Schewanick Computer Services

Looking for the best web hosting provider

So why am I writing another article about choosing a web hosting package ? Isn't hosting becoming a commodity these days ?
Well first, from my experience as a beginner a few years ago I was not able to find a reliable article or review (most of them are just paid advertising or Adsense place-holders !), and with so many offerings I didn't have a clue on who to choose and why could two providers offer the "same" service for 2$ or 50$ per month. So if you are building your first web site, or are looking to change hosting providers, I am quite confident this article will be beneficial for you.

As a first thought, there is no such thing as an overall "best web hosting provider". Your needs are unique and so are the service providers, so the idea is to find the best hosting provider for your own unique needs .
In this article, we assume you are looking for Shared hosting. Shared hosting is Web hosting in which the service provider serves pages for multiple Web sites, each having its own Internet domain name, from a single Web server. Most Web hosting companies provide shared hosting. Although shared hosting is a less expensive way for businesses to create a Web presence, it is sometimes not sufficient for Web sites with high traffic.
In the early days, shared hosting plans were limited in Disk space and Monthly bandwidth, however these days it is not common to find 20 Gb disk space or more on shared hosting, making it a viable option even for medium-to-large websites.

In contrast , Dedicated hosting is basically renting a whole server solely for your use. It is much like having your own server but the biggest difference is you do not need a large initial investment to set it up. Dedicated hosting will not be covered in this article. What you need to know about it is that it gives your more firepower, more bandwidth and CPU, and costs a lot more than shared hosting (serious dedicated servers start between 200$ to 600$ / month)
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Shared hosting options and reviews

Free hosting:

Some companies offer to host for free a small website, under a sub-domain such as yourname.webhost.com, and may offer you 10 mb or 50 mb free space. They will be placing distracting ads and banners on your site and are betting on the success of your website to force you to upgrade to a paid service. They would also not provide any support, backup or warrantee. For a list of providers , pros and cons see our other article about paid vs free hosting

The bottom line : DON'T USE FREE HOSTING – unless you're under 13 and are creating a page to tease your sister. These services are simply not useable for a real website project. Besides, hosting is becoming really affordable these days, so if you want to cut costs, you may want to try to cut costs elsewhere.
Free hosting providers will always offer you the option to "upgrade" to a paid service, but in practice their paid services are usually much more expensive and have much less features than the main shared hosting players.

Budget shared hosting (I can't really recommend except for small dead-end websites)
Some people are looking for "the cheapest possible hosting", if this is you, then you need to look fore budget shared hosting. Budget hosting is usually offered for less than 5$ per month, some companies even offer packages at 1 or 2 $ / month, and is usually limited. Limited in diskspace (a few dozen megs to 1 or 2 Gb), limited in power and speed as your website is likely to be found as well as hundreds of others web sites. Limited in terms of mailboxes, domains you can host under 1 account (usually 1), sub-domains you can create (usually no real sub-domains can be created), ftp users , they usually do not allow certain type of content (nudity, gamling.)
This type of hosting is usually fine for a personal website, a small company website, a club, association or such. It is usually not recommended if you want to perform e-commerce, host a large on-line community or portal.
Then some people say that you can always start with a budget hosting under 6$ and then expand or upgrade when their site takes off. This is not practical as in reality these hosting providers do not usually have a better offer (for speed and support) , moving to another host is a very tricky situation and even if upgrade is available, it is usually much more expensive .
Also this only works if you plan to host 1 domain and 1 domain only – otherwise you end up paying per domain and it will cost you more than the "Mainstream" shared hosting which usually allows you to host multiple domains while paying the same monthly fee
Budget shared hosting main players are :
• Godaddy www.godaddy.com (3.99) : good space and bandwidth, slow, support is notoriously slow, they will try to sell you a lot more features, bad control panel
• 1and1 www.1and1.com (2.99) : good space and bandwidth, slow, support is notoriously slow
• Oxito (for French speakers) www.oxito.com (2.99 Euros) – little space and bandwidth – they tolerate nudity
• Ace-Host www.ace-host.net can be 4.99 if you take 2 years or more – offer a lot of features including many templates and cpanel. beware of their CPU and bandwidth overlimit policies – support may be questionnable
There also many small or regional players. Check the webmaster forums such as www.ozzu.com or www.webmaster-talk.com to see many small companies offering their services.
Important Note: beware not to use these providers if you plan to publish a newsletter as any email sent from an application running on a domain hosted there will be sent to the bulk mail folders of Aol, Gmail , hotmail and yahoo. I've had a bad experience there Also do not trust an offer if it looks too good. Too many people have seen their website vanish as the startup in India, China or the US disappeared after 15 days, having charged them for a full year !
Mainstream shared hosting (highly recommended)

