Choosing a good host is a rather difficult endeavor since you can get excellent or lousy service for the same price. It's much better to get it right the first time, than to move from one host to another spending time and money. Learn from my hosting mistakes, and pick the right host for yourself...
In 2002, when it came to finding a host for this site, I looked through dozens of Web hosting providers and chose the best value for money I could find. That host offered 50MB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth and 99.99%(!) uptime guarantee for $1.5/month and, in addition, dedicated IP address for $0.5/month.
I wondered why others spent hundreds of dollars a year on Web hosting, whereas I got everything I needed for mere $24. Unfortunately, I found the answer very soon - the hosting gradually became a nightmare.
Almost every day, during peak hours, the site got inaccessible or very slow at best. One day, when my site had already been indexed by Google and received noticeable traffic from it, the entire server became inaccessible. I couldn't see my site, I couldn't log into my account.
After three days of downtime they sent me an email which said they had moved my account to another server and I had to re-upload my site. This downtime was long enough for Google to drop almost all pages out of its index.
When the similar incident happened again, I started considering switching the host. I realized that, since hard disk space was cheap, they simply made money by placing thousands of sites on one physical server. So I started looking for a host offering several hundred MB of storage space and not less than 5-10 GB of bandwidth, to ensure that they don't host too many sites on one physical computer and their network isn't overloaded.
After the third prolonged downtime, I gave up and switched to another host offering 1GB of disk space, 5GB of bandwidth and 99.99% uptime guarantee for $40/year. Additionally, they did weekly backups of customer's data - in case of a hard drive failure (this happens frequently on many hosting services) they could quickly restore my site from the backup copy.
At the beginning, it was OK, all pages downloaded quickly, except that approximately two times per month, I received alerts from Hyperspin (a free server monitoring service) that my site was down for 0.5 - 8 hours. The total downtime during 10 months of hosting was 52 hours (99.3% uptime).
But after 6 months I noticed that my site became slower and sometimes inaccessible. In other words, the server became overloaded. Though it was less painful than with the first host and no re-uploading was required, I couldn't bear low uptime and started looking for a new host.
I analyzed my hosting mistakes and compiled the following list of requirements...
- Inexpensive (under $10 per month).
- Several hundred MB of disk space and not less than 10 GB of bandwidth.
It allows you to expect that they won't host too many sites on one physical server and their network won't be overloaded. - Money back guarantee.
Those that offer money back guarantee are more confident about high quality of their hosting. - Daily data backups.
In case of a hard drive failure they can quickly restore your data from the backup copy. The grand majority of inexpensive Web hosting providers don't offer this feature. - 99.9% - 99.95% real uptime.
These figures are more realistic than 99.99%, and can be obtained with the aid of UPS power, diesel backup generator, high-grade server equipment and redundant network connections to multiple backbone providers. - Reputable and well established company.
The company that has been in business quite a while and serves tens of thousands of clients is more concerned about customer satisfaction and more responsible for customer support than a little-known company which most likely is a reseller of a large hosting provider.
After long researching, I've found a host that perfectly suits my requirements and is definitely
the best balance between pricing and quality... IXWebHosting.
They offer a few hosting plans. Expert Plan comes with unlimited disk space and bandwidth, 30 day money back guarantee, website builder, free domain name for $5.95/month if you pay for 1 year or $4.95/month if you pay for 2 years up front. Additionally, you get a unique (dedicated) IP address for your site.
I especially like the following features which distinguish IXWebHosting from the bulk of other inexpensive hosting providers...
- Dedicated IP addresses.
Having a dedicated IP address for your domain is more reliable and valuable to search engines. Most other providers host multiple sites on the same IP address and charge additionally $2-$5/month for a dedicated IP address. - Strong uptime guaranee:
"We guarantee that your website will be up and running at least 99.9% of the time during any 12-month period. Our guarantee coverage includes our network uptime, server uptime and service uptime.
If downtime exceeds 0.1%, you will be credited...
- Every 3 hours downtime, receive 1 free month.
- For 24 hours downtime, receive 1 free year."
Other plans provide even more disk space and bandwidth, more domains (separate sites), MySQL, SSL and other advanced features.
So, I moved Buildwebsite4u.com to IXWebHosting. Since then, I've had nothing to worry about: my site is always accessible, all pages load fast, I receive no alerts from Hyperspin. Regrettably, I didn't make this hosting decision back in 2002. How much time and efforts were spent in vain? How many visitors were lost?
Note: here's a description of one small obstacle I came across when configuring
my email client. It can save you a few hours if you're going to move your site to IXWebHosting:
From their online help, it isn't clear what method of SMTP authentication to use.
If, trying to send an email, you receive the following error:
sorry, that domain isn't allowed to be relayed thru this MTA (#5.7.1),
it means that you cannot send an email before receiving (you need to start the POP3 service before SMTP).
I switched the "POP before SMTP" option in my email client on, and all started to work properly.
If you find no such option in your email program (for example, Outlook Express), you just
need to always press the "Receive" button before the "Send" button.
- Computer Internet Security - protection against network security attacks.
- Advanced and free spam blockers.
- Remote computer access software.
- Fast and free Internet accelerators.
- Satellite Internet access - high-speed two-way satellite Internet connection is now available.
- Online faxing - how to send and receive faxes by email.
- Online data backups - a new method of data protection.
- Easy website building tool.
- Improving business writing skills.
- Dedicated IP hosting - benefits of using a static over shared IP address.
- Avoid my hosting mistakes.
What's New
How to Create a Website
One-page guide for beginners.
Web site builders
Easy way to build a professional looking site for commercial use or just for fun.
Satellite Internet access
High-speed two-way satellite Internet connection is now available.