Shared hosting: today I’ve found the disadvantages
People say the Internet is the best and cheap place to start a business as you don’t need a big pile of cash to start your future meals provider. You need 10$ for a domain name, 5-10 more for your first month of hosting (in a shared environment) and a PC connected to Internet. That’s all, you’re now online with your website powered by a free software. Cheap and fast, but there are things you don’t know, things that you’ll become aware in time. One on them is the hosting environment where your website files are stored.
Shared hosting: my take on it
Shared hosting is probably the form of web hosting you’ll be using 99 % of the time, mainly because is cheap and doesn’t require too much knowledge to operate the environment. The drawback? You don’t have control on the server’s resources and it’s not your server, as it is shared with other people having their own websites up and running. If one of those websites goes berserk your’s won’t run smoothly or won’t run at all. If the administrator isn’t fast enough everyone has to suffer.
If it’s your website then probably it will be shut down, as it happened to me today on JustHost, who suspended my account and noticing me after all my websites went down. I managed to get things back on track, but I don’t have to tell you how stressing this was for me, as I couldn’t see what the problem, which script caused the problem. I managed to convince them to re-enable my account and move my files to another server (using my persuasion skills) but I’m already looking for another host (any advice is welcome).
So, when using a shared hosting always backup your data frequently, as you might need to pack your things and move at any time. That’s the price of cheap I guess.
Options to shared hosting?
There are options, better but expensive as you might expect. One is Virtual Private Server and the other is Dedicated Server. The first one is like a virtual machine with fixed hardware resources. When you exceed them your websites start to move slowly, but don’t affect other virtual machines on the same physical server. A dedicated server means exactly that: you’re getting your own physical server, with root access and all that and you’re paying a monthly fee for rack space rent, power, bandwidth and security (in case someone decides to stole a server from a database you’re covered). All the administration is done by your or someone you hire, so that’s the professional version.
There’s also a solution that makes you less depending on someone and that’s server collocation: basically it’s your server and the provider offers you a place to store it, powers it and connects it to a backbone (a subscription which you pay).
As you see the more expensive a hosting solution for your websites is the more resources you have and the more complex the administration is. So chose depending on your budget and networking/servers/Linux knowledge level.
Web hosts I’ve used
I can’t finish this article without making a short list of hosting services I’ve used, with a few pros and cons:
- Dreamhost (if you like them use promo code IONUT97 for 97$ discount the first year of hosting)- reliable, pretty slow connection from Romania, nice support (who don’t jump and suspend your account because you’re passing the 10% CPU load limit), doesn’t have on demand general backup (which is a nightmare as you have to do it manually) but have a one time general backup and save snapshots of your files on each FTP account (not including databases)
- Justhost - very cheap, fast, reliable, jumpy when it comes to closing down your account (but you can talk to them and get things back on track), has general backup feature which is great
- HostGator (see available coupons here)- I’ve used them for a few days so not a lot to tell about them (I’ll update the article at some point). They seem fast and have general account backup feature
PS. I also recommend giving a look at Website Hosting, Website Design, and Search Engine Optimization.
