CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am seriously considering making the trek up to New York for the CiviCRM training in September on behalf of several organizations that I hope to help with CiviCRM.

However, I don't want to, myself, nor on behalf of these other organizations, make a time and money investment to find out that due to their various hosting solutions (MOST ARE SHARED) I will not be able to help them as expected.  Some of the current shared hosts include Bluehost, IX Web Hosting, and Dreamhost.  

What I would really like is some detailed help with identifying if the hosting primarily effects/limits performance, functionality, or mere size of an organization.  Of the hosts that I mentioned, if any provide Virtual Private Servers, would that be the way to go?  Also, I find it hard to imagine that many non-profits are in a position to shell out the bucks for truly dedicated servers.  If this is, however, the case, I'd love some suggestions.

What are the most troublesome areas of CiviCRM (planning on using with Drupal) when installed on shared servers?  Mail?


My plan, for instance, is to first set up Civi for a friend's US Congressional campaign for all the obvious - constituent tracking, donations (and contribution limits), volunteers and talent pools, events and registration, email and snail mail correspondence.  After that, I would like to set up something close to that for my county party - not a huge party, but potentially tens of thousands of people.  Then, there are outlying groups (and another county party) also that could greatly benefit from CiviCRM.  I can foresee other candidates benefiting from it also down the road...once they see it's capabilities.

Currently I don't think performance would be a big concern as it would be used primarily in-house and a bit at a time.  

As the training is only 2 weeks away - I'm REALLY HOPING for quick replies.

Thanks in advance y'all
ferkee - Out

P.S. Basically I'm looking for encouragement that this can work! 

Thanks Lobo.

Dreamhost offers VPS AND has all those features I believe.  Bluehost I think has those features also.

I recall back with pre-2.0 CiviCRM having a hell of a time setting everything up so it could deliver (and I think deal with incoming) emails.  As far as "smtp mail server", what does that entail for the purposes of CiviCRM?

John

If you decide that a VPS is the way to go, I can't say enough good things about SliceHost.  Not even their acquisition by RackSpace last year as diverted them from fabulous customer service at a great price point.  We've been with them from a few months after they started.  A 256 Mb machine with backup is $25 a month and you can scale up within minutes with a click.

The best thing about it is no one is going to tell you that you can't have access to cron, php.ini, etc...  The downside is someone has to mind the server!