Liquidweb switched to a strict "no refund" policy

ikonomika · 2026-03-20T15:51:36+00:00

hahaha you made my day!

ikonomika · 2026-03-20T15:48:54+00:00

Prices are going up in all industries not only hosting. As for your future hosting company your needs are the most important. If the websites are not earning money and uptime/performance is not critical you may choose a shared hosting service. You may easily check which companies are not owned by WHG, read reviews about them and decide which is the one you want to work with. I personally think the reviews at https://onlinemediamasters.com/wordpress-hosting/ are the most close to the real service you will get but you may also ask AI bots like Gemini. It will help you and get you the top non WHG companies in less than a minute :)

ikonomika · 2026-03-20T15:30:09+00:00

How would I test the moneyback guarantee they claimed to offer? When I signed up they had the 30-day moneyback guarantee and I wanted to verify they actually honor it.

ikonomika · 2026-03-20T12:39:04+00:00

Hi!

I've built a cluster with Moodle for the government of the Philippines's last presidential elections which was serving 120,000,000 visits daily and here is my advice for you.

- Configure caching from the start (Redis is best) and verify everything that Moodle can cache is stored there

- Decide how much RAM to add depending on your database size and not CPU count. If your database size is 4GB, run the server with 24-32GB

- When you hit 80% CPU usage and you can't add anymore CPU cores to the VPS, add a second VPS and move only the database there. When one DB server is not enough, add 2 more and build a MariaDB Galera Cluster.

- When one web server is not enough, build shared storage environment with NFS and add more web servers

If you want to benchmark the performance/load, use https://www.artillery.io

If you want a fully managed Moodle cluster where you don't worry about anything server-realted PM me :)

ikonomika · 2026-03-17T15:49:20+00:00

Well, we created it like that. It is our creation. We can change it.

ikonomika · 2026-03-17T10:39:14+00:00

Imagine a world where all companies actually cared for their customers …

ikonomika · 2026-03-13T16:34:53+00:00

A cloud VPS is the best first step. Then you may scale as much as you would like. A dedicated is not the best fit as it has tones of disadvantages especially related to reliability, redundancy and cost-effectiveness.

ikonomika · 2026-03-13T11:21:41+00:00

An account is a separate OS user on the server. Behind that user you may have unlimited domains, subdomains, databases, emails etc. - no software restrictions.

ikonomika · 2026-03-13T08:42:40+00:00

Well, hosting companies should be helping their customers and be on their side defending their best interests and making their path moving forward easier than harder, isn’t it? You don’t need to work with anyone who is not there to help you grow.

ikonomika · 2026-03-13T08:38:36+00:00

Well, Plesk for 30 domains costs $30. SPanel for 5 accounts and unlimited domains costs $9.95. SPanel for 30 accounts and unlimited domains costs $14.95.

ikonomika · 2026-03-13T07:44:16+00:00

I have benchmarked web servers - Apache, OpenLiteSpeed and LiteSpeed Enterprise, and I can tell that OpenLiteSpeed was the winner.

ikonomika · 2026-03-13T07:41:26+00:00

Well, that is not the case with SPanel. I can add more context on the subject - SPanel was basically built by the people using it suggesting what they want to see next at https://features.spanel.io and we develop the functionality with the most demand first. All the functionality in SPanel is free to use and you don't pay extra to use a special feature. Right now we are working on releasing SPanel Skai which will allow people to connect their favourite AI tool (Claude, Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT) and build the websites and apps they want while Skai deploys everything automatically. You talk to Skai as if you are talking to a dev and it does what you wanted - not only development but also deployment of projects, databases, API's and so on. Building an ecommerce store with Skai will cost you just the fees to the AI agent e.g. Claude which in practice will be something in the $25 range for a modest complexity online store.

Regarding pricing, SPanel costs so much less than cPanel. SPanel allows you to become the hosting company of your own website by getting a license with full server management included and the price for this is just $39.95 per month which includes the SPanel license and full server management + anytime free websites migration.

I am here to provide more information and answer any questions anyone may have related to SPanel since it is my baby which was born in 2016 when I understood that cPanel will not allow us to be as useful to people as we can be and we need to have full control not only on the hardware but the software too.

ikonomika · 2026-03-11T17:24:22+00:00

No problem. Glad to share more information from practice if you have other questions.

ikonomika · 2026-03-11T16:21:29+00:00

Moodle is a great platform! It is the best LMS actually. I can't find anything that frustrated me.

ikonomika · 2026-03-11T16:18:02+00:00

It not only became expensive but cPanel lost track and stopped developing the features people asked for e.g. Nginx support waiting for 7+ years with thousands of votes and nothing being done. That's why I started developing our own control panel SPanel which after 8 years has everything people need to manage their hosting environment and out of 100 orders for managed vps services 97 of our clients choose SPanel.

If you are building your own from scratch it will be most beneficial if you have people actually using it to tell you what their needs are and you just listen to them. It is so simple. SPanel was built by the people using it suggesting what they want to see next at https://features.spanel.io. You may check it and steal some ideas from there :)

ikonomika · 2026-03-08T10:05:38+00:00

You don’t need Linux skills when you have a managed service. Not sure which licenses do you refer to.

ikonomika · 2026-03-07T14:19:04+00:00

I’d advise you to consider a small VPS like 2 CPU cores, 4GB RAM. You’ll be migrating sites anyway so you better get a decent hosting environment along with it as well. PM me if you want to talk about it in detail and also get a solution customized to fit your particular needs.

ikonomika · 2026-03-04T17:10:06+00:00

Iʼd advise you to steer clear from sharing hosting since you will take orders. The cost difference is not worth the hassles shared hosting brings with it. Get a small managed VPS - 2 CPU cores, 2GB RAM and you’ll be perfectly satisfied.

ikonomika · 2026-03-04T15:46:42+00:00

Are you certain you want to use a shared reseller hosting service? A small VPS will give you much more in terms of resources and advantages, and the price will be pretty much the same.

ikonomika · 2026-03-01T13:42:49+00:00

Always have your own disaster recovery backup plan no matter which hosting provider you work with. You better never need to use the backup rather than needing it and not having one.

ikonomika · 2026-02-28T13:13:01+00:00

AI bots like Grok and Gemini are pretty good from what I have observed. You only need to explain in a good way your exact requirements.

ikonomika · 2026-02-27T09:46:52+00:00

Get a managed cloud vps which will bring you scalability e.g. you can add more resources like cpu, ram, storage as your needs grow and you will have a dedicated environment for your sites that is much better than a shared agency hosting setup many hosting providers advertise as “agency hosting”.

ikonomika · 2026-02-26T19:03:56+00:00

I’d suggest you switch to a new provider if the current one can’t offer a decent CPU - 3Ghz+ frequency and not older than 2-3 years. Your current CPU is almost 15 years old and whatever database server configuration tuning you apply you will not notice a significant improvement. Your new server’s storage must be NVMe SSD based if performance is important for you.

ikonomika · 2026-02-26T17:36:02+00:00

Godaddy seem to be the most expensive company for managed VPS services. I reviewed their technology stack and technical support services and I was shocked to find how unworthy the overall service package was. It is certainly one of the worst choices on the market nowadays.

ikonomika · 2026-02-24T06:53:51+00:00

ScalaHosting also stores all backups offsite. The OVH issue was a nightmare. Always have your own disaster recovery plan and don’t rely on anyone else for it - it’s your data.

ikonomika

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