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Since I started in 1998, hosting has been one of the most confusing aspects for some of the people I've worked with. When hosting became necessary, a lot of companies made a lot of coin by severely overcharging for their services. There is no reason why a 5 MB website with only six pages and twenty graphics needs to pay $100 a month for hosting. On this page I'll give you some tips on finding the right hosting for you. I'll also tell you about a few companies I would avoid.
Answer these questions first:
1. Is your website going to receive many thousands of hits every hour? The vast majority of websites do not.
2. Will you be allowing for downloads and streaming of a large number of videos for a very large number of people every day?
3. Will you be only hosting one website on your hosting account?
4. Or would you rather be able to host any number of websites on your hosting account?
5. Will you be running a shopping cart and also need secure server access for credit card processing/account privacy?
6. Is your site designed to be a personal home, with family members for visitors only?
7. Do you want to resell web space and essentially be your own hosting company?
If you answered yes to number one and/or two, you will probably need your own dedicated server. That way all of the power would belong to you, without putting a large drag on a shared server and potentially taking the server down. I'll give you an option in a bit.
If you said yes to number three but not number six, then the smallest account I'll show you (which is still very large) will work for you. If you said yes to number six, I'll give you another option at the bottom of the page.
If you said yes to number four and/or five, there are two good plans to choose from. If you said yes to number seven, we have three options for that too.
I've chosen a web company called HostGator for my websites for a variety of reasons. First, they are a green web company - their servers are powered 130% by Texas wind, which means they not only negate their own impact, they reverse it. Second, they are one of a few companies I have never had a single problem with. Third, they are very affordable and give the majority of websites far more resources than they will ever need.
For those who only want to run one website, the Hatchling plan will give you an immense amount of space and bandwidth for one domain. Note that if you wanted, you could create extra websites in folders and point domains to them - you just wouldn't have email addresses for those domains. Hatchling starts at under $85 a year, and becomes cheaper the more time you buy. Or you can choose their monthly payment option. You can always switch your payment schedule later if you want to.
The Baby plan will allow you to host unlimited domains. If you have twenty websites, you could host them all on one account and only pay one fee. I host several on my account, as well as websites for a few friends who don't care to have cpanel access. They get their own emails and I host them for free in exchange for barter. If you want to do ecommerce, you can add a few dollars a month and get a dedicated ip and SSL access. Or for a little more...
You can get their Business account for less than $180 a year (or $14.95 a month). This comes with unlimited domains, free private SSL, a free dedicated ip and all the space you need for most small business shopping websites. Just tell them when you sign up that you want SSL turned on and they'll do it quickly and even guide you through the process of installing a certificate. If you need a secure server certificate, visit my E-Commerce page.
For those needing a dedicated server, HostGator has a variety of well-priced options depending on your needs. A dedicated server means you are the only person using that server, which gives you more access, space and badnwidth abilities. This is for people who want an Amazon shopping site or to run their own YouTube. Most people will never need a dedicated server but the option is there.
For those wanting to resell space, there are five options. You pay one fee and get a billing system and hosting control panel that allows you to be your own hosting company. You can start small and host about 6,000 websites with a 4,000 MB limit each. Sell that many websites and you're in the green in a big way. You could upgrade to any of the other four accounts at any time.
I completely recommend HostGator. Click here to get all of the details on all of their options. Most of the time they have a special going on, so make sure to look out for those.
If you only plan on having a small personal website for family members to view, I've heard good things people I've referred to Doteasy.com. You only pay about $35 a year for your domain name and nothing else. The $35 covers the domain and the hosting account, and you get a decent amount of space and bandwidth. I've heard that it will go down for a few minutes on occassion which is why I don't recommend it for a business, but I have one friend who raves about it everytime I see her. It's a good choice for smaller sites that don't rely on selling anything.
Hosting Companies to Avoid
These are companies I have had direct experience with, either having hosted with them myself, or working for a company that did. I would never use these companies.
Siteground - I moved a customer off of Siteground because their servers went down all the time. Response time for support was bad. When my client tried to renew the SSL certificate they bought through Siteground, Siteground's techs took the money, didn't renew the certificate, and applied the money to a person we'd never heard of. After much arguing I got the money back for my client and went directly to Geotrust.
Mosso - Absolutely terrible. Not only do they severely overcharge, but they have uptime issues pretty much every single week. They are slow as well - my client's website loaded in 8-55 seconds on Mosso as opposed to the half a second average they now get on HostGator. They always had the exact same problem but apparently no ability to fix it.
Host Department - The people were nice and usually fixed things well, but the sites I had on their servers loaded a lot slower than they did anywhere else. Host Department tended to blame the scripts used, even though those same scripts ran 10 times faster on another company's servers.
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