Finding a good web host is a real crap shoot, but there are things you should do to insure that you’ve got a chance of finding a good one.
Five tips to help you make your Web Hosting selection:
1. Don’t trust the “Best Web Host Ranking” sites that populate the search engines. Many of them are paid advertisements while others are actually created by the web host themselves to steer customers their way.
2. Do ask those that you know and trust in the industry who they use for web hosting. A personal reference is worth a 100 doubtful web rating sites.
3. Research, research, and research so that you understand not only what each hosting company offers but also what you think you may need a couple of years down the road. Most hosting companies offer cheaper rates if you pay by the year. So spend the time up front to be sure about who your signing up with and what you want. Below’s some general information about different types of Web Hosting.
4. If you are thinking about a specific hosting company, for example Co. “ABC”, do a web search on “ABC sucks” or “ABC bad experience”. You’d be surprised how many vocal and unsatisfied web hosting clients have web pages out there telling their story. While reading these sites make a list of questions you may want to ask the company before you sign up.
5. Call and talk to the tech support at the hosting company before you sign for a plan. If they can’t make you feel comfortable about supporting your needs before you’ve committed they surely won’t after.
Good luck with your future on the web.
TYPES OF WEB HOSTING :
Free Hosting
You don’t find as much free web hosting as you use to and what you do find is limited. Most often you will find that free hosting requires you to display advertising or banners on your web site. One exception to this is blogging. There are still some good free blogging web host around, such as Googles Blogger, however I know of several people who started with Blogger and wish they could leave but they are now tied to blogger because of their post history permalinks and archives that exists on the search engines.
Positives: It’s a good way to get started. It’s free and often provides all the tools you need to create a starter site.
Negatives: You’re restricted and often bound by the sites rules and limitations. You may also find it difficult to move you site if you develop historical links.
Shared Server Hosting
This is the most popular individual or small business type of hosting. With shared hosting your site is placed on the same server with perhaps hundreds of other sites. Since all the sites share this single server it is important that the host has limits to prevent any one site from using more then their share of the total server resources. Even with shared hosting plans that offer many GB’s of storage and TB’s of monthly bandwidth, there will me some type of maximum transaction or CPU usage limit. If these limits are exceeded then your site could display errors or become non-functional. In some cases the host could even disable your site until the problem is solved. Always remember that for the hosting company that the most sites they can have on each server the more profitable it is for them.
Positives: Inexpensive with basic plans beginning around the $5-6 per month. No advertisements or banners. Many software and service choices. Usually some on-line help or support available. Promise of high uptime and site monitoring.
Negatives: Level of customer support is totally dependent upon the individual host service provider and varies greatly. Performance or limits can become an issue. Shared hosting does not scale well so that when you require higher performance or less limits you often have to relocate your site to a new server and purchase a new (more expensive) hosting plan.
Grid Server Hosting
This hosting utilizes newer technology to overcome some of the shortcoming of shared hosting. Instead of hundreds of sites sharing one server there may be thousands of sites sharing many servers. The advantage of this configuration is that you can scale the infrastructure by adding additional servers to the grid. It also allows for metered services. For example you may be give a base grid performance unit (GPU) that you can use each month. This unit is based upon a percentage of the total grid CPU processing resources. It you exceed this base GPU you are charged for the overage without any negative effect to your web site.
Positives: Moderate cost beginning around $18-25 per month. Better performance and scalability with less required moves as you grow.
Negatives: Still sharing resources so you will not get the absolute best performance. Some restrictions as to how much of the common resources you can use without additional cost.
Virtual Server Hosting
Virtual server technology enables one physical server to house several virtual environments which act like isolated stand-alone servers.
Positives: This is a more affordable (beginning around $40-50 per month) solution then a dedicated server with most of the benefits such as root access.
Negatives: Still sharing server resources so your site could be affected by another site hogging resources.
Dedicated Server Hosting
With dedicated hosting your site gets a server of it’s own. There are no restriction except those that deal with the web hosts security and network integrity.
Positives: Best performance with no interference from any other site. You have almost complete control of your server and site.
Negatives: Costly with plans starting around $100-$150 per month. Also since you have almost complete control of the server you may not have the level of technical support from the host that you would with other plans. They may not want to support what they can’t control.
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