Flarum hosting provider recommendations

jfbourdeau

jfbourdeau I am presently testing freeflarum.com

GreXXL

jfbourdeau here is a comprehensive overview of options to host Flarum: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/30533-edition-122-community-update

CyberGene

I can recommend SiteGround, I’ve been with them for more than a year and has never had any problems, works fast. The only issue with them is they ignore the .htaccess files and don't tell you that. You will have to manually protect paths on their interface… I have some personal reasons disliking them (I’m a Bulgarian and they are a Bulgarian company that sponsors a political party that I despise) which is why I’m considering moving to DigitalOcean but seems it’s too much of a bother and I may stay with SG.

FullThrottle83

Sorry 😛

CyberGene

FullThrottle83 I know it's funny 😀 The reason for that political disclosure is, in another discussion recently I mentioned how I am considering moving from SiteGround (without sharing why) and in this discussion I am recommending them. Someone might find it contradicting which is why I decided to clarify why that is, they are technically great, however my money are indirectly sponsoring a party that I don't like 😀 I haven't mentioned what party that is, what my political "agenda" is or anything that would be considered political.

KarlReza1

Guesshost is good, their site may look dodgy but they're really the best! You can just open a ticket and they'll even give you SSH access after knowing the use-case. 🙂

FullThrottle83

CyberGene I know nothing about Siteground. Had a friend using them, and I was neither impressed or disappointed.
But I think a hosting company does wrong if they support a political party - no matter which party that is.

CyberGene

FullThrottle83 elaborating more on this I realize how silly it is 😀 Now, let me clarify that SiteGround is not an official sponsor of any political party. However its owners have officially donated a lot of money to a political party. So, a bit far fetched on my side to link SiteGround to political activism, and as I said, speaking more about this I really feel stupid 🤦🏻‍♂️ What is more, I am not one who "cancels" anything. The irony here is the political party in question is one that is associated with cancel culture as one of its main weapons and their supporters cancel people and companies on regular basis, which IMO creates unnecessary social polarization. I'm not that much against the political party as much as I am against cancel culture, so in a way I'm canceling cancel culture as an act of retribution 🤣

Now, back to SiteGround. I've shared my previous experience but in short: I started on A2, however it turned out a nightmare, my Flarum forum was stuttering ever since the beginning when we were just 10 people and I was back and forth with their support and they were useless. They were actually laughable since after a lengthy support communication they concluded my forum is slow because of a DOS attack and to prove it they showed me some HTTP logs where people were using the Flarum "refresh" button like two calls a minute on average 🤣🤦🏻‍♂️ At this point I decided I couldn't take that cr*p anymore and moved to SiteGround and it's been a flawless experience with a very fast speed, no downtime, easy configuration. There are only two minor cons with them:

As I said, they ignore the .htaccess files and thus vulnerable Flarum files can get exposed. Actually they still respect some of the .htaccess lines but not all. That has been discussed on the forum, so the solution is to use the SG site tools and just separately create 5-6 entries with restricted access.
Their first year is very cheap but after that the price is increased significantly. I managed to find a discounted "upgrade" to the higher tier for one more year that would be cheaper, however once it expires it will get seriously expensive for my needs which is why I am planning to downgrade in the last month to the cheapest plan at regular price.