Basic to Webhosting

Since I'm providing guides to subdomain in my last article, I thought I'd write a little more about it for those who are interested in finding a good host. There's literally hundreds of provider on the market and the competition is fierce. It's good not to get tricked by all the false advertising. If you are not sure which to chose, it's always best to do some research on the internet and look for reviews. webhostingtalk.com is a good place to start your hosting searching and ask question. But before you ask, try to read the beginners guide and search the board topics first before you post a question as many new comer question has already been answered. Be careful when you are on some top web hosting reviews site, those comparison site could be made by some hosting company itself to promote their own products. Thus, the best way to find the web hosting company is through forum and community site.

I'm not going to promote any web hosting company here, so don't worry. Instead I'm going to tell you my own experience with some of the hosting company I use. Before I start talking about my own experience, I'll give you some tips in finding the right hosting company for the right price. If you don't have a Paypal account or credit card, you might find it a little hard to buy a webhost, in that case you might want to seach for your local hosting company that accept direct transfer as payment method. If you have paypal, then everything would be much easier and also you got a lot more choices. Through my research I still found US based hosting company provide the best speed and price, I could be wrong though.

We are talking about basic web hosting here so I assumed that you are new to this. For your information, there are 3 basic hosting on the market, shared hosting, VPS and dedicated. Since you are hosting a new site with little too no traffic, you might want something cheaper. I know it's always tempting to use hosting companies that offers unlimited bandwidth and that kind of shit even if you don't really need it, those are just their marketing ploy. No company can provide unlimited bandwidth out there, if they can they will be out of business long ago. They knew a new site isn't going to use even a tiny bid of those bandwidth, in fact they have ways to deal with even high traffic site on shared hosting. What you don't know is most shared hosting if not all have concurrent connection limit. What does that mean? That means if the shared hosting have 50 concurrent connection limit, it only allows 50 connection to the site at once. If there's more than that, other of your visitors will be prompted with errors page. Most hosting company should have this information stated on their site, somewhere deep and well hidden that not even 1% of chance you'll come across. Most people doesn't know that, and the company will just laugh at you at the back saying yes we can provide unlimited bandwidth only if you can use it.

Most shared hosting have all basic software and stuff that comes with your hosting. Some allows you to host more than one site and some offers better service. But it all comes down to price when you are on tight budget. And I'm one of those webmaster that are constantly looking for cheap web hosting. Currently, there's two I use namecheap and godaddy. Namecheap was relatively new to web hosting, and I found their server rather slow and their support basically can't help you at all. But they have the cheapest at just $2.99, the catch is you have to pay for the whole year. So if you are not satisfy with their service after few months, you can't get any refund. From my experience, I host my site with them because I know I wouldn't receive too much traffic in the first years but I'm looking for long term, so I don't mind paying them one year of hosting. I check my site very often, the speed and uptime wasn't too bad either, although I do have problem with one of my site that keeps going down and it frustrate me.

Most shared hosting with priced under $5 requires to pay one year in advance. Only godaddy I know of requires to pay just 3 months. Godaddy was much cheaper in the past at just $3.99 and they allows monthly pay which is great for testing. But that's the past. Now it cost $4.99 per month for shared hosting, and you have to pay 3 months in advance for the first time. Although I hate godaddy doing some sneaky thing to one of my larger site, they are not a bad hosting for smaller site. I can't complain as other host might just suspend my site. Both namecheap & godaddy are reputable companies and they are some of the biggest domain registrar out there. So you have one less worried about getting scam. I recommend them both for your first web hosting, chose between them based on your preference.

I'm just telling you my experince with the web hosting I've been with, there might be better and cheaper hosting companies I'm not aware of. And that's your job to find the best one out there for your needs. There's one thing I do realized is that you'd probably stick with your first web hosting company longer than you wanted even if you don't like it. So choose wisely. Good luck!