If you are looking for an open source platform to build a portal, nothing can beat Liferay. Liferay is an enterprise-level open source solution with proven track record and real-world clients all over the world and raving reviews.
Liferay Portal is Java-based and runs on any computing platform capable of running the Java Runtime Environment and an application server. Liferay is available bundled with a servlet container such as Apache Tomcat.
That means that a hosting company for Liferay needs to have excellent support for Tomcat as part of Java Runtime Environment. That rules out bargain Shared hosts that technically support Java but don’t offer the horsepower that’s needed to support an industrial strength portal.
You can build a lot of things using Liferay. From content and document management systems for internal corporate usage (it even comes with Microsoft Office integration), web publishing and shared workspaces, enterprise collaboration, enterprise portals or even social networks. If you can imagine it, you can build it. Liferay is both a content management system and a framework.
Built on the Java framework, you can actually use other scripting languages to develop using Liferay. It supports Ruby, PHP, Python, Grails, and other lightweight scripting languages. And it will run on a myriad array of application servers as well as with a lot of database servers, so you will never be locked to one system. Liferay can work on your existing infrastructure.
With that much flexibility and power in hand, it is obvious that you can’t just go with shared hosting services for this one. But maybe dedicated servers are too expensive for your needs. If you fall in this group, then you will be happy to know that we have hand picked 5 best hosting companies with awesome VPS and low-priced dedicated solutions.
The Best 5
- Omegabit : A Liferay specialist hosting company, offering Liferay plans for Shared, VPS, and Dedicated hosting,
- Pacifichost : A Liferay specialist hosting company that offers cloud VPS plans,
- VPS.net: A world leader in cloud VPS Hosting, with dataservers in 18 locations around the world,
- Gigapros : A VPS provider that offers a plan with Liferay preinstalled and optimized,
- Hosting4Life : A VPS company that offers a line of Shared Liferay portal plans.
Read more about them after the break!
Summary
| Rank | Provider | Starting Price | |
1 |
 |
$24.99/mo | Visit Site |
2 |
 |
$40/mo | Visit Site |
3 |
 |
$20/mo | Visit Site |
4 |
 |
$16.99/mo | Visit Site |
5 |
 |
49.95€/mo | Visit Site |
Winner – OmegaBit – From $24.99/month
Omegabit is a privately owned and operated business located on the Central Coast of California. It was founded in 1997 and has its datacenter in San Luis Obispo, CA.
Omegabit is a specialist Liferay hosting company; they are not set up to do generic hosting. They boast that they are the “#1 Liferay Certified Hosting Specialist” and their recommended Liferay plans come with the current version of Liferay Portal preinstalled. You can expect excellent Liferay-specific customer support from them!
Liferay Portal Plans
Omegabit has three plans that are recommended for Liferay hosting. Liferay 6.1 is preinstalled. The three plans also represent the three main types of hosting: shared, VPS, and Dedicated!
- Gamma for Communities: Perfect for clubs churches, bands, independent businesses and professionals. It’s a Shared hosting environment that is tuned for the Liferay portal. This is a premium Shared hosting plan.
- Delta for Business: Perfect for larger communities and small to mid-sized businesses. This is a managed VPS that has exclusive use of 1 CPU and 2GB of RAM.
- Epsilon for Enterprise: Perfect for small enterprise installations. It may be scaled for high-availability clustering and fault tolerant configurations. This is a Dedicated server that gives you full root access and control over the configuration.
Here is the price sheet for their Liferay Portal plans. They do not specify bandwidth in the usual way; instead the cite the recommended maximum number of concurrent users.
| Name | Type | CPU | RAM | Storage | Users | Price |
| Gamma | Shared | Shared | Shared | 20GB | 10-20 | $24.99/mo |
| Delta | VPS | 1 | 2GB | 50GB | 20-50 | $44.99/mo |
| Epsilon | Dedicated | 2 | 4GB | 250GB | 100+ | $179.99/mo |
Notes:
1. The plans include Liferay 6.1 GX or 5.2.3. The Gamma plan shares its CPU but the Delta and Epsilon plans have dedicated CPUs.
