Petar Smilajkov - Peconi

If you are looking to put a website on line, one of the hardest things will be finding a good, reliable web host.

Choosing a web host is not a trivial thing. There are many aspects to consider besides the price, which most of times matter more than the price you pay for hosting. Here are some tips on what to look for:

1. How reliable the host is as a company?
   - There are many fly-by-night hosting companies, and many more ran by students, often reselling and overselling the allocated space they pay for on, usually, shared servers. While not all of these are actually bad (I started like this myself in 2004), they are risky. There are ways to research them before making a mistake. Besides the following tips, check how long they’ve been in business, how long has their domain name been registered for (domaintools.com), how many sites do they host, are they maybe even registered with Better Business Bureau, are there any reviews on-line?
2. How reliable is their network?
   - Most providers like to brag about Tier3, Tier4 networks, the bandwidth their data center receives, etc. Check out on their site to how many ISPs are they connected to. What are the connection speeds, uptime guarantees, etc. You do not want to host with a provider who is connected to the World with only one line. Look for names like Level 3, UUNET, XO Communications, and TimeWarner (for hosting in the US). If there are any pictures of the data center provided - make sure they’re neat and pretty. While these could be fake, there’s still a chance they could not be Most of the network downtimes happen because some idiot trips over a wire!
   
3. How reliable and knowledgeable is their support staff?
   - You will find this to be one of the most important factors in your long-term relationship with a hosting company. At times, you will need things ASAP, questions answered, servers rebooted, or maybe even more. Try contacting the support department and asking them some questions prior to signing up. Take a note of the response time it takes, the tone and language they respond in, as well as the technical expertise of the person. Also check where their support is located at? In India, or in the very data center your server is located at? [Disclaimer: I'm against outsourcing of US jobs!]
4. Do they offer a FREE phone support?
   - Most web hosts are slow when it comes to responding on emails. You can expect to wait anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours for a response on average for any given host (and this is actually good, some take longer!). At times there will be emergencies, or, to put it simply, you are maybe more of a phone person. It’s important that there is some other way of contacting your web host besides email. What if they are located in Florida, a huge hurricane hits them and cuts out all of their network connectivity? They’re in Cali? Earthquake is a big possibility; phone lines usually die last
5. Managed versus You’re On Your Own… [mostly for dedicated servers]
   - If you do not think of yourself as an expert when it comes to hosting, server administration, etc. - make sure you get Managed hosting. This simply means that your hosting provider takes care of everything for you, from some software installation, updates, services configuration, troubleshooting, etc. at no additional cost. These servers are usually a bit more expensive, but the price is worth for what you get. If you are unsure what you are getting with Managed vs. Unmanaged, contact the provider and ask them what’s the scope of their support. Many people hear too many times, “We’d love to help you but what you are asking is out of the scope of our support”. This is usually followed by: “However, our administrators can do this for you, but it will cost $90/hour”.
6. Features offered vs. Features you need…
   - You will notice that most hosting providers nowadays offer pretty much same features. Huge amounts of hard drive space, generous bandwidth allocation, unlimited emails, databases etc. If you already have a website, or are planning to have one made, look for features required by your site.
   1. If it is PHP based, is it PHP4 or PHP5?
      - most still render all .php files with PHP4 compiler by default, and PHP5 is available if your site uses .php5 extension. Will this work for you? Can you change this behavior?
   2. If it is Ruby on Rails or ASP.Net - does the host offer full support for it? It’s trivial to install Ruby on Rails on a server and offer it, but a good installation is more than that. If you need ROR hosting, make sure you get the host specializing in it. Best configurations are Apache for static files, and Mongrel server, or cluster, for Rails applications.
   3. Backup, backup, backup! Do they offer it? Where is it stored? How fast can it be restored? What’s the price? These are a must ask questions if you value your site and it’s content and are not planning to make your own backups manually.
7. Control Panels
   - While this could fit into features in the previous section, it is so important it deserves it’s own. Control Panels are a wonderful thing. They let you control your website through an easy-to-use web based interface and make the usually not so trivial tasks a piece of cake. When you need to add more domains, subdomains, parked domains, password protect directories, setup Web Disks, install 3rd party applications with just a couple of clicks, manage databases and users, you will mostly rely on the Control Panel which lets you do all of this. There are couple of choices these days, but my suggestion is: cPanel
   - cPanel.net is an industry leader when it comes to this. The latest version (v.11) even offers integrated Video Tutorials for almost all of the features. Friendly “Wizards” are integrated to make the management more than easy. Especially if you are new to hosting - make SURE to get a web host which offers cPanel. If you are into installing 3rd party applications (blogs, forums, wikis, etc.) most hosts which provide cPanel offer it with Fantastico DeLuxe add-on which lets you install over 50 of the most popular Open Source web applications with just a click of a mouse! You will LOVE this!

   Other popular Control Panels are: Plesk, Helm, Ensim and H-Sphere, and most of them offer on-line demos which you can test drive and see the features. Once again, I’d like to stress that you won’t find better than cPanel. I simply cannot live without it

8. Plan for your growth!
   - Make sure you ask what happens when you reach your allocated resources. While hard drive space can easily be increased, bandwidth is a different sort of an animal. While some may just bump you automatically to a higher plan, others may silently charge your fees or even shut down your site. Make sure you ask your host these questions:
   1. How much do they charge for bandwidth overages? While some charge per GB (anywhere from $0.10 to $1.00), others charge per Mbit (megabit), which is roughly around 350GB.
   2. Is there a cutoff? Most dedicated servers come with 100Mbit links. If you overuse it they may bump you up to a Gigabit link! What’s the price for that?
   3. If you need to grow rapidly, say your site just starts getting 1000s of users a day, can the current host accommodate you? Can they easily switch you from a shared environment to a dedicated? Can they easily upgrade the resources on a system you are on? What’s the downtime for all these things to take effect, if any?
      
