Small Website Hosting - Internet Marketing and web development » Hosting

Comparing Shared Web Hosting to VPS Hosting

admin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 02:48:43 +0000

One of the first decisions you will need to make when choosing a new web hosting plan is the type of plan. You can choose from a dedicated server, VPS hosting or shared web hosting. In this article, we will discuss the main differences between VPS hosting and shared hosting.

Virtual private server hosting, or VPS hosting, is similar to a dedicated server in which it has its own software, operating system and many of its own resources. Though technically, VPS hosting accounts share the same physical server, there are “virtual” walls that keep each account separate, allowing for many independent features.

By contrast, shared hosting hosts numerous websites within the same server. Unlike a VPS server, they are not partitioned and all websites on the server share an IP address. Individual websites that share an IP address are recognized by their exclusive host name.

Each subscriber on a VPS hosting plan is guaranteed to have a minimum amount of the shared resources. With a shared server, all accounts use available resources, and there is no guarantee that the resources will not be used by another subscriber when your website needs to use those resources. The resources are not distributed equally among subscribers. In the event that a single user exceeds their available resources frequently or for a long period, the administrator can suspend the account and ask the account holder to upgrade to a plan with more resources or to a different type of hosting.

By their nature, shared web hosting and VPS hosting have many differences. Furthermore, web hosting companies can also offer different options and levels of the two plans.

Differences In Email Accounts

With VPS hosting, each account has its own mail server that only handles email from a particular domain name. This gives greater security and performance, as well as more control for the website owner. Each email also has its own IP address, which helps ensure that it reaches its destination. Since website owners can install software on a VPS plan, a more sophisticated email software with tracking can be added.

Since shared hosting plans all share the same mail server, if one web host uses their account for spam, all accounts with that IP address can be affected. If you do choose shared hosting, ask the web host what policies they have to reduce the risk of your mail being blocked as spam and how the situation will be resolved if it does happen.

Platform Control

On a VPS hosting plan, you have your own software and operating system. You can install and upgrade software as needed, unlike on shared hosting. If you do choose to add new software to your VPS, your web host may not provide support for that software.

Shared servers usually do not update to the newest software version until the update has been released long enough and proven to be stable. This is to protect account holders, but if you want the latest software version for new features, VPS hosting might be a better option.

Firewalls and Email Security

Firewall configuration is determined by the hosting company on a shared server plan. With a VPS hosting plan, each account holder has control of their firewall and can customize it to fit the needs of each website. A website owner can set different services and parts of a website to be accessible by certain IP address. For example, by only allowing certain IP addresses to access the cPanel (control panel), this heightens prevention against hackers.

On a shared hosting plan, email can be accessed through a non-secure connection. VPS hosting lets you make email only accessible through a secure socket layer (SSL) connection. Using a SSL connection ensures that log in information, including passwords, are encrypted. This added security can help keep hackers from accessing private emails.

Scanning all incoming emails for viruses can use a lot of resources, so it is not usually done on a shared server plan. With a VPS plan, you are given the option of scanning incoming mail for viruses.

Performance and Speed

With all other variables equal, VPS hosting is generally faster than shared hosting. Since you have control over software settings, you can tweak settings for the best performance and speed. If you will be using a high level of bandwidth or have a lot of email going in or out, a VPS plan is a more sufficient choice.

No matter what type it is, any server can become overloaded, or you may outgrow your current hosting plan. With a shared server, each database and file must be moved to the new server. This is not only time consuming, but also leaves room for human error. With a VPS, it’s easier to upgrade or downgrade with no website downtime. Simply change a configuration setting to upgrade to your needs and it is done immediately. If you are expecting a large amount of growth, a VPS plan will be much easier to maintain as your website grows.

Summary

VPS hosting offers many advantages over shared hosting. The account owner has greater control over their website and software. VPS hosting also provides better security for the website and for email. In addition, it has better performance for larger websites that use a lot of resources. VPS hosting is usually a good investment for small to medium sized companies, and it provides a better value with its added security and room for growth.