2. Automatic backups are included on all plans.
The Gamma plan has a 30-day free trial and they do not charge until the second month! That’s a great deal.
The Delta package is a complete stand-alone installation of Liferay Portal including the framework, db schema, and file repository. It gives you the ability to install custom themes and plug-ins. No file or OS level access is provided.
The Epsilon plan is a Dedicated server and it gives you root access, choice of OS, and full file and OS level access.
2. – PacificHost – From $40/month
PacificHost is a LifeRay specialty hosting company. It has a line of high performance and full featured cloud VPS plans that are perfect for LifeRay Portal hosting.
They have been in business since 1999 and now operate five datacenters in the western United States. They are located in the following cities:
- Irvine, California
- San Diego, California
- Las Vegas, Nevada
- Hawthorne, California
- Denver, Colorado
Although they are not a big name in hosting, they have a successful business catering to small to medium-sized enterprises. They advertise a 45-day money back guarantee and 99.9% server uptime. If your uptime ever fails to meet the 99.9% spec, they will credit your account on the next month’s bill.
Managed Cloud VPS Hosting
They recommend the following their line of cloud VPS plans for Liferay Portal hosting. The plans include the cPanel, weekly backups, and full management and support. They use CentOS 64-bit Linux. By default, the use the Apache server with Nginx as the reverse-proxy. Using Nginx as the revere-proxy server carries significant performance advantages. If that weren’t enough, PacificHost also offers Litespeed server as a $15/mo option. Here are their Cloud VPS Plans.
| Name | CPU | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Price |
| Startup | 2 | 768MB | 50GB | 200GB | $40/mo |
| Developer | 3 | 1388MB | 80GB | 300GB | $70/mo |
| Executive | 4 | 1856MB | 120GB | 500GB | $90/mo |
| Pinnacle | 6 | 2334MB | 160GB | 1TB | $120/mo |
Please keep in mind that these prices include the cPanel, weekly backups, and full management. You will find lower prices from providers who advertise their prices for unmanaged VPS plans but then charge for the features that PacificHost throws into the base package.
3. – VPS.NET – From $20/month
As the name suggests, VPS.net offers only VPS and they specialize in Cloud VPS hosting. Cloud VPS servers can re-size on demand without reboot while remaining online. This ability is often advertised as “auto-scaling”, “auto-healing”, “elastic service”, and so forth. Capacity expands to meet heavy demands and cloud servers can take over if your main server goes down. If 99.99% uptime just isn’t good enough, you need a Cloud VPS host.
VPS.NET is a leading VPS specialist host with cloud servers located in 18 locations all over the world. Here is the complete list of their datacenters. You choose your server’s location at the time of your signup.
- Asia: Tokyo, Singapore, New Delhi
- Australia: Sydney
- UK: London, Manchester
- Europe: Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt
- South America: Sao Paulo
- Canada: Montreal
- US: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Washington, D. C.
You can install Tomcat or other Java application servers on it, or anything you want to do with Java on your server. This is perfect for Liferay.
Unmanaged VPS Plans
Their unmanaged VPS plans are branded as their “instant” cloud servers and they prefer the term “semi-managed” to “unmanaged”. We don’t think that “unmanaged” carries a negative connotation. It just means that it is the best choice for a knowledgeable webmaster who enjoys working with the technology and wants to save some money.
Here are their plans in the $100/mo and below range:
| # Cores | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Price |
| 1 | 512MB | 10GB | 3TB | $20/mo |
| 2 | 1GB | 20GB | 6TB | $40/mo |
| 3 | 1.5GB | 30GB | 9TB | $60/mo |
| 4 | 2GB | 40GB | 12TB | $80/mo |
| 5 | 2.5GB | 50GB | 15TB | $100/mo |
VPS.net describes these plans as “semi-managed”. That means:
We make sure we are here for you. We provide 24×7 support via live chat, email and phone. Should you have any problems with the software that comes with your server then we can help you out with the basic free of charge. More complex issue may require our paid for Fully Managed support.
