Please note: I’m not going to discuss about your privacy when uploading files to your web hosting or any topics for buying domain names. If you have any questions with those then feel free to send me an e-mail.
There are numerous individuals and probably some of them are students who asked me about a good web hosting solution for their web projects. Although some of them are developers and are very well-aware of the Internet but they seemed to lack some key points in choosing the right Web hosting for them. So I decided to post some handy advice and exceptional conclusions of various web hosting providers and its solutions.
But what’s this post for? Well, it’s for choosing the right Shared Web Hosting.
Now that you’re certain for making the most of the internet for your business, where should you start? Well, the very first place to start is to get a website. The cost of developing and hosting a website has become inexpensive. It is where people that find you on the web and will go to learn more about you. So, if you don’t have a website, there’s no point in choosing another internet marketing services and tools.
So you have your site. We know that there are many services offered in hosting your websites and it adds stress when choosing the right one. For now, I will just list some of the types that I’ve been using for years.
Shared Web Hosting – which have the essential or should we say minimal features. This is good for informational websites that don’t need extensive features. One thing to note is that your site is hosted at the same server and probably the same medium with other users in the internet.
Dedicated Hosting – customized hosting for your business. You can fully manage all services that added into it. You can have a fully isolated server for your business.
Virtual Hosting – you can have the full features of a dedicated server but it operates like a shared hosting. You can have your OS pre-installed (sometimes not) and is running virtually. You can reboot your server without affecting others.
Collocated Hosting – there are several collocation arrangements. And if you have your own server with all the software installed, you can move it to anywhere you like. So your still taking advantage of a dedicated server but instead of a hosting company provides the server and maintenance, they host it for you.
In any of those services above, we can also Resell it. So there comes the Reseller Hosting. It tends to provide customized hosting needs for your own hosting packages.
I hope that explains most of it. Just a concise explanation maybe.
So I’m going to discuss about Shared Web Hosting. Now, before choosing “where” we should look at first on “what” are available and “what” are your needs. I’m going to list the facts and I’ll try to include some opinions on it.
Reliability: Uptime and Downtime. It should have a great uptime level. In reality, we business owners sleep or should we say, we’re not accessing our own sites for 24/7 but our customer does. They don’t sleep. They’re exploiting all the benefits of what we have in our web site. So if a downtime happens they all get mad. So that should leave the answer of satisfying your customers in every seconds of what they want.
Support Services: let’s make sure we can contact the service provider easily after we subscribe to them. Good hosting providers will have a great deal with support services. You can contact their sales reps anytime you want. You can ask support to their technical personnel when you have problems. You can contact their administrative personnel for customer relations and groups. You can contact their billing personnel to arrange an order. A good hosting provider should have time to their customers and its called transparency.
Bandwidth: next is the data transfer rate. It is not more like how fast BUT it is how much amount of bytes you can transfer from your site to your visitors. This happens when your visitor we’re attempting to access your website. So your host will probably forward the request to your shared account then your host will send some amounts of bytes to your visitors to see the contents, pictures, presentations etc. In all of that, your hosting should be capable of handling those request overtime.
Web Space: this is how much space you can have. Normally, they separate disk usage of e-mails and databases. But don’t get confused. There should be a reasonable web space for your web applications to fit in. Overtime, our sites usually exceed the maximum web space they provide because of user comments, private/public messages, forums, and blogs etc. into our sites. So be sure to use your web space wisely. Sometimes it’s good to use flat files just like XML’s for database solutions since we normally have a bigger web space than a database space.
Features: this will summarize all the necessary services you need for your business, private or corporate web sites. Important services should have the following:
· Email service – almost all shared hosting have e-mail service added but you should have the number of e-mail you require in your company.
· Dynamic Pages support/components – if you’re accepting payments online then you probably have developed your own e-commerce web site. So be sure you get what you need. Let’s say in Windows, you require having ASP.NET and in Linux you require PHP.
· SSL support – really an important feature for your web pages. The whole point of purchasing a certificate or using an ssl certificate is that it is signed by a source that is already recognized by your visitors. Anyway, there are lots of aspects to look at when it comes to SSL certs and we’re not going to discuss it here. My opinion is that; buy this if you want your visitors to trust you with their credit/debit card details.
· Multiple domains and sub-domains – been having problems with this since I started this blog. I have one shared hosting and I need to host more than one site. Good thing is my shared hosting provider can add up to 100 domains pointed to my account. Great! So now I can host some of my client’s web sites to one shared host.
· Multiple Web Applications (not applicable for Linux servers) – this has been my problem last year with my shared host. They can only provide 5 web application per account. The problem falls to IIS6 with some limitation in the server itself. If you’re going to have a windows server, be sure to have a good deal with multiple apps. So even if you have many domains pointed to your account but you can run ASP.NET pages for selected folders because it should run as a web application in IIS.
· Database solutions – just be careful with the db space. Sometimes, your db space will be a fraction of your web space. So be sure to ask them. Database engine will vary with your site requirements. If you’re into windows hosting then you probably require MS SQL Server. And the most friendly of all, MySQL.