On the other hand, shared servers remain popular because they are more affordable. Small businesses typically have smaller budgets, and shared hosting may be the best option that fits within the budget. Shared hosting is also a good choice if your website does not require a lot of customization or does not use a large amount of bandwidth, disk space or RAM.

Brian Flores is a blogger for InMotion Hosting, one of the top providers ofdedicated servers in the United States.

Where can I find the cheapest VPS?

admin — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 02:20:11 +0000

When people are looking for the Cheapest VPS that they can find they are going to be amazed at just how many they have to choose from. The best way to conduct this search for the Cheapest server is to simply start a search in which you are looking for VPS server. There are going to be many companies that are showing up in this search, so the person must visit each and note the price, as well as what comes with the price that you are paying.

The cheap aspect is not only referring to the price, but you are going to want to get the most services for the price that you are paying. You can find incredibly cheap servers at a number of places, but paying a dollar extra for service is something that most people should highly consider.

Once the person narrows down the choices to two or three, they must then decide, which is really the better deal. If you are getting ten times more services for its members for something that cost a dollar extra compared to the other servers, then obviously this is the server to go with. Just because you are looking for cheap does not mean that you should sacrifice quality and dependability with the server.

Choosing the Right Affordable Web Hosting for You

admin — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 14:27:39 +0000

Do you have a small online business? Web hosting would be the perfect solution for your small online business. You can find affordable web hosting by doing a Google online search, there you can find web hosting for many different prices, where you can pick the price that is in your budget.

Just because you have a low budget for web hosting, does not mean you miss out on quality. These companies can offer low prices to you because they split the expenses with a lot of different users, so they can provide you with quality, but yet affordable hosting. They also use big servers that split the server space with many different customers, however, keeping the server speed up to par.

Over the years cheap web hosting has grown significantly, this has caused more competition to rise in the web hosting industry. This is a good change for you because companies want their company to be the cheapest so they will get your business. As well as the companies in competition for the lowest prices, each company wants to have the most usable space for their customers.

Many of the webs hosting providers offer a satisfaction guarantee in the form of money back guarantee, so you will know when paying for their hosting abilities; your satisfaction is their number one priority.

Cloud Hosting can Make Your Site to Load Faster and Handle a Surge of Incoming Traffic without Account Suspension

admin — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 07:17:50 +0000

Cloud computing for business has grown in importance. Despite still many businesses reluctant in integrating their business to the cloud, the real benefits of going cloud is apparent.

Going cloud offers business owners both increased productivity and lower costs related to IT infrastructure.

For webmasters and website owners, going cloud can be done by hosting their sites in cloud hosting. Luckily, cloud hosting providers are now great cloud business solutions as the market is there and the benefits are apparent.

Cloud hosting is basically a web hosting that integrates hosts its file on the cloud – on various web servers in various geolocations. In layman’s term, your website files and folders are being “broken into bits” and host them in different web servers automatically.

When a visitor visits your web site, the files and folders related to the web page is loaded from the cloud. This “on-demand access” allows resources to be allocated more efficiently and effectively, resulting in faster page load – which is a good thing for both site visitors and the search engines (Google consider page load as a factor in determining search engine ranking of a site.)

What’s more, some cloud hosting providers, such as SiteCloud, implementing load-balance system, guaranteeing your site to always-on, regardless of surges in traffic – thanks to the leveraged resources of the cloud. This could results in account suspension in most conventional web hosting providers’ shared web hosting plans.

If you have a site that is well-visited, please consider host your site with cloud hosting.

Should I Consider WordPress Hosting for My WP-powered Blog?

admin — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:53:05 +0000

Are you planning to build a blog, either for your personal endeavor or for your business? If so, one of the first things to consider is which blogging platform you should use to power your blog (obviously, you would want to do this after you have a domain name in mind.) WordPress is the household name in blogging world, and I can’t see why you don’t use WordPress as your blogging platform.

If you have finally decided that WordPress is the best solution for you (it is!), your next step would be seeking the right web hosting provider to host your WordPress blog.

