What Some Web Hosts Don’t Want You To Know
Many start-up web hosts in their desperate attempt to get hosting business from you have plenty to hide. Here are some of the things they will never tell you. For some start-up web hosts, service does not exist. Low cost or budget web hosting services are the ones most likely to fall under this category. Some will not provide any information about their service while others will proudly announce that they provide 24/7 service. This is quite often not true.
Many of the low-cost web hosts have little experience in web hosting. A good way to find out about the level of service is to get the service telephone number and use it before you sign on. This should tell you a lot about the level of service you should realistically expect from the host you want to use.
The other common truth amongst many web-hosting enterprises is that they lack experience. Ensure before signing up that the company that you are going with has reasonable experience. How long has your host been in business? You do not want to be part of a start –up experiment for an important service.
One other thing you will need to be very careful with when using low cost or budget web hosts, is the fact that some of them are involved in many different businesses and not just web hosting. Ask what other businesses or projects your web host handles before signing up with them. You want a specialist not a generalist whose resources and time are bound to be so stretched that chances of you getting reliable services are very slim indeed.
It is also a fact that some small low cost web hosts do not offer the promised bandwidth. They should not advertise one thing and end up providing something else.
The best way to protect yourself from most of these nasty surprises is to go for a short term contract to begin with. You can for example start off paying on a monthly basis. That way it will be easier to change hosts when you discover something you don’t like.
About the Author
Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for http://www.websitesource.com and http://www.lowpricedomains.com with experience in the website hosting industry.
Server Uptimes Revealed: The Hidden Cost of Cheap Hosting
We often see server uptime statistics when looking for hosting providers, for example 99.8%, 99%, or 99.99% server uptime guaranteed. Though 99% server uptime may sound good, but is it really and what does it mean?
99% server uptime means that in a year of 365 days, your server will be up 99% of the time, which is 361.35 days (365 days x 99%). This is not really good, because even with 99% uptime your site could be down for 4 days. It would be disastrous if you owned an online store because even an hour’s downtime would cost you. Imagine, not only lost revenues, but also customers who switched to your competitors while your site was down.
Here are some server uptime examples with calculations showing what the percentages mean.
100% server uptime
Up = 365 days
Down = 0 days = 0 hours = 0 minutes
99.999% server uptime
Up = 364.9964 days
Down = 0.0036 days = 0.0876 hours = 5.256 minutes
99.99% server uptime
Up = 364.9635 days
Down = 0.0365 days = 0.876 hours = 52.56 minutes
99.9% server uptime
Up = 364.635 days
Down = 0.365 days = 8.76 hours = 525.6 minutes
99.8% server uptime
Up = 364.27 days
Down = 0.73 days = 17.52 hours = 1051.2 minutes
99% server uptime
Up = 361.35 days
Down = 3.65 days = 87.6 hours = 5256 minutes
You can use other tools like ping and traceroute to measure server response times and hops required to reach your server.
Initial hosting offerings of very low prices bundled with a lot of disk space and server features may be lucrative, but when it comes to server uptime, you could be paying a heavy price. If you are just starting off with your own website, then a lower server uptime like 99% may not affect you much. But as you get more and more visitors, you should choose a hosting provider with maximum server uptime like 99.999%.
Sanjib Ahmad – Freelance Writer and Product Consultant for Business.Marc8.com – Business Best Sellers. You are free to use this article in its entirety as long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content, and include the resource box listed above.
Managed Hosting Services Who Benefits from It?
Managed Hosting Services are used primarily by companies that either don’t have staff with the expertise to manage a dedicated server or don’t have staff with the time to attend to the needs of managed hosting. In either case the option of having the host manage the server can be of great value to firms that have such needs.
Some companies web sites are too traffic intense to share a server with any other sites. This is the point at which a dedicated server becomes a necessity. Many firms reach this point and are put in the position of being hosted on a dedicated server yet do not have the IT personnel with the background to manage a dedicated server. The knowledge requirements to upkeep the server operating system, updating security patches and handle the special circumstances that arise, require a great deal of in depth expertise. The question then becomes can the firm afford to hire someone with the capabilities needed to take care of a managed dedicated server or would outsourcing the task be more practical?
This question has to be answered by each individual company and all the factors are weighed according to the specific situations. The case could be for example that the firm is already needing additional IT help beyond the above needs and adding a qualified person would be a timely efficient solution. In most instances however it isn’t practical to add full time specialized personnel, when getting managed hosting services is an option for much less expense.
A company may have personnel on staff that are capable of operating a managed dedicated server. The question then becomes is time available to devote to such a server and is the person able to keep abreast of all the continual updates and changes that the server industry is constantly incurring? Again the issue is does the additional expense of managed hosting services off set the added work load and responsibility that will be assigned to the existing staff. Since a dedicated server is definitely needed the managed dedicated server option can add as little as $250-$300/mo. to the total monthly outlay.
