Miva Hosting Question

[g4connect]

Hi,

I'm evaluating potential hosting providers who have Miva as an option. The question I have is whether or not the end-user will be able to install and use the many aftermarket modules available in a shared hosting setup? Is this up to the individual host? Are there some hosts that will install the module for you? Any limitations?

Any experience from current shared hosting merchants or from hosting providers directly is appreciated.

Thanks!

~g4connect~

[ILoveHostasaurus]

We've seen some hosts that disable the admin in ways to restrict that, those are hosts you should not use. :)

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

You also want to avoid hosts that limit your account resources such as memory, processor, hard limits on diskspace and bandwidth utilization.

[chucklasker-BANNNED]

Hostasaurus.com and WolfPawHosting.com are two hosts who specialize in Miva Merchant, have excellent support, and whom I've had many clients on their servers without any issues. I gladly endorse both of them.

I believe WolfPaw does module installations and I think Hostasaurus refers clients to preferred MIVA Merchant experts/consultants. They might want to chime in with clarification on that issue.

Run away from any of the big guys - ValueWeb, OLM, etc. as their support just cannot match the two I mentioned.

It's funny, too, that the two I mentioned are also so involved with MIVA that they responded to your question quicker than I could.

[Dyna Jim]

We've seen some hosts that disable the admin in ways to restrict that, those are hosts you should not use. :)

I can vouch for that statement, I'm probably the reason those hosts do that, I have more modules than products it seems. And I would imagine David has thought about the idea, or at least limiting me to 50 or less.
DJ

[Random Confusion]

We've also had good luck with DotCom Host as well. They've been very understanding with our red-neck-ness as we switched hosts & upgraded from MM4 to MM5 at the same time, helped with ensuring that all the modules we wanted were installed and working fine, and have been really open-minded when a problem would arise and it wasn't clear where it originated from (some from us, some from them, but they treated it all with the same goal of "let's get it fixed and not worry about who did it.")

We had a hard time choosing between the three listed here for they are all about as good from what I can tell. Just look at the packages offered by them, how they answer your questions off-list, and what your management finally tells you to decide on as the final decision. <grin>

RC

[Ashish]

use westhost.com ... :-) ...

Now it is interesting!!

[g4connect]

Thanks to everyone for their info and input.

Does anyone know if www.hostmysite.com has a policy regarding this? I will try and contact them to find out but was wondering if anyone had any experience with them as a host?

Thanks again!

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

There used to be a lot of negative experiences posted regarding westhost and hostmysite on the old users list.

Should still be available in the archives.

[d_host]

There are some hosts that also restrict access to your own mivadata directory, which is where all your databases are stored (if using DBF database format), or prevent you from accessing your mySQL databases completely by means of direct access via phpMyAdmin or similar tools. Network Solutions is notorious for blocking access to the mivadata folder, and if you go through their level 1, 2 and finally level 3 support, they will eventually unblock it so you can access your own files, but since they keep the mivadata in your public HTML folder - EVERYONE can then access your customers' credit card numbers and other sensitive info.

Avoid any hosts that restrict access to your own files, and avoid any host that puts the mivadata directory inside your public HTML folder. I hate to say this, but even one of the "good" hosts mentioned above keeps the mivadata folder in the public directory, too... (you know who you are!)

[letterbank]

Re: Miva Hosting Question

Hostasaurus.com and WolfPawHosting.com are two hosts who specialize in Miva Merchant, have excellent support, and whom I've had many clients on their servers without any issues. I gladly endorse both of them.

I'm having a LOT of trouble finding Miva web hosts. A number of them do not host Miva any longer (iTX, as example. I was on livechat with them for a while before they admitted they don't host Miva 9, even though that was my first question. They still show up when I search for a host). Apparently Miva is trying to do all hosting by themselves.

As I'm having a problem with my current host and frustrated in trying to resolve this- they're charging for a LOT of outbound traffic which I can't possibly be generating), I'm looking for one which will transfer my existing site seamlessly and my dev site as well. Specifically, I would like a host without limits on traffic and with a consistent, high speed loading time.

Your suggestions are welcome.

[d_host]

Re: Miva Hosting Question

As I'm having a problem with my current host and frustrated in trying to resolve this- they're charging for a LOT of outbound traffic which I can't possibly be generating), I'm looking for one which will transfer my existing site seamlessly and my dev site as well. Specifically, I would like a host without limits on traffic and with a consistent, high speed loading time.

Your suggestions are welcome.

Joseph,

1) We have not charged you a single penny for your bandwidth overages, so I'm not sure where that comment is coming from that we are "charging you a LOT".

2) There is no such thing as hosting "without limits on traffic" - every hosting company charges for your usage. Bandwidth is like a utility (water, electric, etc) - the more you use, the more you pay. Miva and every other host charge for bandwidth as well, including overages. The hosts that offer "unlimited" specs simply put no cap on your account that you can see, but restrict the bandwidth by limiting the "pipe" into your server. In other words - they give you a sipping straw and tell you that sure, you can fill up a pool with it - it will take you 40 years to do so, rather than 1 day like other hosts that offer big data pipes with no restrictions, but hey, it's "unlimited!"

3) Even though we have not charged you for any overages as of yet, you'll find that our rates for overages are some of the lowest in the industry (on par with Amazon S3/EC2). We actually charge less for overages than Google Cloud. By comparison, Miva charges $3.75 for every 250MB disk overages - that's $15/1GB. We charge $0.24/1GB. We charge the same rate for bandwidth overages as well. That is 98.4% less than Miva's overages, to put things in perspective. And, you get more disk space and bandwidth with us up-front than with Miva, included in the hosting plan.

4) You likely won't find many companies still offering Miva hosting, and there's a good reason for that. Miva (the company) has systematically driven every Miva host either out of existence, or they switched to offering other ecommerce platforms. As even Rick Wilson, the CEO of Miva, mentioned in another thread, Miva has gone from over 200,000 active stores, to under 8,000 today. You can do the math to see why you won't find many other companies offering this as a viable ecommerce platform - there's just no money in it and Miva is taking what's left and internally hosting the remaining handfuls of Miva stores themselves.

And finally - you do have a support ticket open with us already, I'll be happy to respond to your questions there, rather than drag your personal info here in an open forum.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Miva Hosting Question

That's because Miva is no longer sold via third party hosts (except in some legacy contract situations), why wouldn't you host with us directly?

[letterbank]

Re: Miva Hosting Question

Joseph,

1) We have not charged you a single penny for your bandwidth overages, so I'm not sure where that comment is coming from that we are "charging you a LOT".
...you do have a support ticket open with us already, I'll be happy to respond to your questions there, rather than drag your personal info here in an open forum.

You're right; I mistook the SSL renewal fee ($149?) for the extra traffic charge. Whew.

I appreciate your help in getting this issue resolved, and the "above the top" offer to use the screen sharing program to review and renew settings on the mail program- and the avast virus settings as well. I also heard back from the senior Apple tech who said that according to the activity log, an earlier version of teamviewer installed mid November may also have been sucking up bandwidth (possibly).

Thanks to Remik and all concerned!