Shared Hosting Guide : Web Hosting For Beginners

All Shared Hosting Is Not Created Equal

Fri, Jul 17, 2009

Most webmasters and bloggers will start their online hosting careers with a shared hosting package. It is usually the best path for new sites unless a huge amount of traffic is expected because it is affordable and perfectly sufficient for those building their first site or blog.

Shared hosting is a good thing and has enabled far more people to get their fledgling sites up and running with minimum outlay but the market is swamped with shared hosting providers, making that first purchase decision a very difficult one. Information overload is also a very real problem when it comes to researching shared web hosting, particularly for those just starting out.

You will for instance find huge amounts of conflicting opinion about almost every hosting company out there. Just when you find a few positive comments about a particular company you will be confronted with others saying that they are to be avoided at all costs and citing a truckload of bad experiences. The tough thing for customers is knowing who and what to believe.

So, what can you do to maximize your chances of finding a good shared hosting plan that meets your needs?

The hosting companies themselves will woo you with all kinds of wonderful sounding facts, figures and statistics but finding impartial advice about web hosting is what you really need and it is not easy for the reasons mentioned above. Many of the hosting review sites are little more than paid advertising boards and the forums can be an intimidating and confusing place for first time buyers.

You need to consider several different things when shopping for shared hosting so we are going to give you a few useful pointers.

There is no such thing as the best hosting package – what you ideally want to find is the best shared hosting plan for YOU and this can be affected by many different things. For example, if you are planning a Wordpress blog, some people will advise you to choose a host that is reputedly a specialist such as Bluehost, but that if you are setting up an ecommerce site, they may not be the best choice. Then again, others will tell you to avoid them because of their own experiences. You see how confusing it can get? Most people who provide good or bad feedback on a host are speaking entirely from their own perspective and your needs may be completely different making that bad host for one person a perfectly good one for another.

Photo Credit : Jaxmac on Flickr

So, it is important to know what you are intending to build. Once you have established that, there is no harm in visiting some of the hosting forums and asking for some recommendations from others. Having said that, just use this for making a shortlist and remember that some of those giving the advice may not be as impartial as they might appear.

Do your own research. This is a pain, but you will probably be glad you spent a little time on it in the long run.

Let’s say you have narrowed down your choice to three or four hosting companies based on the monthly cost and the features they provide which seem to fit what you need quite nicely and seem to be reasonably well thought of by the majority of customers. One of the companies is Hostgator and you’ve visited the site and like what you see. You might want to try contacting the company to ask them some probing questions that you have prepared in advance. This will give you some idea of a) How quickly they respond and b) how knowledgeable they seem to be. Of course, new business departments may be a whole different ballgame compared to services provided for existing customers because, after all, they want to sell you their services. However it does no harm to test the waters in this way and to repeat the exercise for each of your shortlisted companies.

Having run this little exercise you may or may not feel you have narrowed your choices down even further. As you are going to be sharing a server with others, wouldn’t it be nice to have some idea of how many other customers will be on the same “box”? Of course, you could make this one of your questions to ask them, but you can get a good idea of just how many other tenants there might be by using the neighborhood IP lookup service. All you need is to find a site hosted by one of your chosen companies and enter the URL. You will then be presented with a list of all the sites hosted on that server. (You can find out who hosts a website using a service such as WhoIsHostingThis)

Whilst this is not 100% accurate or cast iron proof of anything it will give you a good idea of how many other sites are likely to be on the same server as yours. The lower the number the better because although not all servers are the same in terms of capacity, memory etc. the law of averages says that less neighbors means less likelihood of your site being affected by problems arising from those other sites. Simplistic but true. You might be surprised by the results too.

If you run this site through that test you will see that we share server space with around seventy sites but it is not uncommon to see 200 or more on some shared plans. We host with Kiosk/GVO who have always provided excellent reliability and uptime. They cost a little more, but when you look at their services and know that they do not overcrowd their servers, it becomes a little less expensive looking. Even firms like LiquidWeb who have a good reputation will often have a lot more sites on one box. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the hardware involved can be very different but it’s just interesting to know. If you see a host offering “unlimited everything” on their sales page boasts however and find that they are cramming 500 customers onto one box, you might well be seeing evidence of “overselling” and want to be a little circumspect. (Note – if you use the IP Lookup service and it shows only one site or a handful of sites, you are probably looking at a dedicated server, i.e a server that belong exclusively to one webmaster, which is not what you need for comparison purposes)

So, deciding on a host because of price is often not a reliable way of doing things. You often get what you pay for and a plan costing $1.99 is not going to be as good as one costing $12.99 as a general rule of thumb. Do your research and know exactly what you are getting for the price.

If you follow these simple steps you will be more likely to find a good deal that fits your needs and your budget from the outset. Anyone who has a bad experience will tell you that moving hosts after you find out you’ve made a bad choice can be a real hassle, even though it really shouldn’t be. It’s much nicer to find a good company from the get go and to be able to grow with them.

If you are an existing web hosting customer please consider taking a few minutes to complete our web hosting survey, the data from which will be used to give guidance to others when choosing their web hosting. Respondents will also earn a link back to their own sites.

I hope that you find this article useful in your search for shared web hosting and as always your comments are welcomed.

TCH

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