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Stack OverflowAffordable, Stable, ASP.NET MVC Hosting Exist?
[+47] [14] Chad
[2009-03-12 06:27:26]
[ asp.net-mvc hosting ]
[ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/637567] [DELETED]

I'm using webhost4life shared hosting right now. They have a 99.99% up-time guarantee, but it is definitely not.

Their support has been good when I do contact them, but it's just not stable. The site will just go down at random times for 5-10 minutes at a time.

I know I'm on shared hosting, but I was hoping it would be more stable than it is. My app isn't at the point where it would need dedicated hosting yet, if the shared was stable enough.

Any affordable hosting that you can vouch for (that supports ASP.NET MVC)?

Expect it to be closed soon! This is not a programming related question and we have similar quesitons closed before. - Shoban
aww, ok. I suppose it's true. - Chad
(42) This is of interest to developers. Please don't close this question. See the faq, if you have a question as to whether or not this question belongs here. "As long as your question is of interest to at least one other programmer somewhere..." - Kyle Trauberman
Agree with ktrauberman. Plus, I think asp.net mvc hosting is definitely "programming-related". - Buu Nguyen
(1) I had bad experiences with webhost4life as well, mostly it being slow. - Chris S
(1) Lately, things have been better. But, I've found out that my site is on an old server - when they have newer servers running IIS7. They wouldn't move my site without charging me. Heck, the wouldn't even turn on gzip compression without a fee. ;( - Chad
(2) What a formidable flypaper for spammers this question is ... - Joachim Sauer
Yes, I've been trying to keep up with flagging the obvious spam. If you've flagged some as well, I thank you. - Chad
[+8] [2009-03-12 07:04:03] arrocharGeek

First of all, I believe as long as you have ASP.NET 2.0 and .NET Framework 3.5 - you can do ASP.NET MVC.

Assuming you will do your development locally with Visual Studio, the only MVC-specific stuff will be installed on your local machine.

I have used this host and I really like them: http://serverintellect.com/

  • Easy to contact for support 24/7
  • Everyone you reach is knowledgeable in .NET/Windows
  • They are very flexible - they try to setup what you need
  • Inexpensive (for shared hosting)
  • Pretty darn good uptime

Good Luck


(8) You can do it with .NET 3.5, but Life Is Better with .NET 3.5 SP1. - Craig Stuntz
Good point THANKS. - arrocharGeek
Just curious, when you say "Pretty darn good uptime", what do you mean? Do you actively monitor the status of your websites with them? If I didn't watch my host closely, I probably wouldn't even know there were micro downtimes. The serverintellect site looks very nice though. I'll look into them. - Chad
I worded my answer that way because I am very happy with the uptime from ServerIntellect - but I don't have exact numbers - and when I do have a problem, I have been very happy with their service to make things right. I also have a monitoring service, let me know if you would like to discuss. - arrocharGeek
I added an answer to this question: stackoverflow.com/questions/365304/… - arrocharGeek
Thank you, I'm really leaning toward them right now... much appreciated. - Chad
(3) Please don't tag answers in this question as spam. THEY ARE ALL SPAM! Do not trust any answers as unbiased; suspect them all. - Will
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[+8] [2009-03-12 07:46:42] Dave Ward [ACCEPTED]

You can host MVC apps on DiscountASP [1]. I've found them to have excellent bang for the buck.

[1] http://www.discountasp.net/

Nice, how close to you watch your web apps with them? On mine, I have some processes that fire emails to my cell phone when problems occur. I have an outside app that checks my site every 5 minutes to see if it is online. With my current host, I'll have micro outtages for 10 minutes at a time. ;/ - Chad
I did monitor it with Pingdom for a few months. There were a couple of ~1-2 minute reboot type outages during those months, but literally only a couple. Unfortunately, a reboot here and there is probably unavoidable on shared hosting. - Dave Ward
I agree... I'll look into them more. Thank you. - Chad
I changed the answer to this because I moved my site to DiscountASP and I simply cannot say enough good things about them. They are simply awesome... great response times, server is fast, and ALWAYS up! - Chad
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[+6] [2010-01-12 13:12:31] MARK

My website is hosted by Arvixe and their mvc framework solution is fine. Their shared asp.net web hosting starts from $5 per month and you can receive unlimited mssql 2008 databases for free.

Check Arvixe asp.net web hosting [1]!

Thank you!

[1] http://www.arvixe.com/397-3-1-25.html

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[+3] [2009-10-29 02:27:59] coderguy123

How about getting a $20/month VPS Ubuntu box with Slicehost.com or linode.com and running asp.net MVC on mono. Has anymore done this? I have successfully configured asp.net MVC with Apache but I just am not sure how stable this would be.


(2) Interesting idea... not sure if I'd trust my MS tech based site to run on non-MS platform, but I suppose that's old school thinking in a new age. :D - Chad
(1) Like this idea, how complicated is your setup? My only concern is you will need to rely on mono which can possibly lacks native supports for aspnet mvc (and other MS stuff). How do you feel so far? Are you using it for production or experimental purpose? - Jay Zeng
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[+3] [2009-03-12 07:55:51] Sohnee

The main issue with shared hosting is that other applications installed on the same server can affect your website.

This is even more evident if someone has a classic ASP application on the same server as you as it it much easier to fire off an infinite loop and consume a large chunk of CPU, rendering other pages slow or unavailable.

James is correct in stating that you just need a host that has 3.5 support as the MVC dll can be uploaded to your directory. MS are moving away from forcing installs on servers for their new projects - so you don't have to wait for the hosting company to catch up, like we had to with the ASP.NET AJAX extensions.

