I am looking for hosting providers and would like recommendations as well as any horror stories about you to avoid.
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4Can you provide more details? Which CMS? What sort of scale? What budget constraints/goals? What kind of access (e.g. developer access vs. only web interface/admin).– Alan DixonFeb 26, 2020 at 23:03
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1To reinforce what Alan says, you really need to say what level you want to host at. For example do you need CiviCRM expertise from your provider or are you just wanting them to provide a reliable and efficient environment?– Mick KahnFeb 27, 2020 at 17:10
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I agree with the comments above. It really depends on what you're looking for. We host a number of Civi sites, but they are often ones we're also doing the maintenance on for Drupal and Civi, so we're the 'superadmin' on their sites. But if you're looking for just basic hosting, the pricing for someone like us might be more than you're wanting. So really the first step is to have a list of what you're looking for.– Jenni SimonisFeb 28, 2020 at 12:48
3 Answers
The top two complaints we hear the most from organizations about their previous providers are:
- lack of responsiveness/customer service to inquiries.
- consistency in maintenance and updates.
When we take over hosting and maintenance services, we try to identify any technical debt that exists so it can be addressed as early as possible in the engagement.
I recommend paying attention to what sort of site/code audits the provider does upfront. It will likely save you in the long-term and start everyone off in the relationship with better and more information.
There is a list of CiviCRM Partners who provide hosting among other services here
https://civicrm.org/partners-contributors?country_1=All&services=Hosting&language=All&cms=All
CiviCRM tends to place higher demands on hosting than most extensions/plugins/modules, so a common recommendation is to avoid generic shared web-hosting packages and instead look for something that specifically claims to support CiviCRM.
You can find a list of those offering hosting for CiviCRM here. Do note those are not recommendations (actually, there are some there I would avoid), but they do at least claim to offer support for CiviCRM.
Note that some only offer hosting as part of a bundle of other services whereas others provide hosting for anyone without further obligation.
There are horror stories, but you may not get people giving specifics here. You are more likely to get those if you ask in person at a CiviCamp or similar!
As already said in the comments to this question, if you provide more details about what you are looking for then we may be able to guide you more specifically. However, one long-time specialist hoster of CiviCRM offering a range of provision who I have had good experience with is CiviHosting.com (They seem to have fallen off the list above, but there is a note saying the listing is undergoing 'revision and repair'.)