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[elitehobo]

How to select a web host (Part 3: Types of web hosts)

In The Past

Check out some of the other articles I've written about the subject:

Part 1: Questions that you should ask yourself

Part 2: Questions to ask your web host

In Part 3

Today, I'm going to go over the different types of web hosts and suggest a few that I've used.

The types of web hosts, or web hosting plans, that I’m going to go over are:

Cloud,

Shared,

Dedicated/ Co-located,

and Content Distribution Networks (or CDNs).

Cloud Hosting

In the past few years, cloud providers have garnered a lot of attention. They operate on a “pay for what you use” and “easy to upgrade” model, which makes them very attractive to small and big businesses alike.

A web host that offers cloud hosting has many servers with a lot of processing power, disk space, memory, and high speed internet links. These servers (and their resources) are then split up and sold to customers. If the cloud provider is good at allocating resources and adequately loading the server then this can be a great affordable choice.

Types of Cloud Hosting Providers

There are two tiers of cloud providers. On the first tier there's Amazon’s AWS service (and Rackspace's OpenStack,) which is by far the biggest and most well known cloud provider. The other tier includes all the remaining cloud providers.

Amazon AWS and Rackspace OpenStack are excellent web hosts and offer great Service Level Agreements. Unfortunately, they can become expensive.

The other tier commonly offer what are known as Virtual Private Servers (or VPSes, VPSs.) The software that runs these cloud providers is open source and easy to deploy so there is a lot of competition. Two of the most popular types of VPSes you will see sold are Xen and OpenVZ. There are a lot of differences between Xen and OpenVZ, but for this article you only need to know that it is easier to oversell OpenVZ containers, and because of that they’re generally more affordable.

Pros:

Affordable

Easy to upgrade when you need more resources (e.g. memory, disk space, processing power, bandwidth)

Cons:

Can be oversold (i.e. more users are allocated than can be comfortably supported by the host server,)

Are not usually managed,

Requires advanced knowledge of the underlying operating system (usually Linux).

Recommendations

I recomend looking at Low End Box for affordable web hosting deals on Cloud Servers or Virutal Private Servers. I use Digital Ocean for most of my web hosting needs. Digital Ocean offers VPSes starting at US$5/Month.

Shared Hosting

Just as in cloud hosting, in shared hosting a web host is essentially sharing a very powerful computer among its clients. The way that this sharing is done, however, is different and leads to overselling on a greater scale.

Cons:

You will run across some issues with this type of web host if they offer plans that are “too good to be true.” Even though every resource (e.g. memory, disk space, processing power, bandwidth) will be sold as “unlimited,” these types of web hosts will most probably not live up to your expectations.

Pros:

Why then would anyone, let alone most websites, choose to use shared hosting? One reason, is that it’s by far the most affordable option in web hosting. They also require very little know-how, offer one-click installs of popular software (e.g. Wordpress,) and are usually managed (meaning that the web hosts makes sure that all software is up-to-date, deals with outages, and acts as support -- kinda like your in-house IT person.)

Recommendations

I recommend NearlyFreeSpeech, which works great for static sites and only charges for resources (e.g. memory, disk space, processing power, bandwidth) that are actually used. Unfortunately, they do not offer a free support line, and do not offer one-click installs of popular software, like WordPress.

Also, check out the Web Hosting Talk forums, where you can learn a lot more about web hosting, in general, as well as check out advertisements for services offered by web hosts, in particular.

Dedicated and Colocated Servers

Prior to the advent of cloud hosting, dedicated and co-located web hosting was very popular for large enterprises. Both dedicated and colocated hosting options offer a fully customizable experience, like cloud hosting. Unlike cloud hosting, with these options the customer retains full control over server hardware. Therefore, the server is not shared with anyone.

One of the main differences between dedicated and co-located hosting is that with dedicated hosting the customer will usually lease a server along with paying for bandwidth. With co-located hosting, however, the customer usually sends the web host (via snail mail/ other means) a server of their own and pays to rent units in a server rack (e.g. 1U, 2U, etc.)

Pros:

The main benefit of these types of web hosts is the fact that customers retain full control over their servers.

