Help me in finding a Web Host for my Prime Account?

I've been struggling the last few hours in trying to find a web host account that fully will support my new Boonex Prime account.  This is a new site, but I expect rapid growth and eventually heavy usage.

May I ask a few questions to the group?

1.  Should I begin right off with a VPS server verses just a regular web hosting account? 

2.  If yes, go with a VPS server, what is a good configuration?  My site will be aimed at the Christian market so I expect plenty of traffic and use of the media server.  I need a balance here as I'm working with a budget.

3.  I just finished chatting with Host Gator (whom I like and have a reseller account with, not a VPS), and I was surprised they did not even know what Boonex or Dolphin was.  Another host said I can go with a regular host account, non VPS, but they were not sure about the media server use.

It seems to me a VPS setup is what I need.  Do these VPS servers seem acceptable?

A.  CPU 1.13ghz, Ram 768mb, Space 30gigs, Bandwidth 500mb, about $50 a month.
B.  CPU 1.98ghz, Ram 1344mb, Space 59gb, Bandwidth 1050mb, about $80 a month.

Thank you very much community for your feedback.  Write me direct if needed.

Hi desertcities, If you have'nt chosen by now, I heartily recommend you try hostforweb

They have been fantastic with Dolphin since as long as I can remember! - They have free use of a ray media server aswell especially for us Dolphin fans!

I have recently been in talks with them since they suffered a sever server crash and they have been helpful beyond and above their duty!

Check them out!  - I'm currently paying just 6.99GB pounds per month and for that I get a dedicate IP

And yes they have a 1 click installer for dolphin via softaculous in the cpanel.

It might sound like I work for them, but I do'nt I'm just impressed with the way I was treated as a customer.

Hope this helps!

1. I would start with a VPS is you are planning on having a decent member base and the site taking off. If you just want to experiment with Dolphin and get your feet wet a shared hosting account will do.

2. Here's the optimal configuration for Dolphin:

 http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/HostingServerSetupRecommendations

I will tell you from experience though, the opcode cache engines are a pain in the neck.. if you look at those graphs they will make you want to install one for the speed boost, but it is NOT a walk in the park. It takes a lot of babysitting to get the memory usage just right.

3. Those both look really low on the ram side.. if you are going to use RMS I would recommend at least 2gb of ram. It uses a big chunk of memory on my server even when it's just sitting idle.

@desertcities let us know if we can help. Check us out at - http://www.boonex.com/hosting/joombyte. We specializes in hosting Dolphin and have been doing so for 5 yrs now.

 I used to have the same opinion. Not any more. I have had a lot of problems with their first contact techs not really knowing how tom do even the most mundane tasks. I also recently had a failure that required a backup be installed and it took an outside tech to finally get the job done so i could bring my site back online.

Hi, i can suggest you a good VPS provider which suits your requirement. it is XnYnZ . here the VPS service is given in the name of "Virtual Dedicated Server" ..here you can see the specification of VPS hosting..and then decide accordingly.