Some people are looking for a good reliable hosting package, to host a serious project such as an online community, a popular free site (jokes, gallery, forum), an e-commerce site, a portal , a corporate website, are looking for a serious uptime and good support yet don't want to spend a fortune on hosting !
These hosting providers will offer you the most "bang for the buck" and you can usually count on them as your website gets more traffic. The usual offers include multiple or unlimited domains hosting, unlimited sub-domains, 5000 or more mailboxes, good speedy support, a good control panel and many updated one-click installs
Many of these providers will offer you a reliable email system that you can use as a professional mail and will allow you to send newsletter and mailing list that will not be rejected by main email providers
The budget usually varies between 8 and 20 $ / month, and get usually cheaper when you take a 1 or 2 years long plan instead of a monthly plan – which is usually a good idea as you end up saving a good deal of money.
These providers will also usually allow you a refund for up to 3 months if you are not satisfied
Some of the most popular hosting providers include :
• Site5 : between 8 and 10$, 11Gb space, 400Gb traffic, 5 domains and sub-domains, 1 free domain registration, good support, good email system. Site 5 has an excellent reputation for support, speed, scalability . They also have other packages
• DreamHost : between 8 and 10$, 20G space, 1 Tb traffic, unlimited domains and sub-domains, 1 free domain registration, good support, good email system, updated one-click installs, nice community, automatic backup and daily snapshots. They also have other packages – I recommend this one although others may work for your
• HostGator : this is well recognized hosting provider in the industry. Between 7 and 10$, they offer unlimited domains/subdomains, 5 Gb space, a site builder, full control panel, good support, many updated one-click installs
• BlueHost: this is a popular hosting provider. Between 7 and 10$, they offer 15Gb space, 6 domains, unlimited subdomains, full cpanel, good email system , many one-click installs, good support and more.
"Expensive" or Premium shared hosting (for special needs)

Some hosting providers are still offering "1990s" rates nowadays.
It is not uncommon to find companies trying to charge 20 to 50 $ for very little disk space, bandwidth, features or even support
If you are looking for these examples, try the articles on main.addfreestats.com , you can find many ways to get ripped off by a hosting company !

The worst I found was a provider based in Belgium, which charged about 60$ per month for 100 Mb space.. For the same money Dreamhost or BlueHost would offer you more than 100 Gb, so they are more than 1000 times more expensive !!!
The only reason you could legitimately pay more for a hosting package is that if you need to host an adult site , or if you need to pay for webmaster services.
For many reasons, I will not list such providers, but contact me by email if you need more information (see end of article)
Hosting Promo codes

When you are set on choosing your hosting providers, you can make some serious savings by using Promo Codes. Promo codes are offered from time to time as special offers to help
Since web hosting is really at core a "recurrent business", these providers will tolerate to lose money on the first year as they know a satisfied customer will stay there for years and refer many people, so they use "promo codes" as a marketing tactic to help convince an undecided customer to choose this "special offer".
Some of the promo codes examples:
Godaddy : gdh0109 will save 10% off the domain name or hosting plan
Dreamhost : FIVE5 will take off 55 $ of your 119$ yearly plan or will waive the setup fee of the monthly plan
Many other providers offer promo codes from time to time, such as SITE5, or others. Entering "provider promo code" on your search engine before buying is usually a good idea
Read the full article on http://www.acemmedia.com/hostingreview.html


Copyright Yasser Shmaytilly - http://www.acemmedia.com