Always a bit daunting and a question I’m often asked. ‘I want a website but where do I host it’?
A quick Google search will reveal thousands of companies (and the 12 Google Adwords results) and 10’s of different options.
A web developer looking to publish a website will most likely be even more confused when doing a search, instead of finding a good web hosting provider highlighted by the search engine.
The reason is very simple many individuals and companies, small and big, have seen the opportunities in web hosting. Indeed even I partnered with a friend a number of years back to sell space on one of my dedicated servers… it was space going to spare why not make some money from it? Of course responsibility and support needs come with that and that is the reason I stopped offering it as I had too much real work to do!
The result of this saw new web hosting providers created overnight, to go with this there is now a plethora of forums, ‘reviews’ sites, publications and middle parties, mixed with an entire array of web hosting products, from free hosting to powerful dedicated or co-located servers.
Now I’m not going to recommend any specific providers, even the ones that currently host my site but to try to explain the options available.
Free Web Hosting
Unless you have a personal website, you should never look for free web hosting. Sorry you just shouldn’t, unless that is your experimenting and testing code or are willing to be at the whim of a company that can delete, loose your website without any guarantees from the provider themselves.
Companies that offer free hosting tend to do it for the following reasons:
- they will recoup their costs back by inserting ads on your website or
- they are providing Internet for you, and offer you a ‘free web space’ and free email, as part of their Internet package, so it’s not truely free anyway
Putting ads outside your control on your own website can be irrelevant and obtrusive and won’t make your website appear credible. Those webpages are as credible a myspace page, and are just useful to host a couple of images and html pages.
As for Internet Hosting Providers, their free web hosting service is often tied to your subscription. This means that as soon as you stop doing business with them, the free web space is most likely to be deleted or at the very least you will no longer have access to it for updating your site.
Shared Web Hosting or ‘Cheap’ Web Hosting
Cheap web hosting is almost always shared web hosting. A shared web host is where you get a little bit of space on a larger powerful server. Shared hosting is very common amongst websites online. Pricing ranges from just over $1 to over $30 (it is common for many web hosts to change in US $ even if they aren’t based in the US!).
They offer a huge array of options from PHP to .NET to OSCommerce to PHPBB.
Here is what you should look for in shared hosting:
- Web Technologies supported. If you are looking to open up a wordpress blog, you need obviously to make sure that the shared plan has PHP and MySQL. Same for Ruby On Rails applications, or .NET shared hosting. This criteria is probably the most important since there’s no use finding a cheap web hosting provider if it won’t run your website. Here’s a possible list of what to look for: programming languages, database, web server software installed, cron jobs, domain name tools, etc.
- Number of users hosted on a single machine. The total number of users directly affects the speed of your website, and there are lots of providers who overload their servers. To gauge this number, ask for a list of active and fairly big websites under their shared web hosting plan, and see if the websites are running well. They may not be able to divulge the exact domains running but they should be able to give you and idea of how many sites.
- Price and possible discounts. Many companies offer deals and discounts at specific periods so shop around.
- Support and Guarantees. Lastly, doing business with a web hosting company is mostly a long-term relationship, as it is a huge hassle moving hosting providers, especially when it comes to moving all your domains and IP addresses, etc. You might find a great deal, from a new unknown provider, but what you need to make sure is that this company is reliable, that they will still be there one year from now; and there will be someone listening to you if you are having a technical problem with your website. Looking for well used support forums and live chat capabilities from your provider are good indicators.
Dedicated Servers or ‘Virtual Private Servers’
You can look for a VPS (virtual private server) or a dedicated server if you are a small or large company serious about your web presence, if you are a web developer who need performance and greater control of your web server, or if you plan to host an entire array of websites, either your own, or your clients’.
Here are the advantages for virtual private servers offerings:
- it’s often cheaper (although not always) than dedicated servers
- provisioning is usually automated, on-demand and quick, which is good for web developers looking for a hassle-free experience or quick deployment of their server infrastructure. You can have your server ready for your to load your sites on in minutes.
- billing can be done hourly, which can be a key business argument for startups and companies alike,
- you get SSH access and a control panel (Plesk or cPanel), which is often enough for your needs.
Here are the advantages for dedicated servers offers:
- you can get customized servers, fine-tuned to your needs, such as the exact quantity of RAM, the right CPU, network speed, required bandwidth etc. You can order a RAID hardware setup for instance, which is impossible for a VPS. Need more RAM than processing power? it’s possible. Do you prefer AMD chips instead of Intels? Just order it in the form.
- you can setup advanced configurations for your technology infrastructure, by setting up firewalls, web clusters, load-balancers, anti-DDOS solutions, etc., which is again, impossible for a VPS
- you don’t have to design advanced backup solutions, since your dedicated server is physical and your data won’t evaporate one day, which is the case for VPSs. Of course you still need to consider backups but it’s just the same as backing up your home computer, just make sure you do it!
- a dedicated server can be cheaper than many purchased virtual servers, if you use virtualization software such as Virtuozzo or VMWare. For example, by virtualizing your dedicated server, you can have one instance as the web server, another instance as the database server, another instance for cache.
- You have 100% control of your server. The web hosting provider cannot for instance offer CPU or RAM bursts to other users, so performance will be equal and guaranteed any time of the year.
In my opinion the biggest advanced of dedicated vs VPS is that there are known ways to secure your data, whereas data tampering is a real issue in cloud computing.
Here are the main points you should look for when choosing the best web hosting providers for your dedicated or virtual server:
- Assess if the company owns their data center, or if they are a reseller who are in fact hosting their server in another company. Look for a physical address, phone lines, network details. Of course, it’s better to do business with a company which runs its own data center. It’s not only about the price, but the guarantee that there will be personel who will physically fix servers when the need arises, know their own equipment and hardware inside out and have a quick turnaround
- Price of your desired configuration, and price of hardware parts and software, both the setup and monthly costs
- Path to scalability, such as availability of more powerful configurations
- Quality of network, which can be done with traceroutes, pings or by testing various websites hosted there
- Reliability and trustworthiness. See for instance how many years the company has been in business. For instance, a company which has been operating for more than 10 years means it is unlikely to disappear overnight. Also, a company which has a open blogs and forums is more trustworthy than another web hosting company which doesn’t offer a place for its users to collaborate and exchange. A lack of a forum could also indicate the company doesn’t have many customers.
- Support. Assess if the company’s support is responsive, if there are customer complaints on the company’s forum.
As stated in the shared hosting section, don’t forget that doing business with a web hosting company is above all a long-term relationship. Please don’t judge purely on the price, choose most of all a company you can trust.
If anyone is interested my site is hosted on a dedicated server by iWeb in Canada after a disasterous experience with The Planet when their datacentre had their power transformer explode! It’s running CentOS and sitting on a 100Mb/s port so network speed won’t be an issue.
