Category Archives: Server Administration

Web hosting solutions

What is your first thought when you think web hosting? My first thought has always been confusing. There are so many hosting providers and so many options within those providers. To name some I have used personally hostgatormyhosting and hostmonster. I started using shared hosting and at first I thought it was a great deal. For a low price you are able to host unlimited sites and databases. Also you are able to access your files as if you owned the server yourself.

Overtime I noticed that shared hosting kept on getting worse and worse. I kept having downtime for issues I did not create. Since I was on shared hosting their wasn’t much I could do about it to. I kept on contact support in hopes they would be able to fix it. I have used shared hosting over the past six years. I have had many good days hosting but have also experienced a lot of really bad days. I started my hosting with hostmonster. I thought their service was really good. I was only paying around six dollars a month to. So for that price you can’t really go wrong right? I noticed very little downtime with my shared hosting. To be fair at the time I didn’t have any real users using my website. So I wasn’t keeping track of downtime I would only notice it if I was on the site myself. I also noticed very little slow speed. Again with the same scenario of not monitoring it closely. I was very impressed with their service over all. After some time I wanted to expand my development skills and at the time hostmonstor didn’t have Ruby on Rails hosting. I seen that hostgator included Ruby on Rails hosting with their shared hosting plans. Also the price at the time was very reasonable only again like six dollars a month. I thought what could go wrong. Well at first it was alright and I didn’t have much downtime. I was able to get my sites up and running pretty quickly too. After being with them over a year I noticed my site kept going down. This would probably happen at least once a week. Most of the time when I contacted support they said it must be something with my code. After debating with them for awhile they would restart the server and we would move on. After working with them for another three or four months I decided that I had enough. I have users depending on it being up and could no longer justify the lower price. I was looking around to other shared hosting and noticed VPS hosting. At the time I wasn’t too familiar withVPS hosting but I had heard you get full control over the server and only pay for what you use. I then decided to move to VPS hosting.

I could have just upgraded my account at hostgator and went on their VPSplans. But they were crazy over priced. I guess they don’t want VPS customers? So I did some research and found myhosting. I was surprised by how low priced they where. Also they offered hosting in Canada or the US. I chose the US but it’s nice to have the option available. Also the VPS setup could not have been easier. You need to know a little bit about a linux server but not a ton. As long as you go with their business package a lot of it is click and go. I have really been impressed with their custom service also. Also they have a guaranteed uptime of 99.9%. Thus far they have kept that promise and actually have had an uptime of 100% the last three months. The price I pay currently is only twenty dollars a month. So about double or a little more than double than what I way paying but for much better service. I think the value in it is well worth it. It will allow me to grow my sites traffic. Users really appreciate sites that have 100% uptime. They get really upset and at times leave if a site is down to often.

To sum it up my advice for any small website or small business go with VPShosting. I would recommend myhosting based on my experience with them but would also recommend to shop around. It’s important to find something that will work for you site or your company. If you have a site that does not have a lot of users or maybe isn’t critical maybe it’s just a blog like this maybe shared hosting would work. Again if you are reading this you know the site is not down. So if it always goes down people will stop looking at your blog. So again I think VPS hosting is the way to go. I also feel that the price for hosting will keep going down as processes improve and get faster. Also if you are nervous about managing your own linux box I would recommend trying it and see if you like it. Maybe start month and month and go from there.