DAP works off-the-shelf on almost all decent web hosts.
But as in any industry, some hosts are just outdated, run old and outdated software, do not offer a choice to upgrade to the latest server software (like a recent version of PHP or MySQL). And some are just plain not helpful at all.
If you had a choice of picking a new web host, then here are the web hosts we use ourselves, and highly recommend, and they have everything readily available that DAP needs to run smoothly.
VPS Hosting
If keeping your site(s) running almost all the time, and having insanely great support from your web host, are both important to you, then you should go with a VPS server from LiquidWeb. For about $50 a month, you can get yourself a great server, with terrific up-time and support. And did we say support is crazy good?
Shared Hosting
If you can’t afford the $50 a month for a VPS server, or don’t see the value of very high site availability or great support, then the next best option is shared hosting, where you share a server with other business owners. Not all shared hosts are made equal. And that’s why we highly recommend the following two web hosts.
1) HostGator
2) HostMonster & Blue Host: We think they might just be two different names for the same hosting service owned by the same parent company. Feel free to correct us if we’re wrong.
NOT Recommended (“FAIL”)
We’ve recently added DreamHost to our “NOT RECOMMENDED” list, as we’ve had so many issues with them on our own various web sites, many that aren’t even running DAP, and are simple WordPress blogs – some are actually plain HTML web sites, and the web sites go down all the time, emails get delivered very late, many emails go missing.
This has been happening on too many of our sites and this has gone on for far too long for us to tolerate. A majority of our sites have been hosted with DreamHost for about 5-6 years now, and we’re now finally pulling the plug on all of them, one by one. We’re moving all of our web sites over to LiquidWeb.
And the biggest joke with Dreamhost, is that when any of your web sites hosted on DreamHost go down, and you go to their site so you can open a support ticket, you’ll almost always find that even their own web site – dreamhost.com – is down! And they always use a different domain (dreamhoststatus.com – maybe hosted at Hostgator for all we know, LOL!) to notify people that various servers or services are down. Would you trust a web host that can’t even keep their main site up and running? We certainly don’t. So 1.5 thumbs down for DreamHost.
GoDaddy is great for registering your domain names. For hosting? Not so much.
We’ve seen many issues with GoDaddy-hosted sites. Their email systems don’t work consistently on all servers. It works great for some, while some of our other users have reported that even simple admin notification emails from DAP don’t get sent correctly. To compound the issue, Godaddy queues up even real-time emails on their end, and only send them out as batches. Which means even instant “Thank You” emails sent to your buyers with their membership login info, may not get sent for a couple of hours, even though DAP has actually sent them out, but are being intercepted and put on a queue by Godaddy to be sent out later in a “batch”.
The other big issue we’ve seen with GoDaddy is that they don’t allow the use of a PHP library called “imap”, which is a very important library for doing email-based order processing. So this means, if you’re using 1SiteAutomation.com (or any other private label of 1ShoppingCart) and wish to do automated cancellations using DAP’s email order processing, this will not be possible if you’re using Godaddy. So bottom-line: Do not use Godaddy if you have a choice. And even if you must, then do not use GoDaddy if you’re planning to use 1SiteAutomation (or any other private label of 1ShoppingCart).
1and1
We wholeheartedly recommend AGAINST using 1and1 for your web hosting. These guys are so stuck in the 90′s, and provide you with some lousy tools.
For instance, the process for setting up a cron job on 99.9999% of the other hosts takes about 2 minutes, because it’s all point-and-click using a browser.
On 1and1, if you see the tutorial they’ve provided at http://faq.1and1.com/scripting_languages_supported/cron_jobs/3.html , they’ve made it so terribly complicated, that it would take us too much time just to setup a simple cron job! And spending 20-30 minutes for something that normally takes less than 1 minute on other hosts, is simply NOT worth our time. So if you’re on 1and1, we won’t be able to set up cron jobs for you for free. We would have to charge you to set it up for you, so just be aware of that. Two Thumbs DOWN for 1and1.
If Your Host Is Not Listed Here
If your host is not shown here, then don’t worry – it doesn’t mean that DAP won’t work on your host.
These just happen to be the ones we have used, have done countless installations on, for our DAP users, and highly recommend if you have the option of picking a new web host.
This is exactly why we offer a 30-day money-back guarantee when you purchase DAP – so that you can make sure DAP can run on your current web site, and also help you decide if DAP will work for you.
So there’s no risk to you, regardless of who you are hosting with.
