I've been using a shared webhosting package for several years. I'm rolling out a new website that I expect to have high traffic and where the subscribers will be expecting near-perfect 100% uptime. I have two problems which are making me consider upgrading to something other than my current shared hosting package with Dotster.

First, I'm tired of my e-mails getting mislabeled as spam because of bad behavior by others sharing the server. A designated IP address would fix this I think.

Also, there are times when my website is down or very slow to load. This is rare but, as a I mentioned, I expect that with my new website any downtime will cost me customers and customer satisfaction.

I've done a little research into a couple of other options and am interested feedback/advice about the relative pros/cons.

Virtual Private Servers seem to be affordable and would give me a dedicated IP address. My hesitation here is that I know almost nothing about servers and most of what I've seen requires you to basically be your own server administrator. That's more than I want to take on.

Another option I found was a managed dedicated server. This seemed like a good solution but is cost-prohibitive ($400/month).

Also, I just learned about DNS Failover which seems to allow one to redirect a website to a parallel server if one server is down. This seems like a great solution to guarantee 100% uptime.

Looking forward to some comments/feedback.

Andrew

Through shared Hosting you may get a dedicated IP Address if you request it. It would cost a little more (about an extra $2-5), however if this is the only reason you were considering VPS's, then I would go with that instead. However, a VPS would be effective you were expecting very very high traffic. Something like Webmaster-Talk so to say. Maybe this would require a bit mroe than a VPS, however you get my point . That's the only reason you should be considering VPS's or Dedicated Servers. On;y if what your website is driving large traffic, and if it actually affects the server load considerably. An example would be Image hosting, file hosting, web hosting, a social community (myspace), or osmething like youtube.

Generally naything BIG goes on a VPS / Dedicated Server. Something smaller goes on shared Hosting.

Thanks for the reply Andrei. I'll check to see if my current webhost offers dedicated IP addresses.

Do you know if it's possible to use DNS Failover with a shared hosting account? If it is, I may be able to use that to have a parallel shared hosting account with a different company and my users could be re-routed to the alternate when the primary host was slow or down. Would this be a good strategy?

Andrew

I've heard great things about http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/index.html.
they're pretty cheap too. I've never done this for myself, and none of my lcients have requested this, so I really don't know what to say. However, I'm pretty certain it should work! Again, i'm not 100% on this, so you may need to get a second opinion .

Let me know how this works out.

This seems like a great solution to guarantee 100% uptime.

The way it functions is to check regularly if the "official" server is down, and if it is, "redirect traffic" to the backup server. This means that there must be downtime for the system to kick in, so 100% uptime is not achievable. To complicate matters, some ISPs may disregard some of your DNS instructions, and still point people to the "official" server. Also, if the downtime is the result of very heavy traffic, pointing visitors to another similar server will not take care of the issue, and will result in downtime yet again. Keeping the data consistent on the two servers can be quite a bit of a challenge if databases are involved.

My hesitation here is that I know almost nothing about servers and most of what I've seen requires you to basically be your own server administrator. That's more than I want to take on.

There are fully managed VPSes out there, where the host would take care of server administration tasks for you. Make sure that the service is proactive, rather than the kind that waits for your requests to do anything.

Another option I found was a managed dedicated server. This seemed like a good solution but is cost-prohibitive ($400/month).

There are decent and yet lower priced fully managed dedicated servers out there. The configuration matters a lot, and if your sites were doing fine in a shared hosting environment, you won't be needed a very powerful server.

Another option I found was a managed dedicated server. This seemed like a good solution but is cost-prohibitive ($400/month).

Do more efforts and I'm sure you will find good solution for your budget

Thanks for the great comments. I think I'm going to start with a DNS Failover system (the one from DNSMadeEasy is reasonably priced and gets great reviews everywhere it's mentioned - thanks for the tip Andrei) and a second shared web hosting account. From what I've read, some ISP's cache the DNS and disregard instructions re: update frequency making the DNS failover solution ineffective immediately. It seems this system would be very effective for downtime of more than an hour.

If server load becomes a problem, I'll need to augment this solution.

Re: problems with e-mail deliverability with the shared IP. I contacted my webhost who said a designated IP wouldn't help for this issue. They recommended I consider hosting e-mail externally using Google Apps. I'm going to check this out today. Anyone have experience with this? Any downsides?

I'm also going to use an independent uptime and server response time monitoring service to make sure the performance is up to snuff. Any recommendations for a good monitoring service?

Andrew