In our article What is a Web Hosting? we explained what a Hosting is and what types of Hosting you can find in the market today.
This time we want to give you some tips to choose your Hosting plan, so that it is the most suitable for your needs and those of your project. The importance of this choice is great because your project could be harmed or benefited by it.
Define the basic technical requirements of your Hosting:
The first thing you should have to establish before starting your hosting search are the technical needs of your project, for this you should ask yourself the following questions:
- In which technologies is my Web site made?
- Do I need support for any specific programming language?
- Do I need to create databases? How many and what kind?
- How much disk space do the files that make up my site have in total?
- Do I need to create e-mail accounts?
- How many email accounts do I need?
By answering these questions you will initially delimit the type of hosting you need.
The first three questions let you know the compatibility needed. If your website is made with HTML or PHP languages with MySQL databases you can opt for a conventional shared hosting that supports PHP, while if you use Java you need a compatible hosting, or if you use ASP.NET you will need Windows hosting. If you use Ruby, Python, MangoDB or others, you should verify that your hosting is compatible with them.
The disk space occupied by your site and the number of email accounts you will create (with their size), will allow you to decide how much disk space you need to hire in your hosting account. If you add the size of your website with the size of your email accounts, you will have a good estimate.
Traffic estimation:
Hosting plans measure the amount of data you transmit to and from the server and limit it. Ideally it would be highly recommended that you estimate how many visits you will have on your site and what is the average traffic of each visit, however this is not always possible.
If your site is already published and you are just moving to a new provider it is very simple because you already have data on the behavior of your Web. But if it is a new website it is very complicated to make this calculation because you can’t know how many people will actually see your website.
The best way to avoid problems is to start with a shared hosting plan that allows you to scale, so at the beginning you publish your website spending the minimum and if you need you can change to a higher plan as your web traffic demands it. If a shared plan becomes too small at some point, you can scale to a VPS, Dedicated server or CLOUD server, but you can do it only when the consumption of your project warrants it.
Define the advanced technical requirements:
Once you have an idea of how much disk space, how many email accounts and which technologies you need in your Hosting; it is time for you to define if you have any special requirements that are a priority for your project.
Examples of advanced requirements are:
- You need to host more than one Web site.
- You need separate control panel access for multiple Web sites.
- A programming language that is not offered in Shared Hosting plans.
- You need administrator permissions on the server.
- You require custom security settings.
- You require customized software versions or system configurations.
- You need to be able to send mass mailings.
- You need a dedicated IP address.
- You need exclusivity of resource usage.
- Having clear the advanced requirements of your project will allow you to further refine the type of hosting you need since they are usually requirements that make real differences in the plan to hire. For example: if you need to host multiple sites using the same control panel you can use a Shared Hosting that supports multiple domains, but if you want each site to have its own panel you will need a Reseller Hosting.
If you need exclusivity of resources, administrator access or require customized modifications to the system, its security and software; then you need a VPS Hosting service or a Dedicated server.
Define your budget
At this point you already know how much space, which technologies are supported and which advanced features your project needs. It’s time to set an estimated budget to purchase your plan.
Only you know your finances and the value you want to give to your site, so as far as budget is concerned our recommendation is that you remember that, in hosting as in other areas, you get what you pay for. The higher the requirements, the higher the investment needed.
Choose your plan
With the information you defined above, you are now ready to choose your plan. Every project is different but we would like to help you define what type of website is usually hosted on each type of hosting service so you have a guide:
- Shared Hosting: In this type of plan we recommend you to host leisure websites, personal or small company sites that receive less than 2 thousand visits per day, do not have server administrator access requirements, do not need custom software and security configurations and do not send mass mailings.
- CLOUD Hosting: These plans have the same use as Shared Hosting, but are aimed at those who want a service with hardware and network redundancy to minimize the risk of offline time.
- Reseller Hosting: This type of Web Hosting is recommended for resellers, Web designers or individuals who need to host several Web sites and each site belongs to different owners. The Reseller plans allow you to create a hosting account for each Web and gives access to a separate panel in each case.
- Non-Managed VPS: Recommended for people with extensive knowledge of server administration and who need administrator access to modify the system configuration, install special software or host applications in a language not supported by shared plans.
- Managed VPS: Recommended for sites with more than 2 thousand unique visitors per day, for companies that require multiple hosting accounts, require administrator access, special configurations, installation of software or language, or simply want a more powerful service, with fewer limits and higher performance than shared hosting. A Managed VPS can be purchased by anyone, without the need to be an expert in server management as it includes technical support to back you up.
- CLOUD VPS: This type of server is recommended for experts who require administrator access, but also seek hardware redundancy for reliability and uptime, and scalability that allows them to add additional resources quickly. They can also be purchased by non-experts, however we only recommend it if accompanied with a Server Administration plan.
- Non-Managed Dedicated Server: We recommend this type of service for large projects, with high traffic or high hardware requirements. Usually those who purchase a dedicated server are looking for pure power for their sites but are experts in server administration or have their own technical staff.
- Managed Dedicated Server: Also recommended for those who require pure power, large projects with high amount of traffic and applications or websites with high resource consumption. In this case it is not necessary to be an expert administrator, you get the power of a dedicated server but you also have technical staff at your disposal to manage all aspects of the system.
Say NO to unlimited hosting
We cannot end this article without warning you: in the world of Hosting, unlimited hosting DOES NOT EXIST. Many companies use as a sales strategy to offer plans with unlimited disk space and data transfer, however this is a deception and we recommend you not to fall into the trap.
By their nature, hosting services have limits, there are no unlimited disks or data transmission lines exclusively for you. When a provider promises you unlimited, run away, you can be sure that they will limit the service using some other “clause” in the small print of your contract.
In these companies the most common thing when an account is at levels of space or data usage that are not profitable for them, is that they ask you to move to a more advanced service because you use too much CPU or too much RAM memory; but we have heard many other excuses. If you want to know how big is the deception look at the other plans of these companies, why sell reseller plans, VPS or dedicated servers if you offer unlimited service? And why those more specialized services if they have limits and are more expensive? How many hundreds or thousands of customers must saturate a machine to be profitable for them to provide the service, and how do they host on a machine several “unlimited” accounts if they share resources?
If unlimited hosting existed, companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Apple would not need to invest billions of dollars in thousands of servers, an unlimited hosting plan would be enough for them.
Do not fall into the deception, it is best to define your requirements and look for a plan with GUARANTEED resources, NOT unlimited.
