[Photo by JohnSeb]
Finding a good hosting provider for your blog is one of the main things every serious blogger should do carefully. There are thousands of so-called hosting providers on the internet, but only few of them are popular and have a great number of customers.
It is not enough just to pick up specific hosting company for your blog. There are many things you should care about. In this post, I will try to help you to find a perfect web hosting provider for your blog that will satisfy all your requirements.
What do you Need
The first question you need to ask yourself is what actually do you need from your host? By that I mean what to expect from that hosting provider.
Think about what do you want from your blog. You should consider how much space you are going to use (approximately), which system are you going to use and most importantly – how much traffic you expect to get at that specific blog(s) you are hosting under the same account!
In this post I will tell you which hosting is the best for which kind of blogs!
Unlimited Space & Bandwidth
Today, most hosting providers declare that they give you an unlimited amount of space and bandwidth – are they?
We are coming to the part many bloggers and webmaster beginners does not know when they create their own blog or a website for the first time. At the first sight everything is perfect – unlimited space, bandwidth, emails, databases, domains… all of that for around $5.00 per month?
Do not think that is a true – it is an effective marketing trick for sure!
Once they purchase that hosting plan, for the first months everything is perfect – till they get more and more visitors on daily basis! Eventually their site gets down and suspended – but how when they get an unlimited bandwidth and space?
Here is a catch! Most hosting providers would tell you that they provide an unlimited amount of space and bandwidth for your hosted sites. Note that these “unlimited” amounts are available only for the shared hosting plans! Read below why!
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is a web hosting that provide you to host your website on the shared server or servers from the specific hosting provider.
This way you and all others on that server share the available space and bandwidth from one or more servers. Today, HDD and internet connections are relatively fast and cheap and that’s why they tell you that is an unlimited.
Yes, you might get space and bandwidth unlimited, but what about the processor power and memory (RAM) your website use?
And there is a catch about it! Your website can use a lot of processor power and RAM usage. In most cases, you will find that you can not exceed 10% of the overall server resources (usually found on TOS that usually no one reads)!
If you get a lot of visitors and scripts running on your website, this might be a big problem for you. Actually, I have had this problem with my previous hosting provider. They have told me that my site causes a lot of resources on that shared server and they have terminated it completely!
Most shared hosting plans are good only for a static websites and low traffic sites. Absolutely not recommended for the mid and high-traffic websites.
If you have a blog with more traffic and complex scripting I recommend you to try some other hosting solutions on the internet other than shared hosting.
Recommended Shared Hosting providers are GoDaddy, Bluehost and JustHost
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is relatively a new concept of hosting on the internet. The whole concept begin with Google and their huge interface.
Cloud hosting is in most cases still quite expensive and not well developed like other hosting solutions, but I think it has a huge potential for sure! This blog is hosted with a cloud-based infrastructure and I have to tell you that it works great for now!
Cloud hosting is recommended to mid and a high-traffic websites of all kinds. Cloud hosting is a completely scalable hosting solution which can satisfy all kinds of websites from the lowest to the highest point.
Your site can use more servers at once, taking power from others when and if needed. Popular and recommended cloud hosting providers are GoDaddy, MediaTemple and RackSpace.
VPS & Dedicated Servers
VPS and Dedicated servers works on the similar principle. Virtual Private Server hosting actually share multiple servers providing you lower costs and dedicated servers means your website is hosted only on one server – reserved only for you and your website.
VPS can be used for the high-mid trafficked websites and blogs. You can choose how much RAM your website can use and how much resources you would share with others. In most cases you would get a root access to your website through FTP.
Recommended VPS hosting providers are GoDaddy, Linode and InMotion
With both, VPS and Dedicated servers, you would get full access to your server and can reserve some or all resources only for your website!
Dedicated server is the most powerful hosting solution you can purchase. Of course, it is the most expensive one. With this hosting solution you will get a whole server only for you – this is an extremely useful only for high-traffic or high-resource demanding websites.
Recommended Dedicated server providers are GoDaddy, RackSpace and Lunarpages
You have noticed that I have placed on any recommended hosting place a GoDaddy? Well, I have to tell you that I am extremely satisfied with their service and it is one of the most professional (and one of the cheapest) web hosting providers on the internet.
They are the main domain registrant leader in the industry, providing millions of satisfied customers all over the world. Only, they bit lack at support but we can not blame them for that because a huge amount of customers. If you are a little experienced blogger I suggest you to try their servers!
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Justine Young
2 months ago
This article is a big help for those who are having a hard time on finding a good webhost in the internet. For me in finding a webhost you should take some reading and searching, for example you are going to host on a VPS hosting and you are having a hard time, you should search for a top 10 vps providers, its a lot helpful to read such articles like that because its a user’s recommendation to his fellow user. :) Nice Article and Very informative! :)
Parminder
2 months ago
It was so kind of you that you have explained so much in detail about hosting.Many people do not have any idea of what hosting is and some people are even looted to a great extent. This post will clear a lot of thing to them, making their way clear.
Dhaval Gandhi
1 month ago
Many people have a huge amount of misconceptions about hosting and many people do not know what it is exactly about.Thanks for the post as many people would gain the benefit from it.
Consumer court
1 month ago
It is very difficult to get a good blog hosting firm as people have a lot of misconceptions and i am sure that many people will like it.
Stefan
1 month ago
Hmm..If i would choose google itself as web server. I only changed my dns server on domain server. So i had www but all my files were hosted on blogger. I use it to save a lot of money per year. hehe.
but nice info, maybe sometime i would move my files to my own server.