The problem is, there are plenty of web hosting offers on the Net today, in such a way that deciding one that is the most appropriate for your blog is a daunting task. Your ‘due diligence’ in choosing a web hosting provider remains the same: What’s the uptime guarantee? How positive is the testimonial? Any additional perks? Can I close my account anytime? What’s the refund policy? And more things to consider in deciding the right web hosting.

To simplify your task, I would like to recommend you one thing: Highly consider WordPress hosting. Why? Because it’s only logical. If you are planning to establish a WordPress-based blog, you surely want to look into WordPress hosting.

What is WordPress hosting?

It offers similar services like those of general web hosting providers offer you, with one distinct difference: It is WordPress-oriented. Now, here lies the problem: Many claim that they are WordPress hosting, but some just offer it as a marketing gimmick – to attract WordPress-based site owners to sign with them.

Here’s the truth: If your web servers are Linux-based and run with the full feature of the standard PHP 5 and MySQL, you can run WordPress-powered sites very well. Most Linux-based web hosting providers offer this, so what’s all the fuss about being a WordPress hosting if it’s only your ‘standard’ plan you offer to public as the much-hyped “WordPress hosting”?

If a web host claims that it is a WordPress hosting, it must offer something that non-specialist web hosting providers don’t. Let’s see – how about WordPress-savvy Support Team?

In all “WordPress hosting” I encountered so far, there is only one that can live up the expectation, namely WP WebHost.

WP WebHost exceeds all expectations: They are run by those who are WordPress-lover and WordPress-savvy. Their team consists of people who have worked with hundreds of blogs, hundreds of WP themes, thousands of plugins and countless of WordPress core coding tweaks. What’s more, WP WebHost Support Team is the only customer support on the Net offering WordPress-related support – e.g. Why I get 500 Internal Server Error when I set Permalink? How to get X plugin to run with Y plugin despite the conflicting nature of the plugins? And other WordPress-related questions.

So, I conclude that if you are not PHP-savvy or comfortable with tweaking the backend of your blog, you might want to consider hosting with WordPress-specialist web hosting provider.

Take peek on what WP WebHost has got to offer »

Green Web Hosting Reviews

admin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:48:48 +0000

There are many web hosting reviews available online that helps people in arriving at a decision. Reviews for Green Web Hosting providers are extremely important as they are relatively new and also using alternate sources of energy like renewable energy sources to run the web servers that are used to host the websites.

Most of the reviews of green web hosting companies or for that matter any web hosting service providers are just a marketing ploy to attract customers rather than having any distinct features and advantages of the company. The genuine green web hosting reviews help customers to compare and analyze advantages and disadvantages of various green web hosting services and then make a decision accordingly. In order to make a decision one should make a decision by going through the reviews of the customers who have used their services. The following are some of the reviews for different green web hosting service providers.

HostGator green web hosting

HostGator prides itself in providing environment friendly web hosting services. The web servers are powered by Texas wind energy to achieve the goal of carbon neutral web hosting for every plan. Instead of purchasing wind power for the purpose HostGator purchased green certificates from the accredited sponsors of renewable energy providers, as much as 130% – So more than carbon neutral your website hosting, HostGator offer an additional 30% to help reversing the negative impact of greenhouse gas to the environment.

The company outsourced most of the services and the staff telecommutes enabling to save thousands of gallons of energy. If one desires to do his bit in saving the planet then this green web hosting service is tailor made for you. Support is provided 24/7 and HostGator live support team is among the best of all web hosting providers.

The following technologies like MySQL database, Perl5 and PHP5, Ruby on Rails and Python are supported by HostGator. The company provides the most comprehensive and sophisticated database technologies for web hosting services.

Visit HostGator to learn more.

Super Green Hosting

One of the first green and probably the greenest web hosting companies in the world, Super Green Hosting also involves itself in tree planting projects to make the world greener. All the customers are provided free domain by Super Green Hosting and one can have that domain for the entire duration of the contract.

Instead of buying green energy credits and certificates, Super Green Hosting invests in “green” Dell web servers and plant (real) trees in its very own Tree Planting Project.

On the hosting account one can host unlimited domains, databases, emails with no limit on the server space usage as well as bandwidth limit. One can design sophisticated websites with the available tools like CRON, CGI, MySQL and PHP and with the help of hosting interface one can even install PHBPB and WordPress along with other software.

