What sort of hosting do I need for my website?

Recently I've had two different clients feel that their sites are outgrowing their current hosting plans, either by running out of space or by loading... very... slowly...

Sometimes these problems are easily rectified with the current hosts or may be caused by a temporary glitch on the server computers that is quickly set right. However, if problems are consistent or if you are setting up your site for the first time I have put together some of the most common hosting solution that I offer to clients.

There are many hosting companies offering different solutions out there, this is simply my own experience of the ones I have found to be the best with a simple explanation of how some of the packages work. Also, this is by no means comprehensive and I'm really talking about hosting suitable for small to medium sites.

Shared hosting

In a shared hosting situation the hosting company puts many sites onto each server computer. This is the easiest, cheapest and most common way to get hosting.

The problem can be that the dodgier the company, the more sites are sharing the same system resources - which can result in a slowdown for your site if other websites on the same machine are working hard at the same time. It's very normal to have 100s of sites sharing one server and not unusual to have 1000s.

Ilisys: Ilisys is a hosting company out of Perth, WA that provides high-quality shared hosting and I have always found that they manage the resources of their servers quite carefully and don't overload them. They have excellent tech support and customer service, and they are also 100% carbon neutral if you care about that sort of thing. The business has been recently bought by MYOB so it will be interesting to see if that has any affect on their performance.

Melbourne IT: I have used Melbourne IT for some of my other clients as they are another Australian business but in all honesty their service is not as good as Ilisys and they seem to experience more downtime so I wouldn't suggest moving to them... although if you're with them already and don't have problems then stick with them.

Overseas providers: There are many overseas businesses that offer easy, cheap and relatively fast hosting. I'm using MidPhase for my some sites and I haven't had any problems with them, in fact I've been very pleased with their phone and email service - much better than some I've dealt with - and they're not too expensive.

The advantage here is that they are large and international and seem to have their act together, but the disadvantage is that they are large and international and it's hard to know how their server speed will compare to local servers. Their shouldn't be much difference just because they're overseas (it adds like 0.2 seconds to most page loads, which is incidental for most sites), but it's still a very large shared server environment and there's not really any way of guaranteeing that there will always be the system resources your site needs.

This means overseas hosting like this can be great for small sites that need to save money but I would hesitate to trust it with anything that's doing lots of work - at least until I've used the host for a while to see how it goes.

Choc chip hosting: We buy hosting space in bulk and redistribute it to our clients. This hosting space comes from an overseas supplier so it has many of the same advantages as other overseas suppliers, with the additional advantage that if you have a problem you can ring us and we will fix the problem as quickly as possible.

Having said that, I still only suggest our own hosting for small to medium sites that are not expecting monster amounts of traffic.

VPS (Virtual Private Servers)

A Virtual Private Server is like having a whole server computer (or a specific, guaranteed part of one) dedicated to your own website. They always cost more than shared hosting and can be quite a lot of money.

Managed VPS

There are different types of VPS, some that work very much the same way as a shared hosting environment only you're not sharing with anyone. The server is all set up and all you need to do is put your website on there, and access happens much the same way. These are usually called 'managed' servers, as you can ring someone and they will change your server config or other settings etc.

The main advantage is that you have total control over the server so you can install only the software and functions you need to - so it runs blazingly fast.

We only use Rackspace for one client site at the moment but I am impressed enough with their service and server speed to recommend them based purely on that. These guys are world-class.

Unmanaged VPS

Other VPS options are more like having a 'blank' computer available and you install your own server software on there, right down to operating system, web server and email manager etc.

This option is very similar to having your own computer at your premesis hooked up to the internet and running a server from that, only in this case you are renting the hardware and it's connected to the internet in a place that (hopefully) has much more bandwidth available than your average Australian office.

Most large companies would be using this type of VPS if they are not running their server from their own premesis. Usually you take this path if you have a tech support or web IT person or team that will take care of the technical stuff for you, or you are geeky enough to try it yourself.

At Choc Chip we do set up unmanaged VPS hosting for clients that need the speed and power but can't afford Rackspace.

Slicehost: The Slicehost guys do the most affordable VPS packages I've seen, but they are totally unmanaged. For their basic package you buy 1/8 of a computer and it's set up so you are guaranteed to always have that 1/8 of memory and CPU available to your site (plenty for normal sites) but you have to set it up from scratch with operating system, web server, firewall etc (although they have great tutorials to follow for almost every situation).

The cost is only $240 USD per year - about the same as Ilisys costs for shared hosting. One disadvantage is that if something goes wrong with the server, there's only yourself or whoever is in charge of your website IT to blame and/or fix the problem. In my eperience though, problems don't happen very often becuase once it's working fine there's no need to change it - and no-one else can make changes or overload anything as it's your system. So there are rarely problems once it's set up and going.

Conclusion

There are many hosting options available for you website, and although for most new sites we set up we suggest shared hosting there may come a time when you need to consider upgrading to something more powerful.

Have you had a good experience with a host, especially an Australian one, that you'd like to share? If so, leave a comment and let us know.