btw, for paid hosting i use bluepipes.net and if you can't afford paid hosting, you can try using a free hosting provider at free hosting world

Originally Posted by charlesgan

i prefer host that offering huge space. Y? so that number customer account per server is getting less. I can host more websites. Basically, space & usage not come to my way.

i wont go for host that offering 500MB, and place 500-1000 people inside. thats driving the site too slow.

This logic is flawed to say the least - if you think that you're paying $5/mo to get (for example) 1/5th of a full server to yourself (e.g. 500GB diskspace available in the server) then you are sadly wrong...

Obviously a dedicated server costs more than $25/month to run. All it means is that companies offering 100's of GB for very little $$ are clearly overselling.

This is bad because you don't know how much of the you resource allocations you can reasonably use before they get upset about it. Just because they're selling you a plan with 100's of GB included, doesn't mean that they have to have that much space available on their servers at all times (it should do - but unfortunately the industry doesn't work that way).

You are generally much better off selecting a hosting provider that is completely honest and open about what they're offering. Unless you need 100GB for your site (which you almost certainly don't for any website that can be based on shared hosting) then why not select a plan that actually caters to/for your needs instead of something that massively exceeds them?

really good informative post, thanks

Found a great one too worth checking out. I have been with www.barakhosting.com and havent seem to have run into any issues. I get 60GB storage & 200,000 file limit. So far so good. Check it out.

Originally Posted by starzlet

I find Hostgator not a bad choice...

Especially not a bad choice with your affiliate link promotion like that - a very reliable recommendation no doubt.

C'mon! If you find a hosting company offers good service then by all means recommend them, but do it because you're genuinely trying to help other forum users instead of trying to gain yourself.

I would strongly discourage anyone from trusting a recommendation which comes with an affiliate link etc. as you can't be sure on the motives for the recommendation.

i.e. affiliate links are probably a sure way not to find good hosting (topic of the thread...); honest user recommendations are more likely to be helpful, but remember that everyone has different needs and expectations which is (one reason) why there isn't a single hosting company recommended / used by everyone.

i prefer host that offering huge space. Y? so that number customer account per server is getting less. I can host more websites. Basically, space & usage not come to my way.

It seems that you did not get it. They don't put less people on a server, they just oversell they ressources. This kind of webhosting companies even put more websites on the same server because they attract a lot of customers with this kind of offers and they have to put them somewhere

i wont go for host that offering 500MB, and place 500-1000 people inside. thats driving the site too slow.

At least with this kind of host, you probably will be able to use all the resources allocated in your plan without being suspended and what is the size of your website by the way ? Probably less than 100 MB.

pay $5 get 100Gb or 1Gb.??? i will take the 100GB for sure.

Do you know that 95% of the website on the internet never use more than 50MB of storage space and 2 GB of bandwith ? Most hosts are offering huge storage space and bandwith because most people never use them. Try to use all the resources and your website might be suspended a lot faster than you think.

I am a webhost and I am only offering plans that people can use and I can tell you that it is not possible to use all the resources promised in these huge plans for you are going to use all the processor resources on the server before you are able to use all the bandwith and the account is gonna be suspended.

Personnaly, I do not want to have my websites hosted on a server where the host is allowing processor abuse. Imagine a lot of websites allowed to use that much resource, it's gonna bring a lot of downtime for everybody and if my site is hosted there, it is not gonna be acessible that often.

It's funny but webhosts never advertise about processor resources. They talk about it somewhere in their Term of service (TOS) page only.

How people can think that you can get the resources of a small dedicated server for $5 or $10 per month. Check the price of any small server in any datacenter, you will find that you get a server with 80GB of storage and 1000GB of bandwith for arounf $75 per month.

Please guys, do not believe in Santa Klaus.

www.site5.com - Check out their 5 dollar deal!

Tis true, even some of the most dominant providers oversell, not a good practice either way. A good list though, Many coupons are available to be used and redeemed.

I would also recommend checking out some of the hosting reviews sites on the net. I came across http://www.realmetrics.com a little while back, and it looks like they publish some useful information on hosts (speed, uptime, etc...). I don't know how accurate it is, but it might help you out.

Originally Posted by kevinharris

I would also recommend checking out some of the hosting reviews sites on the net. I came across http://www.realmetrics.com a little while back, and it looks like they publish some useful information on hosts (speed, uptime, etc...). I don't know how accurate it is, but it might help you out.

One problem is that they don't have a particularly comprehensive list of providers - so you can use that to help highlight a potential issue with a provider you're interested in, but it doesn't hold a wide enough selection of providers IMO.

Another interesting point from their methodology page:

Peak Uptime - Measured every 30 seconds by our monitoring stations checking if a simple web page can be loaded from an account established with the provider. Only includes data from 7:00a-7:00p CST Mon-Fri. Higher is better.

In many cases this definition of uptime would be quite poor, since one of the benefits of the Internet is that it's available worldwide, 24x7. I can perhaps see some sense in 07:00 - 19:00, but Mon-Fri? If you're running an ecommerce (or any other revenue generating) site, you would want to find a host that you can count on 24x7 - not just "business" hours Mon-Fri!?

Maybe I'm wrong - what do you guys think?

I do kinda like the overall concept they have though - just perhaps they haven't implemented it perfectly yet...