How To Choose A Shared Web Hosting Provider?

By Mike Hasselhoff


The type of hosting service you use is dictated by a few factors, the most vital of these are the scale of your project and your budget limitations. The budget should be considered first because "underpaying" for an account will put you into a position where your project will most likely fail. Think of this real world example: You're going to move some furniture, should you pay for a compact car or a rather more costly truck? The compact car can get you from point A to B but strapping a couch to it will be a bit of a problem and in the short-term will likely result in you paying out more for repairs than you would have paid for the proper vehicle. So that compact car is best when used to move a few boxes around. It's the exact same thing with web hosting packages. If your project is vast, then you want to spend a little to get the return you need. If you are getting started or you know the scope of your project is small, then a shared web hosting plan might be justified.

Shared hosting is just that - Shared. There are many customers on the same server all fighting for the resources of that server. Any one customer's actions can affect the balance of site delivery time and cpu performance for the other users on that server. A good host monitors their servers closely to make sure that all the accounts are playing together nicely and, like a schoolyard monitor, are on the lookout for accounts that might be abusive or not appropriate for shared hosting.

The initial step in finding high quality shared web hosting is asking hosts how many people are on their shared hosting servers and what their CPU and ram allotments are on those hosting servers. A dual core machine with 4 gigs of ram can support about 50 users; 8 gigs of ram 100 users. A quad core with 8 gigs 150. In our opinion, there should never be more than 150 hosting accounts on any one hosting server. Monitoring accounts and customer interactions gets almost impossible over 150.

Features are significant too when choosing, but do not be swayed by features you do not need. It is wonderful that hosts offer unlimited email boxes but if every account on a shared server used even 100 mailboxes fully, that server would crawl to a halt. Only request and purchase what you need.

You can always upgrade! This is a crucial fact. Shared hosting, unlike many other kinds of hosting, is expandable. A host can add more disk space or traffic use to your account. Find out before you decide on a host what expansion plans are available as you "will" need to expand as the time goes by. It is simpler to expand in one place than move all over.

Lastly, evaluate how long a hosting provider has been around. There are tons of hosts on the web : too many! Some operations come and go, some are owned by another hosting company, and some are fraudulent. Reputation and years in service are wonderful things to look at. If a hosting provider has been around a few years, it is a safe bet that they are going to be around for a few more. Get web hosting reviews, compare and most significantly don't jump at the cheapest hosting package which catches your eye. Quality is important.




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