Cons:

Of course, the customer would need a lot of knowledge (or hire someone with a lot of knowledge) on setting up and deploying all software as well as all hardware related to the server.

Also, because these servers are paid for upfront (or rented) from the web host, they will be more expensive than other alternatives listed in this article.

Recommendation

If you chose to go this route, I suggest you call local web hosting providers in your area.

Content Distribution Networks

A Content Distribution Network (or CDN,) is not a web host, per se. Instead, it's an additional service that you might choose to purchase.

A CDN basically provides a mirror of your website that is geographically distributed. This helps reduce load on your web server and speeds up delivery of content.

Pros:

Usually results in a faster website - I'm sure none of your users wants to wait for your site to load,

Protection from malicious users through behavioral analysis over the CDN providers entire client base,

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection - a very common attack that can criple your web site / web hosting provider,

Obscurity - nobody knows who your true web host is,

Greater potential reach - usually a CDN will mirror your website all around the world resulting in faster load times.

Cons:

Depending on the size of your site, number of users, types of content you're sending to the CDN it can be really expensive

Recommendations

Recently, I've been using Cloudflare's free tier and not only is it easy to set up, it works very well, and has lots of great stats on the types of malicious content it has protected me from.

Conclusion

I hope I've shed some light on How to Select a Web Host in this three part series.

[elitehobo]

How to select a web host (Part 2: Questions for your web host)

In Part 1 of this series (Questions about your website and users) we discussed the different types of websites (e.g. dynamic, static,) and the important questions to ask yourself for each particular type of website.

Now that you know a little about your website's needs, let's discuss questions you might want to either ask a potential web host or, at the very least, look up on their website prior to purchasing a plan.

Today, we will be discussing two things in particular: Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and upgrading.

Service Level Agreements (SLA)

A Service Level Agreement, or SLA, is an agreement between a web host and a customer that details the service (a web hosting plan) being purchased from the service provider (or web host.)

SLAs describe the services to be delivered, legal compliance, as well as customer duties and responsibilities (and more.) For more information check out this archive of a great 2011 article by Mary E. Shacklett titled Five Key points for Every SLA

The most important things in a SLA, from a customer's perspective (i.e. yours,) is whether or not uptime is guaranteed as well as whether or not there are any guarantees with regard to how quickly any issues will be resolved.

You might be shocked to find out that many web hosts do not have a service level agreement in place! That means that if your website goes down, for a reason beyond your control, you have no recourse. You are at the mercy of your web host.

Now, if you're running a personal blog this might not be a big issue... if you're prepared. But are you prepared? Ask yourself these questions:

How quickly can you have your web site up on a different provider?

Do you have backups?

Where is your DNS hosted?

If it's at your web host then you might have to move it

How long is the TTL (Time to Live)? - This will determine how long it'll take for DNS to transfer to your new provider

If you don't have the answers to these questions (at hand) you might be screwed. Don't worry, I will cover the answers in another blog post at a later date.

If, however, your web host has a SLA in place, you have a legally binding agreement that will force them to act as quickly as possible to get your site back up. Otherwise, they might get sued. If not by you, then by one of their other customers.

How easily do you want to be able to upgrade your plan?

Upgrade paths are important for any website.

Let's face it, most websites are probably not going to be going viral any time soon. If your content does "go viral," though, you might have to deal with the "reddit hug of death," or being "Slashdotted." This occurs when a website cannot handle the traffic that is being sent to it, so it crashes.

Even if you're not producing content that is likely to go viral you will have to deal with upgrades eventually. If you produce content at a steady pace, you can assume that your users will probably also increase at a steady pace too. Hopefully, anyway.

You will want to know how quickly you can upgrade your website before you need to.

Fortunately, unlike with SLAs, most web hosts will make it easy for you to upgrade to a more robust web hosting plan fairly easily. That's because the easier it is for you to upgrade the easier web hosts can get money from your wallet into theirs.

I hope this blog post was helpful in your journey to setting up your own website. In Part 3 of this series, I will be discussing the most common types of web hosts. Stay tuned!