Choosing a Hosting Company: What to Know
When working with and setting up your website you will need to decide on a hosting provider. Hopefully the two of you will have a happy relationship but make sure that you have an understanding of everything involved before agreeing to a plan. Below you will find descriptions of the most popular forms of web hosting as well as some pointers on what to look for in the various hosting plans.
Shared Hosting – The Affordable Plan
If you run a small online business website or a personal site you will in most cases get sufficient web hosting through a shared hosting plan. This is without a doubt the most popular form of web hosting today and one good reason for this is the fact that you will get strong and reliable hosting for only a couple of dollars per month. When searching for a web host that is providing shared hosting there are a few things that you should look for in advance. Make sure that you will get enough disk space, bandwidth and that they do not suffer from poor uptime. The uptime can be checked via an online uptime monitor.
Dedicated Hosting – The Rolls Royce
If you know that your site will attract a lot of visitors on a daily basis you better also have hosting that can handle it. If not, you can count on your website being slow or in worst case scenario, come crashing down. To give you a very basic definition, dedicated hosting is when you and your business will have a server that is entirely for your business. Thankfully you will not have to make any room for the server as it will be stored in a secure place by your hosting provider. Depending on your level of expertise you will be able to choose between managed, which means you will have the content to look after but not much else, and unmanaged hosting. Now, just because the hosting is dedicated it does not have to mean it will cost a fortune. Quality dedicated hosting will usually cost you between $60 and $200 per month which is not much considering the power of the solution you will get.
VPS Hosting – That Thing In-Between
Perhaps your site will get a substantial amount of traffic but not to the amount that you are in need of dedicated hosting. If this is the case you will probably be satisfied with VPS Hosting. VPS will give you a powerful and stable hosting solution that is more customizable than shared web hosting. Things to look for in Virtual Private Server plans are lots of RAM, monthly transfer, disk space, good customer support and unlimited add-on domains.
Green Hosting – For a Clean Conscience
The earth is not getting any healthier, at least not without our help, and that is why many web hosting providers have started to take their responsibility in offering web hosting that can be classified as “greenâ€. Green hosting usually means that the web host either purchases carbon offsets or that they use eco-friendly energy sufficient servers. Green hosting can be found in all forms of web hosting but the most common thing is to find it among the shared web hosting providers. When it comes to the plans they should be equally strong and feature-packed as any other hosting plan. If they are lacking a feature simply pick another web host as there are many green hosting options available in all price ranges which should meet your needs.
Cloud Computing – The Trendy Hosting
Cloud computing is something that has grown in popularity the last year or so and it is really something out of the ordinary. This form of hosting is a great solution for everyone that at times need their hosting to be somewhat stronger (for instance when an article gets Digged) and at other times just needs it to be very basic. A great benefit with cloud computing is that you do not pay for more hosting than you are using.
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CONTRIBUTE
sriganesh
July 6, 2009
nice articles, very much interseted. and informative. i dont know this different types . i made a mistake when brought a domain and webhosting.its not a speed. at all.
.-= sriganesh´s last blog ..Horror Design =-.
Jake Rocheleau
July 6, 2009
Very nice article that covers the main subjects of choosing a hosting company for your site. This is great for all beginning website designers!
.-= Jake Rocheleau´s last blog ..Link Your Social Networking Profiles Together with SocialFollow =-.
Nicholas Z. Cardot
July 7, 2009
Thanks for putting this information together. I remember when I was first getting into all of this and I was trying to figure everything out about hosting. This information would have been great for me a few years back. Where were you when I was just starting out?
.-= Nicholas Z. Cardot´s last blog ..7 Keys to Becoming a Prolific Blogger =-.
favSHARE
July 7, 2009
This article has been shared on favSHARE.net.
RandomReader
July 7, 2009
Nice article, I wish there was a print function on these articles. :(
Andrew Houle
July 7, 2009
@RandomReader – That’s a good idea, I’ll look into adding that.
joyoge designers' bookmark
July 8, 2009
great article about choosing a hosting. thanks for tips..
.-= joyoge designers’ bookmark´s last blog ..30 Beautiful Wood Inspired Websites and 200+ “Woody†Resources =-.
picture hosting
July 10, 2009
You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.
picture hosting
July 10, 2009
Thank you for your help!
Madeline Ong
July 15, 2009
Thanks for this post — it’s very concise and informative. Can you suggest ways to find out when it’s time for a site to move from shared hosting to dedicated hosting (without the site ever having to crash)?
.-= Madeline Ong´s last blog ..10 annoying web problems (and how to solve them) =-.
Caitlin
July 15, 2009
Good information. You did a great job of explaining the different types of web hosting–it can be really confusing for beginners!
.-= Caitlin´s last blog ..Tutorial on How to Upload a New WordPress Theme =-.
Brian Franklin
July 16, 2009
@Madeline There is never really a “set time” to change from shared to dedicated. If it is a site that you own, I would look at the traffic as well as the lag on the server (as a slower server can be as frustrating as a down server) . Depending on the size of the site shared hosting with a decent provider should be enough for a small/medium business or personal site, unless it is consistently making the front page on digg or reddit and going down. If that does happen on the occasion, you may consider VPS or Cloud hosting. Before jumping to any dedicated plan, I would take a look at the statistics and make sure it is not just your current host causing the issues of downtime or slow responses. The price jump from shared to dedicated is a decent amount monthly, so if it could be solved through VPS/Cloud or even a different shared host, I would check out every option first. Hope this helps :)
Jash Sayani
July 21, 2009
Great Article! Perhaps, you could also list a few recommended hosting companies. My favorite is Media temple. Its expensive though.
I currently use DreamHost.
.-= Jash Sayani´s last blog ..Focusing and Getting Things Done… =-.
Dhane Diesil
August 7, 2009
What hosting companies would you recommend? Especially for CMS’s…
I use BlueHost and love it.
One of my clients uses GoDaddy, which is pretty janky when it comes to adding other apps like WordPress (GoDaddy actually makes you page extra to run apps like WordPress – shocked the hell out of me).
.-= Dhane Diesil´s last blog ..What is SEO? =-.
Andrew Houle
August 7, 2009
@Dhane – I didn’t realize GdDaddy charged extra for apps, that’s lame. Right now I’m using Eleven2. They are good. I also have used StartLogic in the past, they are ok, but not great, and I’m currently moving things to Host Color, so the we’ll see. But honestly I’m no expert with hosting companies. What does everyone else recommend? I’ve heard mostly positive reviews about MediaTemple, DreamHost and BlueHost.
Video Sharing Script
October 17, 2009
I strongly recommend that you turn the No Follow off in your comment section. I’ll watch Google Webmaster Tools, and if the links don’t show up after a couple of weeks — I won’t go back to that blog again. Another suggestion: you should have a Top Commentator widget installed. Do Follow and Top Commentator will ensure that you have a successful blog with lots of readers!
Andrew Houle
October 17, 2009
@Video – Thanks for the recommendations, I’ve added the DoFollow plugin, which I had been meaning to do. We’ll see about the top commentors section, maybe in the redesign.
Web Hosting
November 14, 2009
Great list and great recommendations!
Another site that could be included is WbeHost.com.
Thank you,
Chris
Judy Peters
November 19, 2009
I had something on my website go viral on Reddit a year ago, since then I’ve followed the crowd and started using cloud computing. So far its not changed my costs too much as well!
Power 4 Home
December 2, 2009
I like your style, the fact that your site is a little bit different makes it so interesting, I get fed up of seeing same-old-same-old all of the time. I’ve just stumbled this page for you :-D