27 comments ↓
I use BlueHost. What has been your experience with this hosting company?
Anna
Anna,
Yes, DAP works fine with BlueHost.
- Ravi
Hi Ravi,
What do you think of Dreamhost?
I see the link points to another host. Any opinions on MediaTemple?
Steve,
Sorry about that. See now. Link is fixed.
I’ve heard good things about MediaTemple, but have no personal experience (either myself or through any of my clients/DAP users).
- Ravi
Hey Ravi, just to let you know I moved my DAP site away from GVO/Kiosk and onto a VPS with http://ServintHosting.com
Been very smooth so far, although they did need to enable PDO the first time.
Bob
A note about bluehost – they don’t allow users to send email through any ports, so using DAP’s SMTP option will be difficult.
I had a problem with bluehost. DAP worked fine but one of the updates made it unworkable. Does it work now? I’ve still got it on the website but I do not have it activated on wordpress
Is anyone using DAP successfully on HostGator’s servers?
TIA!
Dave, we don’t know what changes bluehost made on your server. So unable to comment if DAP will work now on your servers. But if you had an issue with a specific version of DAP, then just download the latest one from your member’s area, and upload it.
Ken, lots are using HostGator (HG). We are using HG for one of our own membership sites, plus almost ALL of our “Membership Site In A Box” sites for our clients have been setup on HG.
- Ravi Jayagopal
Ravi,
Does DAP get around the following HostGator Email list limits? Dream Host doesn’t have the same limitations, and it seems it would be easy to have more than 50 Products (and hence Email List). Thanks.
Hatching: 20 Lists Max
Baby : 25 Lists Max
Business: 50 Lists Max
Brad,
Are you asking about email list “size”? Then none of the host really have a size limitation.
What they do impose is an hourly “Email Sending” limitation. You can only send X emails per hour.
For that, DAP does have in-built email scheduling. You can set the hourly limit on out going emails, on the “SMTP” screen. That way you stay under your host’s hourly-email-sending limit.
- Ravi
Ravi,
No, I was asking about the number of email lists we are allowed to maintain. HostGator has the limits I posted above. I think you may be getting around these limits by keeping the DAP email lists in a database, but I wanted to be sure. Thanks again.
Brad,
DAP doesn’t use your web host’s list. All DAP user information is stored in DAP’s own database.
So what you are asking about is not an issue.
- Ravi
Is this option (Digital Access Pass) suitable for a paid subscription newsletter?
Does REGISTER.COM support DAP?
Any experience with VISTAPRINT websites?
Does DAP have a payment feature? Password Protection?
Michael,
Yes, DAP is suitable for a paid subscription newsletter. Does Register.com offer web hosting services too? I thought they were just a domain name registrar. Vistaprint just prints cards as far as I know, so have no idea if they offer web hosting. DAP does have a payment feature and can password-protect content. Please see http://DigitalAccessPass.com/features.php
- Ravi Jayagopal
Just wanted to let everyone know that FatCow has PDO enabled so DAP will work on their servers.
[...] Check with your web host. If they can’t help, then here are a couple of recommended, DAP-Certified web hosts. [...]
I am interested in using WPCDN to host my dap site. They are running lightspeed server instead of apache Can dap run on lightspeed server?
[...] But 1ShoppingCart order processing works great with all other hosts. [...]
[...] Short answer: Fire them and get a better host. [...]
[...] if you can't afford even that, then simply use DAP on a decent web host. We ourselves use just DAP and AuthSMTP.com to send out emails to all of our users. DAP also has [...]
Any known issues with DAP and hosting with zippykid.com?
I’m thinking about getting the Bluehost Pro for $19.95 a month. Have you had any experience with that one Ravi? Does the extra $10 really improve the performance?
Thanks!
Joe,
Looks like the “BlueHost Pro” comes with a free dedicated IP, free SSL and “increased” memory and CPU usage (though they don’t say how much more it really is). But for just $10 more per month, rather than a $30-$50 per month VPS server, it’s still a pretty decent deal. But remember that you’ll still be on a shared server.
If you have multiple web sites that are beginning to get popular and get more traffic, then the best way to go is a VPS server from Liquid Web, which is what we use and highly recommend.
No known issues. As long as they allow you to install your own plugins, setup cron, and meet the minimum requirements of DAP, there should be no issues.
I appreciate the feedback. I decided to start off with Hostgator (using your link above
) If I need more power later I can always upgrade to Liquidweb.
So far I’m impressed with Hostgator. Pages load faster than other webhosts I have used.
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