Management: I’ve been into many hosting providers and there comes a time that I can’t modify my web pages online. That’s crazy isn’t it? So look for Control Panel Demo to try out or a screenshot of what they have for their hosting administration. Because managing your e-mail accounts, ftp accounts, changing passwords, managing dns and all sort of that will require a good control panel. The same aspects as Reseller Hosting would require. If you want to delete a shared account then you should have done it easily from your control panel. In some other case, there are differences when dealing with OS (operating systems). In windows hosting, you can have minimal control of your account unless its not shared hosting. There’s also a problem when you implement your site locally and later restore your databases online but don’t have direct access with your server. There are certain limitations with these things in windows hosting before Windows Server 2008 was released. In many years, Linux is very approachable with services like SSH and Apache. So if you’re into Windows Hosting, be sure to ask if you can do things like restore/backup your databases. Otherwise you can utilize the easiest and fastest facilities of a Linux server.
Windows or Linux? This is not new to me. I’ve been asking the same question before I start developing websites. Again, don’t be confused with Operating Systems. Be practical in making decisions. If you’re a developer and your clients wants to setup a website and probably they leave it all up to you. All they want is “cheap” and fast hosting. So best check some linux hosting. What if you’re in a company? And they require a unique hosting that will help their business grow with a hassle-free deployment? Then you can go to Windows hosting. There are lots of considerations to look for. If you’re smart enough to use your skills either by reading some reviews or by having what you got then that’s a plus of being a webmaster. Some considerations will depend on what you know, what they (your clients) require, what the solution of the business requires, what’s the least inexpensive service, how can it help promote the business fast and secure, or how long do you need to familiarize the operating system. Again, be practical. Even when just providing your service to other people or business owners.
How much? I’ve been reading lots of reviews and they always say like “no need to ask for the price. What you get is what you paid for.” Well, heh that’s kind of weird though when the first we thought of buying is we think of “how much”. Every time you see a hosting company web site, you always see the same prices. Why? Why is it always like that? Why is there flat rate of $3 or even $10? Well, welcome to e-commerce world. Fixed rates happen. Many things vary from their end. Start weighing the features you want if you get what you want for that amount of money. Start searching at your budget range and see if you can get any features you want.
MoneyBack! A great deal of subscribing is to get a money back guarantee. It’s true that there are real moneyback guarantees that without any questions, they will give the same amount as you paid them unless it’s still in their moneyback guarantee policy. So if you subscribe not more than 2 months and you want to stop the subscription then you can still get your money back. Almost all hosting providers are providing this kind of facility. So make sure to choose one with it too.
Payment modes: it’s always the best way to pay your bills. You can choose to pay them in monthly basis, quarterly and annually. Better choose to pay the same month with all your major bills so that it will not affect your other accountabilities. Other firms are very serious with this since they don’t like the story when they woke up one morning and their site is gone with a little note: “This site has been temporarily suspended”. So pay your billsJ. In any way, if you can’t pay your host then it will be held to company’s policy.
Location: Well it is important too to consider the location of your servers. Decide which city or what country you like it to be. If you want it close to your home then you can have a local hosting provider. In this case, if you’re in Philippines then do yourself a favor, look for pinoy local hosting providers.
Freebies: Be sure to check if there are promotions and or free tools to use when starting a website. There could be a Free Website Builder package included. Also, there arepromotion codes that are available for discounting. First time you subscribe to their services, you can have a discount in each item or to the actual package. Sometimes there are so called trial accounts that you will not pay for those months or you could stop using the service until you’re not convinced with the packages they provide.
Optional/AddOns: The case of being kind to them is that they always take-out some importance components in their packages. Just like in Windows hosting, they take-out MS SQL Server included. So be careful when choosing them. A customized account is a good choice. Or buy the addon when you need it.
Summary: Ask more questions before subscribing. Don’t be too kind when dealing with them. There’s no such thing as unlimited. If it says unlimited then there’s a good reason for asking more questions. So now, to get you started, I would like to refer the following hosting providers. I also include some Pros and Cons in the list.
Brinkster Communication
- I started subscribing in 2003 with their Educational Package (Free) and decided to host my sites in 2004. It’s not long enough to host my other clients with them.
Pros:
Hosting features are very unique with real-time support services at 24/7. 90 days money back guarantee.
Cons:
I have some frustrations when it comes to managing windows accounts. I came with a Windows Shared Hosting with IIS6 in a Windows 2003 server. But I can’t access the Web Server and manage things.
Hostnine Inc.
- I started subscribing since 2005 when some students from school require a cheap hosting in linux machines. After that, been subscribed with their reseller package and keep a shared hosting.
Pros:
Support services is great!. And they have reasonable prices for both windows and linux servers. Good thing is that they have a great reseller package with Linux and Windows servers together.
Cons:
Spam spam spam. You’re e-mails are full of unwanted messages. Several downtimes. They don’t answer much with the problems of shared hosting nor reseller users.
DiscountASP.NET (Windows only)
- I’ve been a trial-user in their hosting from 2004 and they had the major compenents an ASP.NET web developer likes.
Pros:
Support services is great. And unlike any other host, they have fast servers. They also provide a .net shared class library for their control panel so you can interface to their services in your own way.
Cons:
Can’t find any for a trial-user. Expensive when it comes to a shared hosting.
Others are HostDepartment.com, GoDaddy.com and and BlueHost.com. There is also a great opportunity when subscribing. A referral program which is common nowadays. Try to learn on how to make money and in the long run it will pay your hosting needs and possible make more money.
That’s it. Thanks for reading. Please note that this is just a quick view of how to choose the right shared web hosting for your web projects. If any of the text did not meet your expectations then you can contact me or send your feedback by commenting to this post. In addition, I would like to refer you to another good source of “How to choose the right Web Hosting” from thesitewizard here and here. I hope you learn from it.