I won't recommend a hosting company as, although there are plenty of cheap hosting packages available, it's impossible for me to predict the uptime as I don't use shared hosting.


Yea, I'm not at a point where I want to spend the extra $$ for dedicated hosting... yet. I estimate I'll probably need it in about a year, but possibly sooner if I can't find a stable shared host. ;/ - Chad
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[+3] [2009-03-15 11:23:29] Richard

If you consider virtual hosts an option then as another alternative to EC2 you may wish to try GoGrid which we have used to deploy iis7 windows server 2008 images at low cost:

http://www.gogrid.com

As with Amazon S2 you have a very stable platform with resilience from clustered hardware.


Thanks for the info, looks interesting. I'll look into it more. - Chad
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[+2] [2009-09-25 07:23:23] Chris S

www.dailyrazor.com [1] is $5 a month and has very fast support from my experience. It also comes with unlimited subdomains, SQL Server databases and a lot of bandwidth and disk space. They support paypal subscriptions too which takes the pain out of having expired cards and so on.

You configure your site via Plesk, you will have to specifically ask for an IIS7 server however, unless you are happy with changing the default MVC settings for IIS6. I've found their IIS7 servers are a lot faster though.

[1] http://www.dailyrazor.com

Yeah, my hosting is currently IIS6. Really need to get moved over to their IIS7 boxes, but they wanted a "moving fee" to do it - even though in my case it would be a simple copy'n paste (no SSL, no hard coded IPs, etc...). <sigh> - Chad
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[+2] [2009-03-12 10:00:03] mookid8000

Did you consider Amazon's EC2? It's virtually a dedicated server that you get full admin remote desktop rights to, so it should definitely be possible to host your ASP.NET MVC application there.

John Sheehan made a screencast [1] on how to get up and running with Windows Server 2003.

What is left is to simply configure your IIS - walkthroughs can be found all around, but Phil Haack has a nice one here [2].

[1] http://johnsheehan-screencasts.s3.amazonaws.com/windows-ec2.htm
[2] http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/26/asp.net-mvc-on-iis-6-walkthrough.aspx

(1) That looks very interesting. Pricing looks like it would hover around $100 a month, which is a little high for me right now. Being able to upscale on demand would be great though. - Chad
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[+1] [2009-09-23 15:53:54] AASoft

http://arvixe.com offer great hosting plans, plus a free domain name for as long as you host with them. Their "personal asp hosting" (http://www.arvixe.com/asp_net_web_hosting) has asp.net (and asp.net mvc) included, as well as LOTS of other goodies, definitely worth a look.

By the way, not affiliated with them in any way. Found out about them recently from a friend, and so far have had no problems with them.


Hi, I actually just moved away from arvixe. I ended up talking to their support all the time. I did experience stuff like: Control panel not working correctly | my permissions suddenly changed | payment went wrong some times | everything on my ftp got deleted once | strange errors occuring (working with asp.net MVC. It could be, that I was unlucky. Wish you all the best :) - Nima
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[+1] [2010-05-30 04:10:26] Krokonoster

SoftSysHosting [1] for various reasons

  1. Affordable
  2. Can purchase separate items as required after joining (bandwidth, email addresses etc). Very scalable
  3. Fantastic support (Which I always need 24/7)
  4. Always support the latest versions of technologies, and willing to upgrade that on request of a cheap shared hosting client! (me!)

I once needed my application to run in full trust mode. Asked them how to do and they had that changed for me in minutes. I'm running Asp.net, Asp.net MVC and PHP sites together (in sub domains) and never had a single glitch.

[1] http://members.softsyshosting.com/aff.php?aff=128

Softsys's live support is excellent. And that's a good thing, because I find myself needing to file support tickets literally every time I need something changed in the control panel. Their ".NET Control Panel" throws an almost comedic number of .NET exceptions when I try to manage my website, and the only thing to be done about it is file a ticket and have them make the changes for me in the backend. - Kivin
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[0] [2010-08-04 12:15:55] Russel Pollocks

I'd go for Arvixe(http://arvixe.com).

Great support and all my codes works superb. You really need to check them out. And you are always covered by their 60-day money back guarantee.


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[0] [2011-07-20 09:56:19] mcxiand

Id go for AppHarbor [1] They have free hosting with 10mb of free database storage. They are also offering reasonable paid services.

Services included:

  • Git-enabled code deployment
  • IO, data transfer
  • Load balancing
  • Git repository hosting
  • Instant roll-back
  • Unit tests run and checked
  • Direct access to your database
  • Custom domains
  • Technical support
[1] https://appharbor.com/

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[0] [2009-03-15 11:49:43] omoto

I using CryStone [1] for hosting all my MVC solutions and I'm satisfied.

[1] http://www.crystone.com/

Can't get to the site from my office (blocked), I'll check it out when I get home. Thanks for the link! - Chad
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[0] [2009-08-07 11:28:09] andrewWinn

I would look into CrystalTech [1], I have used them for years. You pay a little more for an "intermediate" level account (about $13.95 / month), but when it comes to bang for your buck, its hard to pass off. Thier uptimes are awesome, and they are proactive about notifications of downtime for patches ect. Additionally their tech support is phenominal, and they are even willing to help/walk you through things such as migration of databases (I had to move a MySql 4 -> 5, and I was on the phone with them for about an hour and a half). I've been know to call them when stuck on a code issue too :-\ and they have been able to help.

Additionally they have a good product mix offering everything from Asp.net to coldfusion and PHP, along with MySQl and SQL server backends. I put most of my clients into their intermediat plan which offers gobs of bandwidth, database size, unlimited FTP accounts, and a boatload of email addresses (more than you would probably need).

[1] http://www.crystaltech.com

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