You are now chatting with ‘Paul’

Paul: Welcome to Live Chat support, how may I help you?

Nabil: Hello, In the terms of use I found this “User may not: Use 25% or more of system resources”

Nabil: could you please give more more info

Nabil: like what is the CPU speed for resellers?

Paul: While our shared services are suitable for the bulk of our customers, there comes a time for some websites when they are better suited for a larger plan, which allows for more dedicated CPU and memory resources. We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to discontinue service to any customer with a website or other hosted data that takes up more than 10% of the server resources and/or 10% of the server’s CPU. If this becomes necessary, you can either upgrade your hosting package, or request a pro-rated refund of the amounts you have paid in advance for the services.

Paul: Now our policy has changed to 25 %

Nabil: OK – You say upgade – Do you mean to a bigger reseller account – or to a dedi

Paul: Bigger reseller.

Paul: You can check this : http://www.hostclear.com/reseller

Nabil: I would like to know the CPU speed so I can calculate what is 25% and know if it suits my needs

Paul: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 5110 @ 1.60GHz

Nabil: OK – thanks

Paul: You are welcome!!

Nabil: one more thing please

Nabil: for which reseller plan is this

Paul: This is for all plans

Paul: http://www.hostclear.com/reseller

Nabil: Thanks

Paul: You are welcome!!

Nabil: So that limit on the terms of use is for Cpanel accounts not for the hole reseller account

Nabil: Am I right?

Paul: Yes.

Nabil: Thanks again [...]

HostGator

Live support

The representatives are the smartest I ever talked with, they hide nothing, they understand your questions. The chat interface is easy to understand and use, if the chat is busy the system tells you how many people are in front of you (like a queue), it has sound notifications so that  if you minimize the chat window you know when a representative answers you.

The Plan: Aluminium Plan

Disk space: 50 GB
Bandwidth: 500 GB/month
CPU: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5520 (8M Cache, 2.26 GHz, 5.86 GT/s Intel® QPI) [Benchmark]
RAM: 12 GB
Limits: You may not use 25% or more of system resources for longer than 90 seconds… There are other limits (scroll to 7a.).
Price monthly: $20, actually it’s ~$25 but when I checked HG was adding a coupon automatically

HostClear

Live support

The representatives are well instructed but lack ambition. The chat interface they are using is provided by LivePerson which IMHO are not very professional, oh! and you wait so loooong with a lame message that appears every few minutes to comfort you.

The Plan: Standard Plan

Disk space: 75 GB
Bandwidth: 600 GB/month
CPU: Intel® Xeon® Processor 5110 (4M Cache, 1.60 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB) [Benchmark]
RAM: 8 GB
Limits: You may not use 25% or more of system resources for longer than 90 seconds… There are other limits.
Price monthly: ~$23 or ~$20 if you pay 12 months or more.

The Winner is HostGator of course!

1st Chat with HM support:

mod_gzip and mod_deflate are enabled on servers, there is nothing we can help with since the modules are already enabled and working

2nd Chat, Now I understand:

This time I was smart enough to save the chat session:

[...]
[4:42:07 PM] I would like to know if HM enables mod_deflates and mod_gzip (apache modules)
Jolynn: [4:42:25 PM] Let me check
[4:45:33 PM] Just another moment
ME..: [4:46:59 PM] OK
Jolynn: [4:47:57 PM] Currently, mod_deflate is installed on all servers. No configuration options are available to our customers. mod_deflate checks with cpud to see whether it should be compressing files. If cpud dictates that the system doesn’t have enough resources, compression will not happen
ME..: [4:49:21 PM] Oh I see – where could I read more info about it – I mean how HM deals with it
Jolynn: [4:50:22 PM] This is the last bit of info that I have
[4:50:24 PM] Another thing to keep in mind is that the gzip compression that mod_deflate implements adds an output buffer that won’t flush until the entire response has been written. This means that if a customer flushes output to the browser from inside php (using the flush function), it gets flushed to mod_deflate and not to the browser. This has to do with the way that gzip works.

After more chat sessions with HM support – yes you need to talk a lot, a representative told me

Lonny: [4:01:52 PM] Sorry, but it is server-wide. The compression will only happen when there isn’t a lot of CPU load.
I’m not sure what the threshold is but it doesn’t seem to be very large [lol, I thought he said  a lot of CPU load] before the compression cuts off.

I’m not sure I understand all of this, but I understand that it’s time for me to move to a better hosting provided probably HostGator which offer a better support, and maybe it’s time to upgrade from shared hosting to VPS… We’ll see…

Note: I use Hostmonster, I can’t test elsewhere, but I think these steps will work for Bluehost too.

I don’t understand why most tutorials on hostmonster and bluehost are incomplete, they have one of the best shared hosting service, one of the best support teams… but there knowledge base is not that shiny. Well, this detailed tutorial from hostmonster helpdesk didn’t work for me, there is one step missing, so here it is again, how to connect to hostmonster SSH with a private ssh key using PuTTy… euh PuTty… euh… sorry… it’s PuTTY

Generate Keys

1. Go to your CPanel -> SSH/Shell Access -> Manage SSH Keys
2. Go to Generate a new key and fill in the fields,
   • leave the password empty (I couldn’t make it work with a password)
   • for added security set the Key Type to RSA and Key Size to 4096
   • Click Generate Key, then Go Back
3. On the table Public Keys, Click Manage Authorizations near the key you added a few moment ago, Authorize on the next page and then Go back
4. On the table Private Keys click View/Download
5. On the bottom of the page click Convert then Download Key on the next page, save it somewhere on your computer.

PuTTY

From Hostmonster helpdesk:

Configuring PuTTY:

1. In PuTTY, under Session, enter your Host Name
2. Under SSH, choose 2 from Preferred SSH Protocol Version
3. Under SSH -> Auth in PuTTY, you will need to specify where your private key can be found. Remember this is where you saved the private key on your local computer. Click Browse to locate the file on your computer.
4. If you wish to have your username automatically sent to the server when connecting, under Connection -> Data in PuTTY, you will see a field for “Auto-login username”. Type your account username there.
5. Save your settings to be used in future sessions – Under Sessions, type a name (such as “my site”) in the Saved Sessions box and click Save.