How to Choose Webhosting

Mar 27 2010

Many people think that quality or good things cost a lot of money.Well,this is not always true,particularly in the webhosting industry.This is so because there are a lot of webhosting companies because the industry is as big as the internet itself,every one of them has different degree of quality services at various prices,so,you can always find a better deal(higher quality at lower price).All you have to do is to conduct your search or homework well and know how to evaluate the various webhosting service providers.This will be discussed later in this article,but then let’s examine the two most significant aspects or elements of webhosting package-Quality and Price.
Quality Webhosting Package Vs Price
Web hosting service providers have different packages.Some hosting packages have bigger space capacities but with limited features,some with smaller space but with a lot of interesting features,while some have bigger space capacities,more website-enhancing features,larger bandwidth,and a lot more.But all these quality contents are of little importance without the ‘Appropriate Prices’.When I say appropriate prices,i mean lower prices for high quality hosting packages.Of course it all depends on your choice,as in which package is of enough quality to you,perhaps you business doesn’t require a large space capacity and the mind-blowing features.But are you sure you are being offered what you want at the best price?Don’t you think you can get the same or even better hosting package at a lower price,somewhere else?I am sure you want to save money and still get a better web hosting service package-a nice deal.
How To Evaluate Different Hosting Service Providers For Your Business
Now let’s see how you about choosing the ideal webhosting service provider for your business or company.You don’t want to sign up with a service provider and later find out that you can actually get a better deal elsewhere.You will probably feel somehow cheated or outsmarted.You don’t want to find yourself in this kind of situation,then you must do your homework well before you eventually choose a particular webhosting service provider that best suits your website or business and has the lowest price.
So,how do you about this little,yet important research.I have designed a four-step procedure for you to follow for your convenience.It’s simple,easy and fun to follow provided you know what you are looking for.When you know what you want,you are more apt to find it.
Step One:firstly,do a search at Yahoo or Google on the term “buy web hosting services” or something of that sort.On the search result page,you will find a number of good webhosting service providers,bookmark the page for future reference.Select six or seven most impressing webhosting companies for further scrutiny.
Step Two:Now,compare the quality of the various webhosting packages of these webhosting comapnies.See which one best fits your business or company.Consider the space capacities,bandwidth,support facilities,the website-enhancing and business-promoting features of every one them.I recommend that you choose the one that can accomodate the future growth of your business.Do not buy a webhosting service that caters only for small businesses just because your business is not,as at now,that big,for you never know if your business is one of those that grow fast.After the scrutiny,cut the webhosting providers to the best three.
Step Three:The next step is to compare the various prices at which theses webhosting packages are offered.Avail yourself of their subscription plans and see which one you prefer.You can also save more noney through this means.Besides,a wise buyer always wants to save more money.Don’t say,”well,since I can afford it,let me just pay for it”.If you are unsure of any part or feature of a webhosting package,in order to justify the price you are paying for it,ask the hosting company’s agents to confirm,as most of the good webhosting companies have Private Chat Rooms through which you can get instant reply on any question regarding their products,from their agents,right on their websites.
So,always go for the “best quality at the lowest price”.This is the main secret of the truly smart buyers.Do you want to be one of them?
Step Four:Finally,decide which webhosting service provider to go with.Choosing a webhosting company to host your site can be a little bit difficult for some people but if you know what you are looking for,what is good for you or your business,it can be very easy.
To ease your search for a reputable webhosting comapany to take care of your site,I recommend these two of the best hosting companies;Vodahost:www.tinyurl.com/25k5qk & www.tinyurl.com/33agcj/,they have great prices and billing plans that suit every pocket.But,remember only you know what is best for you and your business.So,buy right today and feel like the wisest and smartest buyer on earth.

Shared Webhosting – An Affordable Webhosting

Mar 27 2010

Shared webhosting is housing and serving files for a web site. For individuals or small to medium scale businesses that cannot afford to gain an extreme robust connection to the internet for their web site on their own. This is where the virtual or shared webhosting businesses come in. They provide the customers a way to outsource their Internet requirements in a more affordable way.

The shared webhosting service allows individuals and companies to share the cost of a fast Internet connection for serving files. This is the basic, entry-level fee-based hosting service available to the customer. Shared webhosting allows clients to host their website on a powerful server at a minimal monthly cost. Shared webhosting provides individual sites with connectivity and guaranteed uptime. Shared webhosting is designed to host small-scale e-commerce sites web pages. Shared webhosting is used by first-time webmasters because you can have a reliable Web presence without having advanced technical know-how. Shared webhosting is good for small-scale consumer because they are assured of transparent services, domain name for its website and set of email addresses.

Shared webhosting’s low cost makes it very attractive to the consumers. A minimal monthly fee for a shared webhosting service is preferable than a dial-up service. Most small-scale business and individuals choose shared webhosting because of its low price and it provides basic services. Another reason for shared webhosting popularity is its convenience. Site activation and set-up time in shared webhosting usually takes a few minutes after purchasing the services.

