Dedicated Hosting Suggestions? (PHP, MySQL)

Greetings:

I have some applications I'd like to move off my home server using my DSL line, and to a hosting company... I have more and more clients now, and some of my sites take moderately heavy traffic. I would really love some suggestions from people who have done this, as I feel like I am in unchartered waters....

I also would like suggestions about whether I should go with a shared hosting service, or a dedicated hosting service... I probably would have about 50,000 daily hits initially, but could anticipate as many as a million hits a day, so I'm not sure whether a shared hosting service could handle it.... Also, I must have PHP and MYSQL available....

Finally, I would like to find a company that provides some kind of administration support-- daily backups of data and applications, if the server crashes, or the databases get corrupted etc. In other words, if one of my users calls to say the server is down, or the database isn;t available, someone at the company could take care of it, instead of me....

Your input would be greatly appreciated-- also, if you feel I haven't provided enough details about my situation, please let me know...and I'll elaborate...

Thanks....
Axel

At least 50k hits a day is definitely a good number, and if I were you I would go with dedicated hosting.

With that in mind you could talk to guys at (http://www.netacore.com) they have proved to provide good hosting for small sites, but I'm not sure about their policy with big sites.

Another one I would certainly advice to contact is Elite
(http://www.weicomm.net), since AnandTech knows where to host.

Did you try DevShed's Dedicated Hosting Search?

http://www.devshed.com/Hosting_Search/?pgid=sp&fg=2

Yeah-- I tried it... I'm just a little overwhelmed by it. All I see are spiffy company names-- what I don't see is how long the company has been around, what kind of servers they use, what kind of customer service they offer (and the QUALITY of customer service), where they are located, what their actual uptime is, where they are located etc.

Should the location of the company matter to me? (I live in LA, CA)....

Thanks!
Axel

ashalon, did you even as much as bothered to check out Elite?

AlCapone:

Hey! Why the sarcasm? Yes, I "bothered" to look at Elite. The problem is, the url you gave (www.weicomm.net) does not resolve correctly -- maybe their site is down? (Not a good omen!)

The other provider you mentioned (netacore) looks pretty good and I am investigating. Thank you for your suggestions....

Sorry for the sarcasm and the wrong link - it sould be http://www.eicomm.net/ without 'w' in the name (I added www in front manually so probably misspelled).

Again, while Elite guys do not post thier prices online and netacore does put quite impressive tags on their services, I strongly recommend to contact both sales departments and see what they'll say before signing a contract.