A final very important factor to consider in either of the above circumstances is how critical is the uptime of the company web site? Some firms can get along fine with a 99.9% uptime yet with others circumstances require 100% uptime. There are managed dedicated server hosts who offer 100% uptime. Be ready to pay top dollar if you want these characteristics in a host. Such uptime levels often demand redundant sites, elaborate multi-homed environment or possibly a backbone connection. Hosting companies such as E-Insites have seperate divisions dedicated to managed hosting. You can see their offerings at http://www.onlymanaged.com
Recapping a company’s staff’s ability and availability are main factors in choosing a dedicated server or a managed hosting services. If there is staff available that has the capabilities to manage a dedicated server then by all means save some money each month and get a good dedicated server hosting company to work with. On the other hand if the specialized staff isn’t available or otherwise needed then a reputable managed dedicated server host will provide service that will leave the existing staff free to do what they do best to make your company thrive.
Pros and cons of shared Web Hosting
There are a lot of various types of web site hosting. They can be classified by different indexes.
There is Paid and Free web hosting; Linux/Unix-based and Windows-based (and other but they are no that popular); shared, dedicated and VPS. Every hosting type has its own advantages and disadvantages.
The key aim of this article is to acquaint you with main merits and drawbacks of shared hosting.
First of all we must give a definition of the term “shared hosting”. So, what is shared hosting?
Shared web site hosting is such kind of providing space for web sites on the hoster’s server when you share this server with other customers’ web sites. All web sites use the same software and operating system. But unlike free web hosting which has the same conditions, with shared web hosting you have much more benefits.
Shared web hosting can be divided into two subtypes:
- Free Shared Hosting is the best choice for trying some new ideas and not paying for hosting. This type of web site hosting provides you with everything necessary for floating your site. Of course you should not expect the best conditions for your site. Bandwidth and Disk Space is limited. This type of shared hosting may not ensure you with MySQL, PHP support. Web statistics is also poorly provided.
- Paid Shared Hosting provides such necessary features, as multiply e-mail, MySQl, PHP are supported. You may use it if you want to host small business web site, intermediate or large professional site but don’t need the whole server’s space.Using shared hosting you get a good possibility to host your site on a powerful, well administrated server at a low monthly cost.
Shared hosting is in first-time webmasters’ great demand, ’cause it can provide reliable web presence without having special technical skills.
So now we can pick out pros and cons of shared hosting:
Pros
- Low cost
- Good server administration
- Multiply e-mail, MySQL, PHP support
- You don’t need some unique knowledge in web site and server administration
Cons
- Low security level
- Resource limitation – everybody uses the same memory, CPU and HardDrive.
- You can use only the software which is provided with your web hosting company, and correspondingly you can’t install your own.
- Some available ports and connections can be limited because of security policy.
The main feature of shared hosting is that you don’t need to worry about possible server problems. Your hosting company’s support service is to fix all troubles. So, when choosing shared hosting you must carefully look at company support’s quality, the better quality of support – the better conditions for your site.
With shared web hosting you can also place several sites in the neighbour parts of the server.
Now when you are acquainted with all special features of shared web hosting you can decide whether this type of hosting is appropriate to your needs and requirements.
More hosting articles you can also find here Web Site Hosting Reviews, Web Hosting Review and Cheap Web Hosting Directory.
About the Author
Webmaster and articles editor of hosting reviews sites Web Site Hosting Reviews and Web Hosting Review.
Linux servers: Do you understand the difference?
First of all, some people are worried that they will not be able to use Linux hosting because they run Windows on their PCs. However, what operating system you run on your own PC is irrelevant to which web hosting environment you can use, because the latter is run remotely on a web server, where your website files will be uploaded.
Linux and Microsoft Windows are two different operating systems. Windows is a well-known household name and does not require much introduction. Linux is a new version of the Unix operating system. Both these operating systems make excellent environments for web hosting. However, there are some differences between them.
To help you decide whether Linux or Windows hosting is better for you, we look at the following elements:
Cost
Linux is known as an “open source” operating system. i.e. there is no licensing fees to pay. Therefore, compared to Windows, Linux is very cheap. Starting with Windows XP, Microsoft has begun enforcing software activation. This means that a single copy of Windows can only be installed on one computer. With Linux, once you own a copy, you are free to install it as many times as you wish on any number of computers.
Reliability
Linux is reputed to be very stable and reliable. This means that a Linux server is much less likely to crash than a Windows server. Subsequently, a Linux server will mean more ‘up time’ for your website.
Experience
Linux has many more years of experience than Windows in hosting.
Speed
There is no real difference in speed between Linux and Windows, but Linux is slightly faster in processing basic web pages.
Functionality
Windows support ASP (Active Server Pages), a Microsoft programming/scripting language, which allows you to build dynamically database-driven web pages by connecting to a Microsoft database such as SQL Server or Access. Linux does not support ASP nor Microsoft databases, but uses MySQL database instead.
If you use Microsoft Frontpage to create your website, it doesn’t mean that you have to choose Windows hosting. All Linux accounts come free with Frontpage extensions, which allow you to upload your Frontpage website to your web space on a Linux server.
Scripts
There are many CGI programs available on the Internet. The majority of these are Perl scripts and have been developed on Linux / Unix web servers. So they tend to install more smoothly and operate more reliably on a Linux server. Moreover, many Perl scripts are downloadable from the Internet free of charge.
To summarise, most users find that Linux hosting is easier to use, more reliable, provides free, open source software and is much cheaper than Windows hosting. So unless you particularly need to use Windows specific features such as ASP and an Access database, it is probably a better choice to choose Linux over Windows. For more information on Linux hosting, visit .
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