Visit Super Green Hosting to learn more.

Ways to Curtail Cost of IT Requirements via Refurbished Networking Hardware

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:19:31 +0000

How can refurbished networking hardware provider – such as MLCP – help you cut your web hosting or other business offices’ IT-related costs?

With numerous accessible ways to cut down the cost of IT, and IT people being well familiar with all of them from superior “aligning IT with business strategy” to something as trivial as “greening of the datacenter.” The expenses of the IT section of the company can be cut down heavily by effectively stretching your hardware budget to the highest effectiveness. With the year coming to an end the company has to shell out extra money from the pocket, requirement for an immediate network rollout arises which was not a part of the budget planned by the management.

The procedure as well as guide might or might not necessarily specify from where you should purchase your equipment from. In case it does not furnish such information then in that case you can consider purchasing it from eBay or another alternate is buying it from secondary merchants who trade in refurbished networking hardware. Majority of transactions taking place here smoothly take place with no glitch in case and problem occurs it will be an exception.

The positive aspect is purchasing equipment for your company’s IT department at a slashed price. The leading foundations of secondary market networking equipment mainly include huge organizations that have made an up gradation to attain new standards. Hence they require replacing the existing set of equipments with other set of consistent equipments. This suggests you can lay your hands on fairly contemporary networking hardware for fairly low prices. For a business that is trying to create its niche in this competitive world it is quite a bonus.

Refurbished networking hardware can make your day in case you have a new project on the stands. If you have to make all your arrangements within a budget of $50,000 then purchasing refurbished networking equipment will create a lot of difference. To strike the favorable deal it is important to check the buyer rating of the seller. In case you are striking a deal with a specialized refurbishment shop then it is ideal to hunt for several techniques including a return policy, rational contact hours and overnight shipping. Now the companies are also offered excellent warranty coverage along with telephone mechanical support. Along with that it is vital to familiarize with the technology needs in order to avoid making payments for redundant upgrades, along with that take ample time to examine the potential vendors and opt for a vendor that meets all your requirements and can be trusted upon for superior quality equipment and technical back-up.

For more information about refurbished networking hardware, you can visit this networking blog or click here to contact MLCP to explore your options.

Hit the Bulls Eye with The Best Web Hosting Services

admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:09:25 +0000

Are you seeking out ways to make huge money online? Well, if yes then it is extremely essential for you to make out how a dependable web host can be effective to you. It is possible that if your web host is irresponsible then the visitors might not visit to your website again.

Finding the best website host is a very tedious task, but at the same time it is very crucial for the business to make huge profits. It is extremely essential to have a complete understanding of what are you actually looking out in a web host prior to making your pick. Those people who have had a brush with the online world are very well acquainted with what to seek out for, but if you are not a pro in the business then you will have to start fresh.

To begin with you doing an exhaustive research online will assist you a great deal. You will come across certain websites on the Internet that rank the web hosting sites to make your task easier. These sites will enable you to make a comparison between different web hosting services and select the one which you feel will be really effective for your business. Apart from these web sites several articles that will render you best possible guide as they are written by users who have attained finesse.

A web hosting company selected by you should offer maximum speed as having a web page that downloads slowly can hamper your sales. This will curtail your potential clients from being accessible to your services or products. By checking the speed of the web hosting company’s website you can confirm the speed that will be offered to you.

Apart from this it is also essential to look into the disc space offered to you by the company as this will also have an impact on your business. The disk space largely depends on what and how much you wish to store. So, it is important for you to make your decision prudently.

In addition to speed and space requirements above, looking for a web hosting service offering a dedicated server is a big plus point to cater your need for larger and more powerful server. Whenever possible, you should look for a web hosting service company that offer green hosting, that is, practicing energy conservation and using renewable energy for their servers. This way, you can help promoting more environmentally-friendly computing practices.

Another factor that will largely decide the course of your business is to choose a company that offers you the best customer service. Make sure the company you select has financial stability as you cannot make investment in a company that will shut down subsequent to few months. It is better to sought out all your doubts well in advance in order to avoid any chaos in future.

