Mini Guide To Choosing A Web Host

Comments

1. gestroud says:

   1/7/2011 at 4:18 pm

   Kind of surprised that Page.ly and WP Engine get recommendations and no other hosts are mentioned.

   .ly extensions are run from Libya which has a history of shutting down domains it finds offensive to Islam.

   Customers pay Page.ly $20 a month for 5GB of storage space and you can’t have more than 20,000 page views.

   WP Engine charges $49 to host ONE site with 50GB of storage, 50,000 page views and no support for WP multi-site capability.

   I pay $6.50 per month for over 500 GB, 40,000 page views and unlimited domains.

   I’m not knocking Page.ly, WP Engine or their respective professionalism or hosting capabilities. But their pricing structure makes them cost prohibitive to most people running their own web sites. And the way that they’re linked to in the article makes them seem like they’re the web hosts the author highly recommends above all others.
   • Jeff Chandler (171 comments.) says:

     1/7/2011 at 10:41 pm

     Well, that’s now how I wanted those links to look. I linked to Page.ly and WP Engine as they are two good examples of web hosts that are bridging the gap of the security blanket WordPress.com provides with the freedom that WordPress.org provides. They were not linked to as recommendations but as examples.

     Personally, my recommendation of a good web host is HostGator.
   • Jon (3 comments.) says:

     1/7/2011 at 11:38 pm

     First, I don’t use Page.ly.

     However, just because Page.ly uses .ly for THIER domain doesn’t mean their clients are hosted under .ly domains or that their servers are in Lybia… so the only risk is Page.ly’s homepage might be inaccessible, and I’m fairly certain that they already have backup domains in place just in case Lybia shuts their domain down (that based on my somewhat vague recollection from an interview I heard once upon a time, one which I suspect Jeffro may have done).

     As for storage/andwidthb limit comparisons they are only relevant if you actually can and do make use of them… I

     What many people don’t realize is that hosts with lower storage and bandwidth caps often dramatically outperform those hosts promising “unlimited bandwidth and storage”. Cheap shared hosts advertise this way simply because their client base is to naive to know better… and frankly probably doesn’t actually NEED better. CPU is far more important for a busy site than storage or bandwidth caps.

     Just as an example… one of the host’s I use (Host Monster) offers unlimited everything… yet my account with them strains under the load of just 3 WP sites which cumulatively getting fewer than 800 page views per day.

     That account gets 2-4GB/month total traffic and averages out to more like 10-15,000 page views/month. Full disclosure there are 3 other WP sites on that account that get <10 page views per day and a couple sites in development that get are only getting hit by me. There are only a few very very low traffic emails accounts on it. I keep that account to host sites under development for customers who don't have their own servers yet and for "friends" who need free hosting. In short it's all non-critical so I don't care too much about the performance of the sites (as long as they stay up), every site runs W3TC. However, that HM account is getting CPU throttled by 2-10 minutes out of every hour of the day… yes EVERY hour of the day… it's not like it's only getting throttled when there is a spike.

     To recap: 3 sites… 12,000 views/month… 2-4GB/month and I'm throttled in spite of promise of "unlimited everything". Again I don't use Page.ly but I'd wager that a single page.ly site hitting those same numbers would grossly out perform my sites on HM.

     This is what makes comparing shared hosts damn near impossible. No shared host will guarantee any sort of CPU.

     Without knowing REAL numbers for shared hosts, lets assume they put 100-300 accounts on a single server, might be even more… but lets give them the benefit of the doubt and say 100. Assuming a 3Ghz server that works out to 3000Mhz/100=30Mhz per site. This number is really impossible to estimate accurately, but I think that's a somewhat reasonable estimate to give a ball park figure. HM charges $7/m for that.

     By comparison, take a look at VPS.net's _smallest_ offering, a single node which offers 600Mhz/376MB/10GB/250GB at $20/m.

     Does it matter? Not for some users, but it sure does matter for others. Note, that VPS.net is unmanaged so it's not really a fair price comparison, the point it the gross performance differential between a popular shared host and a VPS. Now, I'm sure there ARE shared hosts out there that don't jam quite so many accounts on a server, but they aren't the big names in shared hosting.

     That's what I'd like to hear about though in the next hosting review I read… HARD numbers on shared hosting. Good luck getting those…
     • Conorp says:

       1/8/2011 at 7:40 am

       Wow that’s a long comment
       • Jon (3 comments.) says:

         1/9/2011 at 12:40 am

         Why comment if you don’t have anything to say
2. Edward de Leau (1 comments.) says:

   1/7/2011 at 5:22 pm

   Another alternative not mentioned is buy your own box and place it in the basement (im with http://xmsnet.nl/diensten/internet = 200 Mbit up and down, pretty much a dedicated ip and own servers are promoted).
3. Oliver says:

   1/8/2011 at 11:19 pm

   I’d like to make another recommendation of something to suggest in this post : some web hosts offer you to import your previous data for you.

   That may imply the databases, the wordpress files, and also the other files hosted on the previous hosting account.

   I’ve had various web hosts in my webmastering life, and the best transition I ever had was from servage.net to hostgator.com. The hostgator staff took my previous host credentials (FTP, BDDs, I gave it to them) and mirrored everything by themselves, including non-blogging folders, clean and ready, even editing wp-config files.

   When you’re an experienced, it’s a great gain of time avoiding you a tedious activity.
   When you’re inexperienced, this is a life saviour.
   • Jon (3 comments.) says:

     1/9/2011 at 12:47 am

     This is an excellent point! This is also why, at least for shared hosting, I’d never touch GoDaddy or DreamHost… or anyone else with thier own hosting control panel. Transferring from one cPanel host to another is a cake walk compared to the alternatives… and don’t even get me started on IIS servers, which I avoid touching at nearly all costs. Which is not to say IIS is bad, it’s great for some things, just not WordPress… at least not in my hands.

     Once you get into VPS’s that’ll change because you may not want to be paying for a cPanel license all on your own and it may be worth dealing with the custom server backend, but that’s beyond Jeff’s article again.
4. ij30 (2 comments.) says:

   1/13/2011 at 2:33 pm

   i only have one limit. i can’t upload anythingh bigger than 50mb. everythingh else is unlimitead since march 2010 and all for 10 euros/year payable with SMS. actualy it’s free but those 10 euros is to remove the ad that host puts it ahead your site. i did’nt find anything better so far. when i joined the acces was free, now you have to be invited. it’s easy to understand why.
5. Mazhar (2 comments.) says:

   9/23/2012 at 3:27 pm

   Really nice Hosting Guide, i happened to skim through it, you got any suggestions for Good rubyonrails hosting providers??
6. Suraj Tandon (3 comments.) says:

   2/2/2013 at 11:10 am

   Hostgator is the most popular hosting provider in all around the world. Bluehost is also popular. But, For most of my blog, I am using Free Blogger Hosting. Blogger hosting s free, reliable and no up-time problem.