Shared webhosting services are usually bundled. With a minimal monthly fee, it offers multi-platform website solutions. Bundled services include: minimum amount of disk storage space for web pages, minimum amount of data transfer, email forwarding services with physical email boxes that allows you email aliases at your domain name, unlimited file transfer protocol (FTP) services. Shared webhosting alos provide access to Web statistics for you to gage the number of internet clients visiting your web site. This service usually includes raw statistical logs. Also, shared webhosting will include free 24X7 technical supports.

Other services in a shared webhosting are daily tape backup of web site, anonymous FTP server for you to provide public access via file transfer protocol format and CGI-BIN access to upload scripts that will add features to your website.

Shared webhosting is truly a great way to avail of fast internet connection for your website at a very minimal monthly cost.

Why Webhosts Spread Their Customers Across Servers

Mar 27 2010

As Hosting is a 24×7 business it is mainly a tough business. Everything like servers, bandwidth etc requires to be up and running 24×7. Redundancy in everything is the only solution in such a condition. One requires duplicating everything like having multiple power sources main power, UPS, generator, having multiple bandwidth providers etc. apart from this entire 100% uptime guarantee cannot be given. It is interesting to know that this kind of redundancy is wanted by web hosts from their providers. Nonetheless, hosting all their customers on a single server is the mistake made by many small hosts.

Having one high end server and filling them with as many accounts as possible is time and again considered better. Few reasons why a single server is preferred by webhosts -

1. Maintaining a single server is much easier.

2. Cost of buying multiple servers is more when compared to buying a single server.

3. Multiple O.S. Licenses and multiple control panel installations mean multiple servers. The cost of software is reduced.

4. More datacenter space is multiple servers while collocating.

5. A higher end server is considered better where customers look at the specs of a server.

6. Well-configured server when compared to poorly configured server can take more sites.

7. As the OS architecture is better a good OS such as NetBSD would take more sites.

When a single server can do the task no one would want to take multiple servers. Just selecting the right OS and configuring it by an expert is the only thing a webhost needs to do so that he/she can live a peaceful life hosting as many sites as he/she wants, perhaps even unlimited sites on a server. All this might sound too good to be true.

Most of the time even with over a 1000 sites thing looks very good. And thus it’s been decided by spammer to pay for a year and start spamming from the server. The sites start to take ages to load and the load is never below 20. All the sites will go down at one shot if the server crashes. Supposing server goes down in the morning hours of first day of the working week and the server has say about 1555 sites, then the webhost may end up with many cancellations and 755+ support tickets. Thus single servers may possibly mean:-

- As the number of support calls increases it means higher support costs.

- As the server is catering to more sites there can be higher server load. This would result in slower sites.

- As the number of users per server is higher there are more risks. More users per server is difficult to maintain.

Total throughput of the Ethernet card is another important aspect that many hosts forget when hosting on a single server. At any instant of time a single card would always have its limitations on amount of data it can push. If many of these sites are accessed at the same time, the Ethernet card would fail to push the data quickly when multiple sites are being hosted.

Lastly, lower-end servers consume less power than high-end servers. They are also heated up more than regular servers. This over heating leads to faster hardware failure.

On a typical server “How many sites can a webhost host?” No exact number is there for this. Just how many sites per server are ideal has to be determined by every host. Factors required to be considered to reach this figure: -

- The ratio of static to dynamic html sites on the server.

- Type of O.S. and software used.

- Different packages being offered by webhosts. Higher bandwidth, more mailing lists, databases etc. would mean higher server loads.

- Maintenance of servers. Servers that are not maintained on a regular basis have lesser sites hosted.

- Place where customers are located, as a lot of sites from the same time zone would have higher usage at the same time.

The load ought to generally be lesser than 1 for a single processor server. One can see the CPU load by using the w or top command on Linux. Or merely cat /proc/loadavg . 0.5 means that only half of the CPU time is utilized whereas the load average of 1 means the entire CPU cycle is being utilized by processes. Experiments determine the right load average.

A lot of importance should be given by webhosts to the amount of RAM as well as the type of network card used by the server. While taking server one should always go for high-end Ethernet cards. The maximum throughput of data would be ensured.

Web hosts cannot replicate the setting on servers because of the demand for different O.S. and control panels. Maintaining the servers will not be a problem if a good policy is in place. Webhost are allowed to broaden their offerings to the end users in terms of the O.S. and control panels offered by multiple servers.

Only when a server crashes or when a server is hacked the biggest benefit of having multiple servers is being understood. The number of trouble tickets is reduced in such cases, as every site that is hosted by the webhost is not affected. Instead of having an angry crowd of 1555+ customers at one shot it is better to have 250 customer sites down at a time in case of hardware failure. Multiple servers also mean that the webhost can spread the name servers across the servers.