The Power Behind the eApps Cloud Hosting
Who Are eApps.com?
Founded in 1986 as Strategic Systems Consulting, the company provided consulting, project management, and client-server application development services before moving into web hosting solutions in 1996 under the brand name eApps.com.
From 2000, eApps.com gradually secured its position as a highly respected provider of managed hosting services and continues to attract commercially recognized customers such as:
- NBC
- Sears
- Carnegie-Mellon
- Miami Dolphins
- Harvard University
- Citi Bank
- Staples
- United Nations
- Cisco
- New York Public Transit Association
- Sony
Recently, eApps.com has recognized the potential of Cloud hosting and shifted the main focus of its hosting services to Cloud-based solutions. We at WebmasterFormat welcome sound advice and, following in the direction of the company we have trusted to provide our online presence for the last 2 years, moved our website to the Cloud.
While eApps.com continues to provide VPS hosting services, they are advising new and current customers to migrate to a Cloud-based service. This is not some fad, or sales orientated, advice from an uninformed infant company. This is a sound recommendation from a business that has stayed at the top of a fiercely competitive industry. A Virtual Machine in the Cloud can provide more power at a reduced price and we decided to take advantage of this.
Your Flexible Friend: The Create-a-Cloud™ Tool
One of the greatest advantages of Cloud hosting is the flexibility a customer has over the level of resources they require. This means having the resources you need without having to pay for unwanted resources attached to a package. With eApps’ Create-a-Cloud™ tool you have total control over resource allocations.
Above is a screenshot of the Create-a-Cloud™ tool. The red box highlights the 6 sliding controls that allow you to increase or decrease the following integral resource allocations:
- RAM
- CPU Shares
- Primary Disk
- Date Transfer
- Port Speed
- IP Addresses
There is also two drop-down menus. One allows you to choose from a wide variety of OS Templates, and the second let’s you choose billing options. You can choose between:
- Monthly Pre-paid
- Quarterly Pre-paid (5% discount)
- Biannual Pre-paid (7.5% discount)
- Annual Pre-paid (10% discount)
The total price of the package you select is displayed to the right (shown here highlighted in yellow). The default cost will be for a Monthly Pre-paid option.
Scrolling down, you will then be offered the option to select whether you want an Uptime Monitoring service and/or Priority Support. If you select either you will have the same payment options: Monthly, Quarterly, Biannually, and Annually.
The last two options are for selecting the domain name you wish to use, and creating a name for your VM.
Standard Pricing
If you are unsure about what resources you require, eApps.com provides a selection of popular bundles (seen in the first screenshot, opposite the customization bars. The bundles are as follows:
Here is the cost of each bundle:
- 256MB: $12.76 USD
- 512MB: $24.12 USD
- 1024MB: $41.74 USD
- 2048MB: $82.48 USD
- 4096MB: $173.96 USD
*All prices are on a Monthly plan without Monitoring and Priority Support options selected
The Power Behind the Cloud
Unlike many other Cloud hosting services, eApps.com provides a ‘true cloud’ platform. Powered by cutting edge 64-bit Xen Virtual Machines, and utilizing the Cloud management system OnApp, eApps’ ‘true cloud’ hosting environment is scalable, flexible, and possesses both advanced capabilities for self-service and automatic recovery from hardware failures.
Technical Support Rarity: People Who Actually Know What They Are Doing!
We can all recount horror stories of irritatingly inept outsourced technical support services. A stream of irrelevant questions and curious, but ineffective, solutions await you, before finally being passed to another support member… who then asks you the same questions!
Thankfully, eApps provides an in-house technical support service that is not only 24/7, but possesses the ability to provide customers with credible solutions and reliable assistance. Customers can contact eApps Technical Support by email, chat, landline phone, and worldwide toll free VOIP (using Skype).
Choosing the Correct Control Panel
There are 3 control panels available through eApps. For the majority of hosting needs, the eApps Control Panel will probably suffice. The eApps Control Panel is free but is only available with plans using the CentOS template. This control panel is based on the open-sourced Webmin control panel and has been modified by eApps to to provide the required functionality and incorporate the eApps Application Repository.
We used the Plesk control panel with our previous VPS account with eApps but now use the eApps Control Panel with our VM account. So far, we have found the new control panel to be very functional and user-friendly. The move from Plesk to the eApps Control Panel should not be viewed as a downgrade. The eApps Control Panel is very capable and you will find that featured applications are available with a one-click install.
The eApps’ Application Repository
As an eApps.com customer you will have access to:
- GlassFish
- JBoss
- Tomcat
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- Sqlite
- PHPMyAdmin
- Drupal
- Joomla
- Wordpress
- KonaKart
- osCommerce
- PHP
- Perl
- Python
- Ruby on Rails
- Java
- eAccelerator
- Zend Optimizer
- and many more...
Available applications are maintained and selected by eApps and are one-click installations. However, if for some reason you wish to install an application not available through the control panel you can do so. Obviously, you would need to perform the installation yourself.
Control Panel Alternatives
If you prefer to use the proprietary control panels, Plesk or cPanel, eApps does offer the option to use either of these but not for free. You will be required to pay a licence fee. If you are looking to utilize Cloud VM’s for reselling you will need either Plesk or cPanel as the eApps Control Panel does not allow administration at the domain level. If you are simply seeking hosting for your own site, or sites, then we would advise sticking with the eApps Control Panel. It is both free and perfectly capable.
How easy is it to migrate to Cloud Hosting?
Migrating, or setting up a new account, using Cloud hosting is no different to creating a new non-Cloud account. The web servers, applications, control panels, and OS are the same. It is simply the infrastructure that is different and this is managed at host-level, you don’t need to be concerned. Managing your new account will be as easy as managing a VPS, or dedicated server, account in a non-Cloud environment.
Moving to the Cloud with WebmasterFormat and eApps.com
As mentioned, WebmasterFormat has recently moved to Cloud hosting with eApps.com. We thought it would be useful to current eApps.com customers thinking about moving to the Cloud to write about our migration experience. To read the story of our journey into the Cloud with eApps.com please visit How WebmasterFormat Migrated to Cloud Hosting with eApps.com.
Post new comment