Top Rated Hosting Providers...

djbosak · 05-31-2006, 11:57 PM

Top rated hosting providers...

The Best Hosting Providers I Have Found and Use…

I have used so many hosting providers that have come and gone and have narrowed the list down to the ones that I use for all of my sites. What I present here is a list of hosting providers that I currently use and please understand that it would take to many pages to go through the benefits of one versus the other so I will just insert the links below and you can check them out yourself.

I remember my first website and having to find a provider was a shot in the dark because I had no clue as to whether any of them lived up to their advertising or not. Boy did I learn a couple of hard lessons from some now defunct providers and some who are still out there. Here are just a few things to consider when choosing your provider.

♦ The amount of storage space you need.
♦ The amount of bandwidth you expect to use.
♦ Do you need to have backup, in case a hard drive fails on the server.
♦ Are the data transfer rates from your provider important.
♦ Do you need a dedicated server or can you survive with a shared server.

Storage Space::

What does your website consist of? If you are putting up an “information only” page with a lot of text, then your storage space will not be a factor since text takes up the least amount of space. If you are putting up a photo page with a huge amount of high resolution pictures then you will need more storage space.
Here are two examples.
An information site with 10,000 pages of text that average about 30 kb per file = 300,000kb, or 300MB or 0.3GB
A photo site with 10,000 high resolution pictures that average about 3MB each = 30,000MB or 30GB. This is a big difference and something you need to know in advance when picking a provider and a plan.
Any of the providers listed below will serve you well for any type of informational site with their basic plans.

Bandwidth::

Bandwidth is the amount of data transferred from your provider to your viewers. Basically the same rules that apply for storage space apply here. If you are supplying text only information sites you do not need to be concerned. But if you use the example above for a photo site the same numbers can be used here but with one other factor thrown in. If your site is, or becomes popular, and for example you have 100 visitors downloading 5GB a day then your bandwidth usage is now at 500GB a day. Understand that these are hypothetical numbers used for example only but they do happen on many websites. So if bandwidth is not a concern then the basic packages offered by the providers listed below will meet your requirements.

Backup::

Do you need backup of your data? If your site is informational or even products that you alone control and upload yourself then backup is not as important. Since you already have all of the information that you uploaded via ftp to your host it is not that big of a deal to upload it again. However if you are running a Bulletin Board for example, where other members of your board are uploading content then this is a scenario for wanting to have a backup plan in place. If your servers hard drive crashes and you are not in total control of what is being uploaded then you will lose every bit of information except for what you have on your computer. Check with your hosting provider to see what kind of backup options are available if you need to have it.

Data Transfer::

This would be the download speeds available to your viewers if you are offering anything that would need to be downloaded. Text is no concern because of the file sizes. Images, MP3s, Zipped files or anything else of substantial size can be a concern. In today’s world of high speed, who wants to wait an hour to download a 3MB file? Answer…..Nobody
This is all relevant to the hosting provider’s backbone. This is something you have to ask your host about. Some of them even have test files which you can download to check there speed. If it is important to you, check it out before signing up for an account.

Dedicated or Shared Server::

Well we are back to the same examples above. Information sites or even this site, djbosak.com can be handled by any of the basic packages provided by the hosts below. And understand that your basic packages are all shared plans. This means that you share a server with a number of other account holders on the same computer.
Example- Your host has a server with one 500GB hard drive installed and your hosting plan includes 20,000MB of storage. Well they give the same amount of storage to their other customers on the same plan so let’s break it down. 500 GB = 500,000MB divided by your 20,000MB allotment = 25 other customers using the same server as your site. So there are times that your web page will load slowly dependant on the amount of visitors to the other sites hosted on your server. What kind of sites they have, static pages or dynamic, including using flash scripts, etc…. these will all weigh into what kind of performance you see from your website on a shared server.
Dedicated servers on the other hand are just that, dedicated for your site only. Of course they cost a little more and whether or not you need a dedicated server all depends on what your site is about and what you need it to do for you.

So there you have it and I hope this helps some of you. I have put the links below if you want to check out any of the hosts that I use and I have listed them in the order of my importance and value. All of them work fine for basic hosting plans and I can only talk about two of them that I use for high end dedicated packages which are Lunar Pages and I-Power. I currently have accounts with both and do not have one complaint about either of them and would highly recommend them for any of your hosting needs.

P.S. As a late edition I also put a link to godaddy.com at the bottom of the list. This does not reflect their importance or not as I have not used them but I do use them for my domain registrar and the quality of service is fantastic. They will be my next basic hosting provider in a couple of months so I will update this then. If anyone has or is using godaddy as a hosting provider, post your opinions of them here for the rest to share.