It seems that “semi-managed” means that they are there to assist but you are the primary system administrator, not them. For many people, this is a good balance since a VPS customer is often an experienced webmaster and can handle all the routine tasks themselves. Unmanaged and semi-managed plans are cheaper than a fully-managed plan, so semi-managed or unmanaged is smart if you are ready for the responsibility.
The VPS.net plans are upgradable in units that they call “nodes”. You can add additional VPS nodes to scale up if you want. The additional system resources will be multiples of the basic node. You can scale up or down without any downtime.
For those of you that don’t want to manually scale, you will enjoy automatic scalability with Elastic Cloud service. There are three packages: Small, Medium and Large. Instead of having to upgrade your nodes manually to meet increasing demand from traffic, you will get starting resources and maximum limit of resources that will be automatically upgraded to whenever the system demands for it. For Large package, you get 12GHz CPU, 7520MB RAM, 200GB storage and 20TB of bandwidth. Whenever you get loads of traffic on your site, it can instantly can scale up to 24GHz CPU, 15040MB RAM, 400GB storage and 40TB bandwidth. All of that for just $416 a month, which is a steal.
The VPS.net plans are upgradable in units that they call “nodes”. You can add additional VPS nodes to scale up if you want. The additional system resources will be multiples of the basic node. You can scale up or down without any downtime.
Fully-Managed Cloud VPS Plans
For those who are looking for the fully-managed and supported flavor of VPS, VPS.net has another line of plans for you. Of course, the support is reflected in the price. Here are their three Managed Cloud VPS plans:
| Nodes | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Price |
| 2 | 1GB | 20GB | 6TB | $135/mo |
| 4 | 2GB | 40GB | 12TB | $165/mo |
| 8 | 4GB | 80GB | 24TB | $245/mo |
These plans include the cPanel control panel and Softaculous installer, 100% uptime guarantee (hey, its a Cloud VPS backed by 18 datacenters!), automatic backup, 24/7 technical support,and fully-managed service. This is for business class customers who need to be online every moment of every day.
Their managed Cloud VPS plans offer:
- Fully-managed support
- cPanel/WHM/Softaculous
- SSH
- Optimized for Joomla and WordPress
- SSL certificate
- Remote daily backups
- Two dedicated IPs
- Hosting in the cloud
2. – GigaPros – From $16.99/month
GigaPros was founded in March 2008 and is based in Los Angeles. They are committed to the principle of not overbooking their shared servers. They actually have a written “Zero Overselling Policy”. This is aimed in the direction of the many big-name hosting companies that offer super-low prices by gambling that most customers will not actually use the resources that they think they’ve paid for.
They guarantee 99.9% uptime and have a 30-day money back guarantee.
Of interest here is that they have low cost VPS and Dedicated server plans that have Liferay Portal pre-installed and configured.
LifeRay Hosting at GigaPros
At GigaPros, you can get a VPS with Liferay preinstalled and optimized. It includes full root access! You have 24/7/365 technical support and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
GigaPros LifeRay hosting offers both Virtual Private Servers (VPS) and very affordable dedicated servers, which are highly optimized to run LifeRay.
Liferay VPS Plans
GigaPros specializes in cheap VPS hosting. These price tables are among the lowest we’ve seen for fully managed VPS hosting. Part of the cost savings is because the the plan does not include a panel or installer.
The cPanel is $15.99/mo and the Softaculous installer is $4/mo. That pretty much doubles the price of their 1GB plan, which we consider to be the minimal size hosting a business oriented Liferay Portal. Still, you don’t really need either option, so the low prices are real.
Here is a sample of GigaPros VPS LIferay plans. They have several plans that are even cheaper than their VPS-1024 plan but we doubt that it has enough power to power a Liferay Portal site.
| Name | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Price |
| VPS-1024 | 1024MB | 8GB | Unlimited | $16.99/mo |
| VPS-1536 | 1536MB | 120GB | Unlimited | $25.99/mo |
| VPS-2048 | 2048MB | 160GB | Unlimited | $33.99/mo |
Notes:
The cPanel is $15.99.