WebHostingGeeks.com – Trustworthy Website Hosting Guide

admin — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:53:50 +0000

Web hosting is becoming one of the most important requirements of any business so that its website to maintain the up-time to be near 100%. Web hosting not only includes presenting the website on the server but also presenting it in the best possible way.

Are you looking for what criteria should you consider partnering with a web hosting company? Here is one source I recommend to you – WebHostingGeeks.com is an online web hosting guide that comes in quite handy in this context providing you all the relevant information about the reliable website hosting sites along with some useful information about different kinds of web hosting.

This website has its own set of awards regarding the best service provider in the business for any kind of web hosting be it dedicated, Unix, windows or PHP. Also, you can get a lot of last minute information from the web hosting blogs included in this website.

Well, for any webmaster looking for some potent information about the website hosting service provider, this website is the kind of database he requires. Just check out the dedicated hosting service provider InMotion Hosting recommended on this website. Along with customer testimonials about this company, other things included on this website are the support level, ease of use and technical expertise of InMotion Hosting. So, you do not need to while away your time going from one place to another trying to get useful information about a web site hosting company.

WebHostingGeeks.com lets you avoid all the time-expending efforts of finding a trustworthy website hosting company, making you concentrate more on website designing and development processes.

With this website, you have all the information about web hosting companies at your fingertips, whenever you need it, including the best dedicated server for website hosting companies in the business. All of us understand how important it is to judge the calibre of a web hosting company before handing over our website hosting business to it. If the host is not doing its work properly, then the rankings of a website can fail. The visitors of a website cannot get all the information they want from it, when it is not on the server due to the recklessness of the hosting company. A fledgling company or an established one always tries to avoid losses caused by server failures like these.

Green website hosting is another useful attribute talked about by this website. In the green hosting section of this website, you can find an ample amount of information about companies that use renewable sources of energy like wind, geothermal and solar to make the servers running. So, you can pick out any one of these companies to save natural resources and enjoy benefits of great website hosting as well.

Testimonial: My Client Chooses HostGator Over ValueWeb as Web Hosting Provider

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 08:20:12 +0000

There’s an old adage: Don’t take things for granted.

And I guess ValueWeb, one of the oldest web hosting companies, does take things for granted.

One of my web management client has finally ran out of his patient and finally decided to leave ValueWeb for HostGator.

Sure, ValueWeb’s services are as reliable as most others. However, for the price tags they have, their web hosting services are merely adequate. In the other hands, HostGator does offer top notch web hosting services with an affordable price tags.

Here are some examples of the gaps: ValueWeb doesn’t support MySQL databases by default, while on the lowest HostGator plan (the BabyGator plan), they offer unlimited websites and unlimited databases hosting for as low as $7.95 per month, compared to ValueWeb’s $13.95 per month Starter plan.

To worsen things, asking for MySQL to be enabled (basic plan: 2 MB of data.. What the…?) would add $15 per month to your monthly bills – This is insane! Eventually, my client is happy to pay $15 a month because he is a ValueWeb customer for 10 years – So he’d expected a nice treatment by the hosting company, right? Wrong!

I set up a WordPress blog on this hosting account, and after 10 posts or so, the quota has all been used. So, the next logical step would be asking ValueWeb’s support to increase the MySQL databases disk space cap.

To cut a long story short, the staff can’t even offer an acceptable solution within 3×24 hours; It’s already been a week, and my client can’t post anything to the blog, losing visitors and traffic. Nice. He is now with HostGator and will likely to stick with it for quite a long time. Well, good for him, and (I guess) bad for ValueWeb.

So, from my client’s experience, I can draw one or two conclusions:

Being a long time customer of a web hosting company, even a reputed one, won’t give you any perks – You are treated equally, no matter whether you are an old customer or a new one.
Being expensive doesn’t always mean better in quality. Choose the best value for money web hosting provider that suites your web hosting needs.

All in all – Yes, I recommend HostGator over any other web hosting providers. But this is a matter of preference, really. If you are comfortable with your current web hosting providers, stick with them – If you are not anymore, seek better options.