When to give up on a host? Does history count?

IMO, all control panels are...

LOL, just kidding everybody; but seriously on the mass mailing topic, for some requirements, I’ve used the free http://zookoda.com/ a few times, and it works well enough, has decent templating and can do both one off and scheduled mailings based on RSS feeds or direct content.

Thanks for the tip about zookoda. I have a few clients that can benefit from that.

IMO, all control panels are...

I agree, unfortunately I have no idea how to do it without a panel on a live environment. I dream of having a dedicated server someday, for now my cPanel VPS is all I can afford.

Thanks for the tip about zookoda. I have a few clients that can benefit from that.

Ditto...not the snippet but the saying

I’ve got ssh access to my vps; have you checked with your hosting company to see if they can give you access?

My ssh is a bit problematic, since they restrict access to IP and of course my dynamic ISP assigns me a different IP every time I have to cycle my router, but tech support is pretty nice about my frequent requests to reset the access for me.

I’ve had good success with two hosts: Siteground and Liquidweb. We have a VPS on Liquidweb. Support is usually quite helpful and they made good suggestions to get us where we are.

Siteground is newer for me but they have also been pretty user-friendly.

We did run into one problem with a mass mailing on Liquidweb. We had two people out of 6500 report it as spam and they shut us down for a couple of hours. After a good conversation (convincing them the list was ours and legitimate) they were ok with it. Since then we call them before doing anything and haven’t had any problems.


Both hosts include cPanel and a fairly easy to use admin area. Probably the best thing that could happen for me with any of this is to get MODx included in Fantastico! Life would be easier.