RouteCafe

This my first tip in this blog based from my personal experience and applying other people experience as well. I’d like to mention first that there are thousands of hosts out there that offers different services starting from Dedicated Servers, VPS, Resellers Hosting, Shared Hosting.

I’m not going to discuss their terminology today, as we are going to focus on the basic and advanced things when choosing your hosting. If you are a person that have had experience with other hosting companies you are welcome to give more tips in the comments.

A global note to presidents or employees of companies, I’m in no way endorsed to any hosting company, my opinions are personal. I think the people deserves to be more picky and demanding when hunting hosting services. Don’t take it personal, it’s not that your hosting sucks, maybe the maintenance of the servers, the wisdom of your staff is insufficient to the point of making consumers think “company” are full of mediocre people orrr you are not ready yet.

Now let’s being!

1. Before choosing a hosting, know what you are going to use it for.

   It’s okay to get all happy! You’re going to be part of the web, good for you! Beware that many users fail to complete their websites because they just don’t know what they are going to use it for. So, if you choose a blog, what’s the blog going to be about?

2. Never go with overselling hosting

   Think about it, they will hardly have money to pay for their servers to move all the domains with heavy traffic. Your experience with your site will suddenly be crushed because:

   1. Your site goes down frequently.
   2. Your site will be slow most of the time.
   3. There are so many domains connected to the same MySQL Server that your web script will die without saying “So long my friend” .
   4. People fall because of the prices, don’t be so stingy and put some money into it, what do I mean with this? Easy, the support staffs will take hours to reply to your ticket. Meaning that there are hundreds of customers having the same experience you did, so all they do is copy/paste their reply to you.
   5. There is no such thing as free. You’d think that they will give you 1 TB Bandwidth just like that? Or 500 GB Space? Come on be realistic, but don’t be a conformist.
   6. The prices! So cheap! Like I covered before, but will do say it again, DON’T GET BLINDFOLDED BY PRICES.
   7. Apply what I just said above.

   How to detect that a host is overselling? Simple, what if I tell you I offer 10 GB and 50 GB Bandwidth for 3 bucks. Amazing! You are going with me! The samples varies, you can get hints on your own, or ask in WHT.

   I want to make it clear for new people that likes to research. If you are new in both internet and WebHosting, then I guess I’ll put it this way: You go to Walmart and buy some Best Value crap for a buck. It tastes awful, right? Why bother buying something 100x times unhealthy and not spend a few two or three bucks more for the same product. Putting it simple. Don’t torture yourself.

3. Look for reviews. Please don’t fall for their “Oh, we offer 99.9% uptime”, “We are reliable” because they say so?

   “Google” their company, look for every piece of information that was made in forums about them in a year ago and current year. For starters, there’s a gold mine of information in WebHostingTalk.

4. What are you looking for? A windows server (ASP?) Unix Server? What features are you looking for?

   You want to start a blog? Then you need PHP and MySQL installed some additional extensions such as GD2, ImageMagick, sendmail, mail() function.

   You are a python developer that works on frameworks such as django and Ruby On Rails, look for a host that offer the service.

   Always look at the requirements your web applications asks for, it’s a common mistake for starters to just sign up.

5. Terms of Services(TOS)/Acceptable User Policy(AUP)/Privacy Policy are either hell or heaven, it can be used against the host too if you want. Always read the terms, because you don’t know if you are agreeing for your account to be terminated in half a month, you don’t know if you are agreeing to use 1 GB Bandwidth a day from what they offer (example, 300GB), don’t get yourself capped. It happens that services that oversells(mostly the popular ones) caps your bandwidth daily. On a side note, it’s rare to see normal hosting companies to do this. When I think of oversellers, in my mind it pops up Meb Gibson.
6. Always think about the benefits you get, not the space/bandwidth you get. Check their server specifications if you are a geek, or ask a geek (there are tons in WHT, hey I’m complimenting by the way).
7. Always request what you need, in a quality hosting if you need something they will install it for you. PHP Extensions, explanations on how X feature of the hosting works.
   

   Please people, have some shame and don’t ask them to install or fix a script for you. A web script have their own support and troubleshooting. You are wasting the time of the staffs keeping them away to fix server issues.

   THE HOST IS NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOUR SITE GOT HACKED VIA A WEB SCRIPT (ex. phpBB, SMF, Joomla). It’s developers of the script that needs to be held responsible. Also please make sure you follow every step when installing a web application. The host is not at fault, unless their servers got hacked.

8. In number 6, I mentioned to ignore Space and Bandwidth, now I will tell you to ignore that and apply the rest. Let’s say you were with an old host and you have 1000 users with 100 active daily.

   Do the math, you are wasting 5 GB monthly, and 1 GB in Space. Counting in that you get 300 to 400 unique visitors and the returning guests that never signs up. A lot of hostings sometimes suspend a site because of the traffic they are getting is raising “their CPU” and slowing down other sites.

   That in a shared hosting is still fine, if they ask you to upgrade your plan, just leave them if they are asking you to upgrade to something more expensive to the point that the price is 10x times more than what you paid, if not, think about it. You might also want to ask the next host you choose if that kind of traffic in a shared plan would fit in. Ask in WebHostingTalk what they recommend, some might say a Reseller Plan, others might say a VPS (which would be too hardcore from what I said above).

   Ah yes, those were all examples, please don’t get technical with me, because I bite and I know how to torture geeks!

9. Look if they have support via phone, some companies offer it when they are already well-established. It’s sort of having geeksquad (I pray for your soul not to get support from people like geeksquad). I’ve never had to call, because I’m shy and hide in bed with puffy bears, not really. I just never had a reason to do so, though I was thinking to call DreamHost once.

   This is really very optional, unless you are a business man or woman.

10. If you are a angry customer, get something to calm yourself first. Nobody likes to get yelled at, do you think I would like to read what you just said in CAPS? No way, I would use the TOS against you and terminate your account (because “we” always reserve the right), and refund the money. Of course, that would be in my case. (Would be really unethical on my part, wouldn’t it?, If you are thinking about this, yes you company employee reading this, remember to allow the customer get the back up)

    Be civilized first, and get rowdy if 5 days have passed. I allow you this time!

11. If you are unsure about X or Y hosting, and they offer money back GUARANTEED, then sign up, test them for at least 10 days. If your services go down, ask for a refund.

Experienced Users Tips

This is empty, if you are a user and want to get put your suggestion up here. Reply in the comment box with “My Tip: Your tip here, and the reason(optional)”

By now you should have learned that:

1. Overselling is a no-no.
2. Look for quality, not quantity.
3. They might be pandas.
4. Choosing carefully is always good, although sometimes it’s nice to gamble.

Thanks for reading this article. It might not be well written but I tried my best to offer you, the readers, to be careful when choosing your provider, it’s like having a girlfriend (mostly in the dumping part).

Just don’t get your heart broken. You can always “divorce” and “argue” with your “net buddies” in “forums”.

What’s next?

Tips: Before choosing your hosting, a sequel to some things I said in here.

If you are a grammar nazi, and want to correct a few things. You can contact me at webmaster [at] routecafe [dot] com. I’m also interested because I want to learn. I’m a person who uses English as Second Language (ESL).