« Back from Alaska | Main | How to find the best hosting companies out there (part 2) »
September 17, 2005
How to find the best web hosting companies out there (part 1)
Ok, as the Chief Exec of leading web hosting firm Globat.com one of the questions I'm being asked often is "how can I find a good web host for my website, blog, business, etc.?" So, here's the low down and dirty directly from the horse's mouth (and, a bit of a gentle pitch for Globat, of course). ;-)
Companies and individuals can by themselves create impressive websites (I have seen truly amazing websites over the 12 years I've been in the hosting business), but ultimately everybody needs a web hosting service to launch their site on the Internet and "make it live". Most major web hosting providers offer adequate space, speed, and security measures required to keep your site running smoothly. Some web hosts can accommodate websites of nearly any size so business owners never run out of space or bandwidth as might happen when your site becomes more polular and grows, in need for more substantial space requirements. Webmasters and designers should select a web host carefully and only after familiarizing themselves with each company's plans and options as they might sound alike but usually vary greatly. Web hosting offers and service levels range from being completely free of charge, over inexpensive shared hosting, to more pricey solutions such as dedicated servers or even managed hosting:
Free Web Hosting
As the name suggests, free hosting does not cost a dime, but it usually also doesn’t offer much, providing limited space, software, bandwidth, and no or very limited customer service and support. Quite often, free hosting accounts do not ensure database usage, uptime guarantee or any form of tech support. Generally, free servers do not allow you to use custom domain names thereby making your site somewhat sub-standard, considering that domain names are basically a must-have in today’s competitive online landscape. Some free services impose a very strict size limitation on the files you upload forcing you to create smaller sized web pages and restricting you from uploading heavier web elements. Others might restrict you from uploading files other than those saved as HTML, JPG, or GIF. Free hosting services normally generate their revenue (nothing is really free as these services need money to stay in business like any other hosting firm) by asking you to display their banners, some form of third-party advertising, or a pop-up window along with your website. Depending on the purpose of your website, banners of another company on your site may project a bit of an unprofessional look and a growing number of people find pop-ups extremely annoying. Free hosting services are therefore not a good option, if you are looking to sell goods or services through your website. One of the biggest disadvantages with using free servers is that some search engines do not index sites that lack proper custom domain names (i.e. they only let you use yourchoice.theirdomain.com instead of your-name.com). Free hosting accounts are mostly suited for basic personal homepages, very low-level charity organizations, or online business that are really in their infancy though eventually it would be advisable to move to a paid service that at least allows the usage of custom domain names. A good example of a free hosting service is (http://geocities.yahoo.com/) Geocities.
Shared Web Hosting
By far the most commonly offered solution and the most competitive market, which results in extremely attractive offers for individuals and businesses alike. It’s called shared hosting as most commonly you are sharing the resources of a web server with a bunch of other folks. There are quite a variety of shared hosting providers out there, so lets use a larger hosting company, shall we say Globat.com (told ya) as an example to make clear what shared hosting really is all about. For a relatively small amount (~$95/yr), a web hosting provider such as Globat (but also many others) offers incredible hosting deals (such as our TeraByte T01 Package™) on a shared server environment. Shared hosting firms usually provide better services than free ones (they’re actually making money and can reinvest some of it into their services). Globat offers more software, 24/7 technical support via email, phone and chat, up to 99.9% uptime, 10,000+ MB of storage space, and up to 4.7 Terabyte(!) of data transfer/year. Shared hosting providers are a much better suited option for businesses as well as for more serious individuals, who might be faced with a limited budget, but have at least a small amount of money left for a professional web hosting account. Site owners enjoy more credibility and usually also get better search engine rankings because shared hosting companies allow and actually encourage their customers to use custom domain names (i.e. your-name.com). An easy-to-use control panel (the tool that enables you to easily maintain the entire backend, email, and preferences of your hosting account) is a must and will make your online life much easier. Access to statistics and log files are necessary, if you are interested in find out who is coming to your site and where they are coming from. Go for more features, even if you don’t have an immediate need for them, than less. People are often concerned about limited resources on shared hosting platforms. The number of other websites you are sharing a web server with heavily depends on the type/quality of server the hosting company is operating, but the range is usually between 600 and 1,500 sites per server. Given a proper network infrastructure powerful enough servers have no problem serving up that many different sites as long as resource-intensive applications and services such as mail and databases are broken out.
Dedicated Servers
Any potential disadvantages of free and shared hosting services are taken care of by using dedicated servers, which make this option also the most expensive one. Dedicated servers are ideal for established businesses with high-traffic websites, financially sound individuals, or organizations with tight security requirements who wish to have root access to their servers. Aside from the financial background, dedicated server choice also depends on the objectives that one wants to achieve. Dedicated servers are basically the same type of machines used for shared hosting except you won’t share that server with anyone and all its resources are there just for you and your websites(s). My personal rule-of-thumb for when you might be ready to upgrade from shared hosting and get your own dedicated server (you usually need to have more technical knowledge to operate your own server or hire someone to do it for you) is when your website is ranked in the top 50,000 sites on the Internet. To find out your website's ranking simply check out Alexa.com.
To be continued…
I’m still working on the second part of this posting and should have it up by tomorrow.
Posted by Ben at September 17, 2005 11:34 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.benneumann.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/14