The Softaculous installer is $4/mo.
Dedicated Server Plans
GigaPros’ prices are so low that their mid-priced Dedicated servers are within the price range of other hosting companies’ VPS plans. They do offer some super-low prices but they don’t use a Xeon server grade CPU and are unlikely to withstand the loads put on the average Liferay portal.
Here are some selected Dedicated Server plans. Of course, you have root access and the ability to fully customize your server to your liking. These prices do not include the panel, installar, or backup. But it’s a real dedicated server!
| Name | Cores | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Price |
| Xeon X34350 | 4 | 8GB | 2TB | Unmetered | $69/mo |
| Xeon E3 1220v2 | 2 | 8GB | 2TB | Unmetered | $74/mo |
| Xeon E3 L3426 | 4 | 16GB | 2TB | Unmetered | $79/mo |
| Xeon E3-1220 | 4 | 16GB | 2TB | Unmetered | $89/mo |
| Core i5 2500 | 4 | 16GB | 2TB | Unmetered | $89/mo |
| Xeon E3-1240 | 4 | 24GB | 900GB | Unmetered | $99/mo |
Notes:
cPanel is $35/mo.
Remote backup is $9.95/mo
5. – Hosting4Life – From 49.95€
Hosting4Life.eu is a specialized low cost hosting provider. They are headquartered in Germany and have their datacenter there. They specialize in Liferay portal and sell their line of VPS solutions with Liferay Portal preinstalled.
They have been operating since 2009 under the name Hosting4Life.eu was taken into use and Liferay Portal was officially added. Hosting4Life offers a 30-day money back guarantee and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Shared Liferay Portal
Hosting4Life offers a line of Shared Liferay portal plans that range in price from 7.95€ to 24.95€ (1-year prepayment). The plans come with a Liferay Portal 6.1 CE GA2 instance on a shared server, so it is ready for use out of the box. Hosting4Life also takes care of upgrades, server maintenance, and security issues. It is an ideal way to start, but chances are that you will need a VPS or dedicated solution for Liferay Portal.
VPS Liferay Portal
For some reason, the plans that they call “dedicated” are actually their VPS Liferay Portal plans. The plans come with Liferay Portal 6.1 CE GA2 preinstalled and ready for use or for custom configuration. The plans come with root access so any customization option is available to you.
Here are the VPS plans.
| Name | CPU | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Price |
| Standard | 1 | 2GB | 60GB | 1TB | 49.95€/mo |
| Pro | 2 | 2.5GB | 75GB | 1TB | 59.95€/mo |
| Super | 2 | 3GB | 90GB | 1TB | 69.95€/mo |
| Elite | 3 | 3.5GB | 105GB | 1TB | 79.95€/mo |
These prices are for a 1-year pre-payment. Also, there is a 50€ setup charge that is waived for a 1-year pre-payment.
All plans include root access and use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or Debian 6.
The plans come with a preinstalled Liferay Portal 6.2 CE GA2.
Automatic backup is 9.95€ for 100GB/mo.
Conclusion
Liferay Portal is powerful and calls for powerful hosting environment. We’ve mainly recommended hosting companies that specialize in Liferay Portal solutions for medium to large organizations. They are the most likely to have the in-house expertise to provide excellent customer support. Depending on your situation, a VPS or small dedicated server may meet your needs. You may find that it may be better to go with a clustered servers approach. The choice is up to you though, and our job here is to provide you with good hosting providers for VPS and low cost Dedicated. If you want to find out other companies, then use hosting services comparison tool to find them and evaluate them yourself.
Summary
| Rank | Provider | Starting Price | |
1 |
|
$24.99/mo | Visit Site |
2 |
|
$40/mo | Visit Site |
3 |
|
$20/mo | Visit Site |
4 |
|
$16.99/mo | Visit Site |
5 |
|
49.95€/mo | Visit Site |
