When you are ready to put a Drupal site online, be aware that choosing a hosting provider is not as simple as finding the lowest monthly price offered and if the hosting service has a website that looks legitimate. Unlike static websites, Drupal requires a database and that your web server has PHP installed.

Even though many web hosting services allow you to create MySQL databases and come equipped with PHP, they are all not created equal. I learned this lesson the hard way. These are some things to consider before making a hosting purchase for Drupal websites, as well as some of the experiences I have had with individual hosting providers.

Modifying your php.ini file

I posted an article about modifying the values of your php.ini file to insure Drupal runs smooth and fast. These modifications to php.ini do not just apply to your local development machine. When you are running a live Drupal site, you may also need to adjust your php.ini file to make sure you can upload large files (your PHP post_max_size limit) and that your memory limit is large enough for operations like image processing (the GD library part of Image API recommends a minimum of 96 MB). Some shared hosting services do not allow you to make modifications to your php.ini file, or they cap the size of your PHP memory limit. Make sure you know what you are getting yourself into before purchasing. Call them if necessary.

You can test your site with lowered php.ini values on your local machine to see how it runs if you know you won't be able to play around with the values. Also, keep in mind that Drupal 7 core will require a minimum PHP memory limit of 40 MB (Drupal 6 is only 16MB).

Drupal Performance and Speed

To put it plainly, some hosts serve pages faster than others. In terms of Drupal, I think this has to do with two things: mainly, the speed that the server can read and access the database, and secondly, if you are working with shared hosting, the number of other websites that share the server with you and how much traffic they get. If the other sites on your server get a lot of traffic and demand a lot of resources from the server, this directly affects you. It means there are fewer resources to go around and your performance will suffer. This is why larger websites would go for a dedicated server solution or a VPS (Virtual Private Server). These solutions, although much more expensive, allow your website more power to meet higher traffic demands and in general deliver pages faster.

My experiences with different hosting solutions

A screenshot of the Aegir hosting panel for this website. Take a look at the different options available with a click.

I used a myriad of different hosting solutions for Drupal. My favorite as of August 2010 is Omega8, which relies on the Aegir Drupal deployment platform. Omega8 hosting is only for Drupal websites, and they are experts at optimizing performance. My website runs lightening fast on Omega8 servers, faster than it has on any other hosting service. They have special setups for caching and they also support Pressflow to squeeze every performance juice out of Drupal possible. With the shared solution, you don't have access to your php.ini file, but that doesn't matter. The settings are already tweaked to perfection. I believe their post_max_size is 50 MB.

If you have an existing Drupal website you want to host with Omega8, the install process is not straightforward, as it is in your best interest to integrate the site with Aegir. If you are creating a site from scratch, on the other hand, installing Drupal with Aegir is as simple as clicking a button. That being said, I didn't find much documentation for integrating an existing website with Aegir, and so I had to play around with it and figure it out (not the worst of things). Notwithstanding, Omega8 is incredibly friendly, responsive, and willing to help you set up your site. I am currently using their Mini Aegir VPS solution. It is the most expensive of the solutions in this article, as it is a VPS solution. I will try and write an article about Aegir soon so people who knew nothing like me can get a better idea of what it is.

Two shared hosting solutions I have tested that are quite good are Bluehost and Anhosting. Of the two, I think Bluehost is better, because you can directly modify your php.ini file. Anhosting sort of doesn't want you to, but you can… but at the same time they ask that you limit your PHP memory limit to 32 MB, as of August 2010. I have heard *cough* that you can make that setting as high as you want and they won't do anything unless your site sky rockets and they notice it causing problems for performance of other customers on the server. For tiny websites, Anhosting is fine, but the minute you are doing large image handling or any other memory-intensive application, go for Bluehost.

Two other shared hosting solutions I have tested with Drupal that are lesser-known in the Drupal community are IX Web Hosting and iPower. I have used iPower for over three years, but that was in the days when I was making static websites. They were great back then, including their technical support. I am very disappointed to say they are not the right hosting provider for Drupal. I have tried numerous Drupal sites on different iPower accounts, and each time they were way too sluggish. IX Web Hosting performs much better than iPower, but Bluehost is more common among Drupal users, so I would recommend Bluehost over IX.

Conclusion

If you know what Aegir is or at least are ambitious enough to try and understand it, Omega8 is really the best solution I've mentioned. If you want to go for a VPS solution, but are afraid of having to manage the server yourself, you can try something called "managed VPS" which means you will pay the hosting provider a premium to maintain the server for you while you manage it. If all of this is lost on you, go for Bluehost.