Cheap vs. Good Web Hosting PDF Print E-mail
So how do you find a good web hosting provider? For starters, stay away from resellers. If the web hosting company does not own their own hardware it’s very likely that they have little control over it and/or significant expertise managing it. Resellers generally can’t do anything about your problems directly. They have to act as a middleman, passing the problem onto the hosting provider, who as a bulk reseller isn’t likely to care much about your problems. Resellers also typically have very unsophisticated server setups. They don’t offer backups as part of their service, they don’t have dedicated email servers, dedicated database servers, etc. Resellers are almost always geared toward hosting the least common denominator on very inexpensive hardware.

If you run dynamic publishing software like ExpressionEngine, find a host that has expertise hosting dynamic systems, and more importantly, one who embraces the idea of hosting such sites. There is no getting around the fact that dynamic sites utilize more server resources then static sites. Good hosting providers will build their server infrastructure to cope with the increased load, and accept that their profit margin will be less. Your average host wants nothing to do with dynamic sites since these diminish their profit and create more technical challenges. It’s not uncommon (as anyone who participates in our support forums knows) for hosts to accuse their clients of using too many server resources, when in fact, the problem lies with the host’s capacity.

Also, don not believe any of the marketing messages these web hosting companies put out. You can’t have massive bandwidth, unlimited space, and killer performance for a few bucks a month. Impossible. There’s an old business expression that says “speed, quality, or price. Pick any two”. In other words, if you want something fast and high quality it’s going to cost you more than $10 per month. Or if you want something cheap and fast it’s going to be of low quality. You can’t have all three.

Hosting is exactly like that. If a hosting provider is giving you unlimited bandwidth and space for $7.00 a month you can guarantee that it’s being made up for in other areas. The servers will be cheap, the number of accounts hosted on each box will be maximized, the staffing will be limited, etc. You simply can’t have it all, regardless of how brilliant the marketing is.

If I were looking for web hosting, these are the questions ask the prospective company:

* Do you own all of your hardware?
* What type of server hardware/software do you run, and what are the specifications?
* Who is your backbone provider and what is your overall capacity?
* Where are your servers physically located and are they securely housed?
* Can I have the name of your co-location facility?
* Do your servers have backup power? If so, what type?
* Do you build redundancy into your infrastructure? If so, how?
* How quickly can you deal with catastrophic hardware failures?
* How much expertise do you have managing servers, and in particular hosting dynamic sites?
* What systems are in place to cope with the added demand of dynamic sites?
* Do you do daily backups?
* Do you backup the database?
* Do you run dedicated servers for individual tasks (sending email, database, web hosting, etc.) or does every action associated with every site happen on the single server hosting it?
* Are you able to meet the demands of enterprise level sites (do you run load-balanced servers, etc.)?
* Do you have systems in place to deal with DOS attacks?
* How long have you been in business?
* Are your systems set up to notify your staff instantly when your hardware has a problem, or must your clients inform you of a problem?
* Do you offer phone support?
* Can your provide a significant list of clients hosted by you, particularly clients with very highly trafficked sites?

Oh, and I’d do a Google search for “hosting-company complaints” to see what other people are saying about them.

 
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