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When Purchasing Shared Hosting, What Do You Look For And Why?
The Shared Hosting business is very large and people choose each host for their own personal reasons. Would it be cPanel? Location? Speed? Uptime? Support? Is there any reason why you would pick Shared Hosting over VPS Hosting? Please elaborate below as I am interested to see your answers.
Comments
Never used Shared Hosting before, my first website was hosted on a 512MB Linode :P
Back when I used shared hosting it was the support, cPanel, speed (location doesn't matter as long as it's fast). I guess I generally picked good hosts since I never really had any downtime, but now that I run a few larger sites I'd definitely say uptime is very important.
@Zen Yep
With the costs of LEB's I personally don't see the value in Shared hosting anymore.
From my experience users that choose shared hosting do so due to a lack of server admin & technical knowledge. Plus many shared hosts offer CPanel or DirectAdmin (which further reduces the need to learn about how a server works).
Due to the lack of knowledge these types of users then get sold on price, features & reputation (or "size" of company). Rather than the performance.
Cpanel. And limited resources. Usually "unlimited" (bw, disk) is a big turn off for me.
Heck at this point I might as well put high price on my list of things I look for. Doesn't automatically mean they'll use the money to increase performance and decrease overselling, but they sure aren't going to do that at $0.10/m. So I'll start there and then research reviews and business practices.
One of the reasons I like MediaTemple for shared hosting is that they're never content with their product. Always trying to find a better way to do things, spending money appropriately on development of new offerings. I don't want a host that says "here's cpanel, I know how to run an install script, now pay me." I want passion. I want my host to love what they do.
That said, I obviously host my own stuff, but I know what I want and that's why I started.
free host for unimportant stuff and vps for the important stuff
Why? Just why? Most unlimited hosts have overloaded servers, horrid support, and/or insecure setups.
Just wondering.
i kid ok
Whatever MediaTemples doing with their Grid service, it's correct.
Damn that's good marketing. Always my example.
@Jeffrey - look for one that uses CloudLinux / offers R1 CDP inside the control panel where you have access to the backups / check the retention, we offer 7 days of backups under R1 / Web Site Builder and Softaculous Auto Script Installer / perhaps see if they have the choice of multiple locations for your choice of where you want to site to live / stable / longevity in the business , etc... IMHO
I would only choose shared hosting over vps hosting if it was able to cope with larger loads and I had a site with big traffic.
@mitgib has said before that his shared hosting is designed for performance, that's why it's quite pricey
Hm... Standard for shared hosting :
Could someone please explain why CloudLinux is a must?
If space allotments are too high, this one usually scares me. SQL abuse can take a pretty big toll on a system. I either expect to see low storage or limits to SQL.
To stop abusers.
Hehe.. At some place, I only can get 5GB.
While I only use about 5 database with less than 20MB each.
Contradicting your self :P
Back in the days when we were only offering shared hosting (Free and premium), we have used SSD for mysql and it worked like a charm plus remember, while everyone dreams, not everyone is the next WHT, DP or LEB.
I think @Freek meant that he wants to be able to decide for himself how he uses his allocated ressources. For example things like you can create as many databases as you want as long as you don't exceed your 5gb storage limit.
That would be also what i look for in shared hosting.
Still has an effect on CPU and memory as well. Not likely that anyone is going to make a 10GB database or something, but I don't like taking chances because people continually surprise me.
When I ran a free shared host I had an account with 1gb disk space, with 970mb in MySQL and 13mb of files.
Yes, you are correct. That's indeed what I meant.
pretty well summed up..
@jarland , like it or not... unlimited game keeps on rolling.. we educated many what is unlimited but clients still get attracted to it..
open up few popular ones and u'll get the idea what ppl want - hostgator, bluehost, powweb...
I use shared hosting mainly because of the email-system. I don't want to care about handling spam. This said my preferences are as follows:
So far the same as @japon. SCP/SSH-connectivity would be superb. I don't understand why hosts still today just offer FTP-access.
Brand and reputation. I don't want a 12-year-old reseller or a person who don't know Apache. I buy shared hosting is because I want less headaches on server management, not moving around "hosts" every month.
I consider a company which tell the truth about max shared hosting clients inside a server...
I think it can give us some idea about deciding how good they are, how "not oversold" they are. and how prepared they are since this "max shared hosting clients inside a server" need a mature thinking, else they want to get bankrupt early..
When I purchase shared hosting I look for a VPS.