AN Hosting Review: My Experience With Drupal Hosting

So, you're looking for Drupal hosting (or just hosting in general), and you don't want to get ripped off. You've probably already read a bunch of forum posts, hosting review sites, and top 10 lists. And you probably noticed most of them didn't seem very trustworthy.

Unfortunately, many of the reviews out there are fake, written by hosting company employees, either to brag about themselves, or to trash their competitors. One particularly bad group of spammers have actually managed to get their fake review sites to rank top 3 on Google for just about every hosting keyword you could imagine.

Fighting back against hosting review spam

With all the spam out there, it's hard to know who you can trust. My best advice is to do your research, and know who you're dealing with. With that in mind, allow me to introduce myself:

My name is John Forsythe. I started making websites for fun back in the 90s, and in 2006, I quit my job in Tech Support to become a full-time entrepreneur. Today, I make my living building websites and writing about it.

You might be familiar with some of my work. I'm the creator of DrupalModules.com, Drupal's largest independent community site. I also do technical reviewing for Packt Publishing, one of the biggest Drupal book publishers. If you're not familiar with Drupal, it's a popular content management system like Joomla or WordPress.

It's all about database speed

One thing all modern websites have in common is the need for really fast database access. Every time a visitor loads a page on your site, your server has to make dozens of database requests. If your database is slow, your site will be, too. Like a lot of people, I learned this the hard way.

Back when I first started working on this site, I signed up with a web hosting company that claimed to be "dreamy". You've probably heard of them. It only took me a few minutes after installing Drupal to see that something wasn't right. Drupal was slow. Really slow. Pages took forever to load, or didn't load at all. Even getting into the admin section of the site took almost 10 seconds, when it should have been instant.

I installed some debugging tools, and narrowed it down to the database being really laggy and overloaded. A quick Google search showed I wasn't the only one having problems, and there didn't seem to be any way around it.

It's hard to get any work done when every click results in a long delay, so I cancelled the account and started looking for a new host.

After about a week of research, I finally settled on a company called AN Hosting. I signed up for an account, installed Drupal again, and wow, the difference was incredible. Check out this graph:

Page loads went from over 3 seconds to under 0.2 seconds! It's shocking how much faster things run when you have a good database server.

Another thing I noticed right away was a big increase in downloads speed. My site is full of music and photos, so fast downloads are really important to me. With my cable connection at home, I've recorded download speeds of over 1200KB/s from the new server.

Dealing with traffic spikes

If you've ever had your site land on Digg or Reddit, you know the real test of a host is whether they can handle sudden bursts of traffic. The last thing you want is a host that pulls the plug on your big day.

I've actually had this site make it to the front page of Reddit a few times. Here's what the traffic looks like in Google Analytics:

At peak, I was getting over 30 page views a second. Amazingly, the site didn't even slow down. One of the advantages of shared hosting is the massive amount of resources the servers have. You can actually outperform a VPS, if things are configured correctly.

Final notes

So, now you know why I like AN Hosting so much. It's fast, it stays up, and and it doesn't slow down. This is my fourth year with AN, and they're still the company I recommend to family and friends. Yes, they do cost a couple dollars more per month than some other places, but you get what you pay for, in my experience.

If you found this review helpful, do me a favor and sign up through this link, and use coupon code "Drupal". You'll get 3 months of free hosting, and I'll get credit on my account. It helps me keep my sites running, and you can feel good knowing you're keeping money out of the pockets of spammers! :)

Questions?

Thanks for reading my hosting review! If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help. Send me an email: john@blamcast.net. Or, if you're in Ottawa, Canada, you can usually find me at the local Drupal meet-ups. Don't be afraid to say hello!

Drupal Hosting FAQ

Here's a quick FAQ for anyone interested in using AN for Drupal hosting:

Do Clean URLs work with AN Hosting?

Yes, there is full support for Clean URLs, and they work right out of the box with the default Drupal settings.

Does Drupal's multi-site feature work on AN Hosting?

Yes, I've set it up and tested it myself, and it works well.

Does AN Hosting support PHP5?

Yes, as of this writing they're using PHP 5.2, which is the minimum you should look for in a Drupal host.

Does AN Hosting offer shell access?

Yes, SSH is included, for those of you who like to do things from the command line.

Can I increase the PHP memory limit on AN Hosting?

Yes, you can use a custom php.ini file to change memory limits as needed. I've set mine to 64M without any problems, and I've heard from others using 128M.

Overall, I think AN Hosting offers some of the best Drupal hosting around, especially if you don't have the time or experience to run your own server. AN Hosting has a 30 day money back guarantee, so give it a try, and if you have any questions, let me know.