9. Shared vs. Virtual vs. Dedicated vs. Clusters
   - these are in this order for a reason.
   1. Shared hosting
      This is the most popular kind of web hosting people tend to get. Prices are just about right, resources plentiful, but outcomes can be annoying. Shared hosting is a tricky business. While some hosts have adequate multi-cpu, multi-core machines, powerful enough to host 100s or even 1000s of users, many host the same amount of users on a machine just a bit faster than your home PC. Checkout what hardware are their machines based on and roughly how many users per machine there are. Don’t settle for less than 500GB space and less than 10-30GB in bandwidth.

      
      The good:
      - very affordable and with a good host - the best choice you can make for smaller websites.

      The bad:
      - if you start using too many resources (CPU, RAM) - they’ll just bump you off the net or offer an upgrade to a dedicated server.

   2. Virtual hosting
      - we live in the virtual age and this type of hosting is gaining a lot of traction. It’s usually cheaper than a fully dedicated server, more configurable than shared hosting environment, and you get some guarantees as in how much CPU and RAM your services get. It’s usually a nice step up from the shared hosting. The good:
      - all just mentioned.

      The bad:
      - in my opinion, and from some of my experience while testing virtual hosting with a couple of well known providers, I find the server’s initial response times low. I just think that a winner is clear when you compare a software based network adapter and a hardware network card of a dedicated server. There’s only so fast one can go. I might be wrong but this is why I do not like to go with Virtual hosting.

   3. Dedicated servers
      - if you are serious about your site you will look to get no less than a dedicated server. They are really great! I have a bunch of them for me and my clients and here’s why I like them… The good:
      - you get to control every single aspect of the server, from what software is on it, what services are running, to fine tuning the memory allocation (in my case) PHP and MySQL are allowed to use. You get to set the server just the way you want it to perform!
      You also get better customer support (hosts seem more eager to please those who are shelling out more money). You also get a choice of the server specs: you choose the Hard Drives, RAM, CPU power, etc.

      The bad:
      - if you don’t get a managed server (read #5 above), you’re pretty much on your own so you better know what you’re doing. Securing a server is not a trivial thing. Other than this, how can there be anything bad about a dedicated server? That’s like saying there’s something bad about having a computer in general

   4. Cluster based hosting
      - together with virtual hosting, cluster based hosting is another very interesting choice we face. There are cool looking hosting providers with even cooler looking websites and names spanning out of nowhere and offering cluster based hosting. Surely,there are others which have been around for a long time too. It does seem this is a new trend lately, and here’s what you should know… The good:
      - clusters are designed to spread the services (web servers, database servers, etc.) over multiple, specialized servers making them easier to protect, optimize, manage and restore. Another cool feature they usually add is integrated load-balancing for these services. They become one giant system capable of scaling horizontally. The benefits you see as a customer are that your site can receive a bigger allocation of RAM or CPU power at a moment’s notice - and scale vertically (grow in resources) with no downtime.
      
      The bad:
      - while hardware problems can be taken care of, they do happen and can bring down services. The more hard drives you have (and these clusters can have hundreds), the more chance of them dying. As you know, it’s not a matter of IF the hard drive will fail, but simply WHEN. A well configured cluster accounts for this by itself (thanks to replication), and keeps on going; that is, if it is configured well!

      - Another possibly negative issue is that some Cluster-based hosts do not provide scaling. Your site has a set amount of CPU cycles and RAM it can occupy during any given time period, and if you go over - they suspend your account or offer to move you to a higher priced plan (sometimes even on a different cluster system). When it comes to cluster hosting - make sure you know exactly How MUCH you’re getting for your money’s worth. While clusters are amazingly powerful machines, it does not mean you are getting the full power of this - but rather just a small fraction - which can most times even be less than what you would get if you had a Dedicated Server!

      - Make sure that if you go this line, your host guarantees the CPU and RAM and offers easy upgrades. Stay away from “grid-hosting” and such, unless, they tell you up-front how much of resources you get and what happens when you go over. Cluster hosts who are up-front with this will tell you you are getting a cluster with 1/7th of resources or such. This way you know there will be no more than 7 other people on this cluster.

10. READ THE TERMS OF SERVICE
    - I cannot stress this enough. This is that “small print” you always hear about. Web hosts always put all kinds of situations in here - which at times contradict with their marketing campaign and with what they say they offer. Unlike Credit Card agreements (which you read, right??), these are usually 10 times less in length so there’s really no reason not to read them.

And couple of last pointers:

• if web host’s web site looks like crap - find another one! If they can’t afford someone to make their site visually appealing in this day and age - they don’t deserve your business.
  [Disclaimer: I am a web developer ]
• beware of those “UNLIMITED” features. Nothing in the world of computing is unlimited! It can be unmetered, but it is certainly limited!
• RAM (memory) is important for sites relying heavily on database (like forums!), CPU power is required for processing PHP and other dynamically generated pages. Leverage these for a perfect balance of your needs.
• Need more info, read the Peconi Hosting’s Frequently Asked Questions.

STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT COLUMN: The most popular web hosts today, and what they offer!

Any suggestions or concerns are always welcome

This post is sponsored by web hosting provided by yours truly, since 2004: