When is it time to switch to better hosting?
May 28, 2007 | Comments (14) | Filed under: Hosting
When it comes to running an online business, a site is only as good as your web host lets it be. If you’ve got a slow webhost or one that is constantly down, even a great site can appear to be poor as a result. To make matters worse, finding a great webhost is not an easy task. I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue lately due to some pretty major concerns with my current webhosting provider, Site5. As most of you know, I tend to experiment a lot with traffic from Digg, and recently, I’ve been finding some interesting (read infuriating) issues with my current host.
My recent concern is that they seem to take a very inconsistent stance when it comes to dealing with influx traffic resulting from the “Digg effect” or the ”Slashdot effect.” Sometimes they let the traffic just flood in with no issues, which is what happened for my 300 article and my color palette article, but other times they take extreme measures such as locking down my site (and all my other sites hosted in the same account) for hours at a time.
As far as hosts go, Site5 has been really top notch for me so far, which is why this has been bugging me so much. Their support is excellent and you really get a lot of bang for your buck with their hosting plans. I also experience very little downtime and generally fairly fast site speed at all hours of the day. So the way they deal with this particular issue is really throwing me.
When you really think about it though you can’t really blame them for any stance they take when it comes to this issue. My hosting package is a shared hosting plan, and there are most likely hundreds of other sites hosted on the same server. If one site blows up in traffic, it can directly effect the traffic of the other sites. So in that situation would you shut down 1 client to appease 999? Of course!
The real question is, when is it time to switch to better hosting and is the hosting really better?
There are literally hundreds of different options out there ranging from 5-50 dollar shared hosting to 200-1000 dollar dedicated hosting / co-location. Obviously a dedicated plan is a big step forward, but generally for new sites, the cost of this type of account is a little prohibitive, at least until they start producing a steady revenue stream. So, that leaves more shared hosting.
The old adage, you get what you pay for, hasn’t always been true for me when it comes to paying for shared hosting. I’ve paid for cheap plans that worked beautifully and more expensive ones that were absolute trash. As a result, I’m a little hesitant to think upgrading to a $30 or $40 a month hosting package would do much to solve my problems.
Let me pose these question to all of you. At what point do you bite the bullet and switch to a better more dedicated hosting solution? Do you wait until your sites would pay for the hosting themselves, or do you make the switch early and ultimately improve your income by avoiding downtime? What has been your experience when it comes to hosting and paying for various different levels of shared hosting? Is more expensive ever better traffic wise or just resource wise?
At the end of the day, switching to a dedicated hosting platform is really not that bad in the big scheme of expenses. With a small set of blogs or even a few great resource sites, you can easily generate enough revenue to cover the cost of the server with not much effort. The real issues is deciding when the right time to make the jump is, without sacrificing your user experience in the process.
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While I have not yet had to deal with Digg and GoDaddy switching me off yet, I can only imagine the sweat required in making the decision to go dedicated. It seems like a surefire way to tank your own website, if you’re not careful or are not hosting several sites on the server.
But I suppose if the income is expendable, why not?
Well - you could always keep upgrading to bigger shared hosting accounts - or just ask your host to move your account to a less crowded server - usually they’d be more than happy to do so.
And if your host is running 1 server - run away… fast.
In your experience has moving up to bigger shared hosting plans really helped out that much? The plan I am on now is really impressive for the price, and has more than enough bandwidth, drive space, and domain support than I will probably need for a long time.
The only thing that is maybe better about the more expensive packages is that they might not be as crowded server wise?
In my experience with hosts, the more expencive packages were always slightly faster - due to “crowding” etc.
But - if you get enough bandwidth for the diggings and it’s just the server load that’s the problem - i don’t think it’s worth “upgrading” - just ask your host to move you to a server that’s not as “busy”. Usually they won’t mind doing so.
Flaky hosting is just one of those things we all have to endure at some point - i hope your situation improves and as long as your RSS feed stays alive and updating i’ll be happy - Keep posting!
Yeah, you need to find someone who can handle the peaks. Have you looked at dreamhost? I’m happy with them, for the most part.
Looking for a new host can be a real nightmare - there are just so many to choose from. Even asking people for recommendations will leave you with a million and one alternatives!
- Martin Reed
NearlyFreeSpeech hosted sites get dugg and [b]/.[/b]ed often enough - and their price policy is very attractive.
I like the prospect of only paying for what i use.
And they don’t have any silly limits on domains, SQL databases.. (you pay for SQL processes)
I’ve only just started using their hosting - so i’m only going on first impressions.
Linkage:
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/hosting.php
Thanks for giving some great food for thought and for the comments everyone. Being new to the entire options available is rather overwhelming. Currently using Wirenine.
I’m not too happy with the host that I’m at right now, but I’ve stuck it out for the two year hosting package that I paid for mostly because switching to a new host is such a hassle. You have to move your whole site and set everything up on your new host. That being said at the end of my two year package (in October) I’ll be switching to a new host.
Frankly, if your site is always down due to digg effects I would look into dedicated hosting. The logic behind that being that the investment would pay for itself in the long run.
Yeah, I agree. I was with midphase for about 6 months, and they crashed on me daily. The biggest problem with finding a good host is you can’t really tell if they are a good host till you try them out. You could talk to people forever, and still never find out that the server crashes at exactly 12:00 noon every day!
I think the best advice I can give is to maybe not worry too much about going down to Diggs. It’s a fairly rare occurrence and I would wager you are mostly just looking for new readers or visitors if your site is new, not really big pay days.
Just ride out the host you have now (which sounds like you really like, minus the digg issue) until your have so many sites or so much traffic that it really warrants the upgrade to dedicated hosting. Jumping too soon is a surefire way to annihilate all your early profits!
When to switch? Well, it’s one of those numbers games. Sit down with a spreadsheet and calculate the cost of dedicated host against what you’re bringing in. If you’re making enough money to cover the cost, then you’re all set — but are you? I think you need to dig a little deeper and look at your trend over a longer span of time. If you see steady growth in visitor traffic and comments, and a steady growth in income, then yes it makes sense to think about switch to a dedicated host so you can handle the consistent growth. If, however, all growth is very inconsistent, then you’re probably better off staying where you are unless of course your current provider stinks.
I use DreamHost for techtraction and am only mildly impressed. Their communication about problems is always drenched in lame attempts at bad humor. They are pretty unprofessional. I also use HostMonster for BrothersInBlog.com I like that provider much better. Have had little issue with service and availability. Both of my sites however have never tested the provider with the Digg effect so I can’t comment how well they could handle a serious Digg traffice spike.
While it’s probably a long way off, I really hope that my hosting provider can handle things if something of mine takes off.
As it is, I have 3 sites on one shared hosting plan through Bluehost. So far no problems, but you never know.