Choosing A Web Hosting Company
Choosing a Web Hosting company as the owner of a network of web hosting information sites, I am often asked, "which Web Hosting company should I choose?". Most people were disappointed with my answer. This is a question that requires a lot of additional questions. Which web hosting company is right for your website depends on many factors.
What Platform does your site use? In what language is the site written? Is this a business or personal site? How important is occasional inactivity time? How good are you at the web? What budget do you have? How much traffic does the site receive? The reason why there are thousands of web hosting companies is because there are millions of sites and these websites use different technologies, have different memory and traffic requirements, require different downtime, and so forth.
I have divided this discussion into two large parts. What kind of hosting services do you need/want? And what kind of company do you need/want? The reason I chose the words" need "and" want " is because many of these answers are more based on your preferences than absolute needs. What kind of Hosting services do you need? The best way to start this discussion is to determine what type of hosting services your web business needs.
Note that I did not say "website". Many people have multiple websites as part of their web business, and this also plays a role in the selection of a hosting company. In the big picture of the hosting industry, it all starts with the data center. These are high availability facilities usually with multiple fiber channels to them, backup power systems, network switching equipment, and server racks. Hosting companies that own and operate their own data centers sit at the top of the chain.
They can offer a variety of services from shared hosting to co-location, although most specialize in one area. Next in the chain are hosting companies that own and manage a group of their own servers. These companies "co-locate" their servers in data centers. That is, they rent rack space or slots in racks in the data center to place their servers. The data center provides fiber connection to the internet and facilities (power, air conditioning, security, fire fighting, etc.). This begins to go into how to choose the right hosting company for co-location services. Then there are hosting companies that rent Dedicated servers that are already in the data center. These companies do not have as large a capital investment as the first two groups because they do not need to build data centers or buy servers. But they depend on the company where they rent servers and rack space. When choosing a hosting company that uses rental servers
How to find out which category of hosting services suits your needs? Most sites use shared hosting plans. This package is suitable for personal, community, and small business websites. If your site does a lot of processing (such as database transactions) or gets a lot of user traffic, a dedicated server may be needed. In addition, a shared package is sufficient. Shared hosting plans can be provided by different types of hosting companies. They are the most commonly used and widely available. Competition in this area is high.
Choosing a company for a shared plan depends on your preferences more than anything else. There are thousands of quality companies that can provide good shared hosting services. For Windows-based websites, the options available are fewer and slightly more expensive. You can get Unix-based shared hosting plans for just a few dollars per month. However, most companies that offer these packages are small startups that operate with Reseller packages or in some cases, unmanaged servers. This limits their initial investment, but it also might get you dealing with a company that closes in a few months. Reseller packages are used for two main reasons.
First, people use it as a platform for their own hosting company. Many reseller plans are like a "franchise" on a major hosting company with everything needed to run your own hosting company without a huge upfront cost. Another use is multi domain accounts. Many web businesses and web designers have more than 1 website. Maintaining multiple hosting plans becomes difficult, even if they are from the same company. Reseller plans allow you to combine all of your sites in one plan with the ability to add more if you need them without increasing the cost (provided the reseller plan still has space left).
Next, there are Dedicated servers. These servers are generally rented by small hosting companies that have exceeded the capacity of reseller packages. However, some companies that run websites use dedicated servers instead of shared hosting packages because of performance and security. These servers are generally used for top-level sites with high traffic and database interaction. If you have questions about your website, start with a shared hosting plan and if this doesn't provide the speed you need, consider using a dedicated server. Depending on your system administration skills and Budget, such servers can be managed or unmanaged.
A managed Server means that the company provides support and maintenance such as troubleshooting, OS upgrades, program installation, system performance monitoring, etc. Co-location is generally a service purchased by another hosting company or a medium-sized company that does not want to invest in their own data center. This is not a service required by the website Owner
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