, features, uptime and whatever other relevant criteria)?

What is worthwhile testing and comparing and what tools and setups would be most suitable to do so? How can the results later be judged to determine the good, the bad and the ugly? What would tell me the comparative technical qualities between the various providers?

The above is regarding shared hosting. But I'd also be interested in knowing how to also compare quality between VPS accounts with my different providers.

On a tangential note, after deciding which host to use as my primary provider, what use can I make of all my extra shared hosting accounts with the other providers? And the same question with the extra VPS accounts.

totally_not_banned

You could upload a one gigabyte test file and post the link so everyone can do speed tests from all their servers.

remy

You shouldn't buy it if you don't need it.
You can also transfer the services to someone who will use them

Edit: You can also leave the servers idle, taking care to monitor them closely and complain loudly when there is a problem

SlowDD

I use uptimerobot. You can get a free account with a few monitors. Public dashboard example: https://stats.uptimerobot.com/qEGMZIL7kZ

COLBYLICIOUS

@SlowDD said:
I use uptimerobot. You can get a free account with a few monitors. Public dashboard example: https://stats.uptimerobot.com/qEGMZIL7kZ

You should try HetrixTools.

kidrock

You can install the below plugins on WordPress site in each shared hosting and then test their performance.
1. https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpbenchmark/
2. https://wordpress.org/plugins/mywebtonet-performancestats/
3. https://makeitwork.press/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-benchmark-plugin/

And then you can test the site speed/performance here: https://tools.keycdn.com/

vsys_host

Hello @josephf

You can compare the following indicators/criteria/points

Shared hosting:
- disk performance
- control panel provided
- limits on domains\aliases\mail
- backups
- support

VPS:
- disk performance, CPU, network
- control panel
- backups
- support

JosephF

How can you determine whether a provider oversold or over-provisioned a shared web server or VPS?

darkimmortal

ioping -R, ping -OD somewhere | grep -v --line-buffered '64 bytes from', your choice of graphing tool for /proc/diskstats especially watching time per operation outliers

IO latency and network dropouts of a few seconds per day/week are more interesting to me than YABS / throughput benchmarks. Any summer host can undersell for impressive YABS or have network uptime good enough for Hetrix to report 100%, but it is exceedingly difficult to match the IO and network stability of a dedi from a major provider or a 'VPS' from one of the major cloud providers

SlowDD

@COLBYLICIOUS said:

@SlowDD said:
I use uptimerobot. You can get a free account with a few monitors. Public dashboard example: https://stats.uptimerobot.com/qEGMZIL7kZ

You should try HetrixTools.

I’ve checked their website, but the only difference I see is the 1min check for 15 domains. Since those are just playing around sites I do not mind.