Tips on How to Choose a Website Host - What to Look Out For

There are different types of website host. This article will focus on choosing from a shared/reseller, VPS or dedicated host. It is assumed that you know the differences. However chances are (if you don’t know the differences), you will simply want to look for a shared host.

Shared/Reseller Hosting

There are many factors to look out for, and you should create a shortlist of hosts based on your set of requirements. An uptime guarantee and quality of support are important aspects to look out for, amongst your other requirements. A low-cost host who offers a relatively high amount of disk space and bandwidth can sound good, although if they have sub-standard support and your website is down for more than a few hours per month, they may not be worth going with.

Remember that whilst “unlimited” disk-space and “unlimited” bandwidth offers sound a great deal, there really is no such thing as “unlimited” (if there was, Google would use an “unlimited” host instead of paying millions per year in hosting!). Instead, try and work out about how much disk space and bandwidth you will require and look for a hosting package that will give you 50-100% more than you will use/need.

Another thing to potentially think of is how quick their servers are. Ask the host if they can provide a test file for you to download (and you can test the download speeds of their server). Whilst a client should always create backups themselves, it’s also common for a host to automatically backup their servers nightly - feel free to ask a potential host what backup systems (if any) they offer. It would be wise to go for a host which offers backups - nearly all hosts nowadays do.

If you are looking for reseller hosting, you will want to choose a host depending on whether they offer you end-user support or not (i.e. support for your customers). In addition, look out for whether a host offers an uptime guarantee (and remember that 99.5% uptime still equals 3 hours and 40 minutes downtime per month). Some hosts also offer an SLA (a Service Level Agreement) where they will issue a refund or service credit if their downtime goes below the their uptime guarantee.

VPS Hosting

There are two main types of VPS hosts - those who offer fully managed support, and those who offer unmanaged support. If you have little experience with managing a server/VPS before, then opting for one who offers fully managed support is a must. If you are relatively confident with managing a server, then an unmanaged provider could be worth going with. Remember that those who offer fully managed support (KnownHost, WiredTree etc) cost more on average than those who offer unmanaged support.

With a VPS you don’t just have a disk space and bandwidth allocation - you also have a RAM allocation. If you have a control panel (cPanel, DirectAdmin etc) then you will want anything from 384 MB RAM and above (since a control panel takes up some memory).

Also be sure to look out for the ‘typical’ features like how fast their support/sales responses are, how quick their servers/test files are and whether backups and an uptime guarantee are offered.

Dedicated Server

As above, if you don’t have experience with managing a server then you will want a fully managed provider (or go with an unmanaged provided then sign-up with a server management company like Platinum Server Management).

With a server you have a large number of choices and combinations of components and features to choose from. Remote reboot will allow you to restart the server remotely; and rebooting can help sort a range of performance issues with your server. There are various different operating systems which you can use; the main choice to make is whether you want a Windows or Linux operating system. Linux OSes are most common for dedicated servers, although most dedicated providers will give you a range of choices.

If your website is mission-critical (in that you’ll want as little downtime as possible), getting RAID 1 will increase data redundancy - RAID 1 (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) requires you to have at least two hard drives, and it mirrors the data onto both hard drives; so if one hard drive died, the data would still be on the other hard drive and your server wouldn’t crash (so then the dedicated server provider can replace the dead hard drive).

Also remember that there are different ‘types’ of dedicated host - there are budget providers like Volume Drive and Hivelocity (who offer cheaper prices but slightly less ‘extra’ features, etc) or premium providers like SoftLayer whose prices are higher, but have an amazing, feature-packed control panel.

Tristan Perry, Le Creuset Kettle