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How To Choose A Shared Web Hosting Provider?

By Mike Hasselhoff


The kind of hosting plan you use is dictated by several factors, the most significant of these are the size of your project and your budget. The budget should be considered first because "underpaying" for an account will put you in a position where your project will probably fail. Think about this real world example: You are going to move some furniture, should you pay for a compact car or a more expensive truck? The compact car can get you from point A to Z but strapping a couch to it is going to be a problem and in the short term will probably result in you paying more for repairs than you would have paid for the correct vehicle. So that compact car is best when used to move 1 or 2 boxes around. It is the exact same thing with hosting accounts. If your project is huge, then you need to spend a little to get the return you want. If you're getting going or you know the size of your project is limited, then a shared hosting solution could 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.

It is always possible to upgrade! This is an important fact. Shared web hosting, unlike many other types of web hosting, is expandable. A host can add more storage space or bandwidth use to your hosting account. Find out before you decide on a hosting provider what expansion plans are available because you "will" need to grow as the years go by. It is easier to expand in one place than move all over.

Finally, evaluate how long a hosting company 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 take a look at. If a hosting company has been around a few years, it is a safe bet that they will be around for a few more. Get hosting reviews, compare and most importantly don't jump at the cheapest hosting plan which catches your eye. Quality is crucial.




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