Web Hosting Options

If you are going to have a web site you are going to host it somewhere. As a design company we have dealt with many hosting solutions ranging from Yahoo business to some guy in the woods with a DSL connection. In fact we even have our own server online and used to do a bit of hosting ourselves.

What has our experience taught us? Use a dedicated hosting company. We don't mean use a dedicated server. Unless you are going to be immense and massive (and 98% of all websites don't fit that category) you only need a a shared hosting company. That means you want a webhosting company that has a server farm and pays a geek or two (or more) to be on site 24-7. A server farm needs to be baby sat. There are things that go on in the internet that you and I are never aware of.... things called denial of service attacks, broadcast storms, link-flapping... Digital horrors that can give a cognizant geek nightmares. This is why we no longer host ourselves. We love our clientele but we would like a little time off to sleep, thank you.

web hosting technology has changed a lot

In the past a hosting company would have one computer with a hard drive or two on it running a bunch of web sites and then repeat that ass many times as needed for their work load. Modern server farms will have racks of servers and racks of hards drives. All separate, all shared, all really cool technology. It makes for more up time and better service all around.

This is why many hosting companies are offering "unlimited" storage, "unlimited" bandwidth and "unlimited" domain names. Do you need "unlimited" webservices? No, this is just marketing jargon. It is pretty meaningless for your needs. It is likely you will use less than 100 mb of disk space and under 500mb of bandwidth. many successful & profitable sites use much much less. The tough thing for any of these companies is to sound unique and different in a marketplace where everything is pretty darn similar!

The only companies we tend to steer away from are Yahoo and Godaddy. Why? Well, they seem to strive to do too much. Companies like godaddy that are primarily domain registrars should stick to that and try to do just that well, instead they branched out into seventeen different directions until their interface is complicated and crazy. What's more they are constantly trying to sell you more of their different services and design their interface so that you can unintentionally be adding on services you neither want nor need. The result is they do few things well and many things poorly.

Webhosting Companies we like

We like companies that specialize in running a server farm. We like web hosting companies that own and manage their own servers. We have compiled a list of web hosting companies that we find acceptable and are willing to recommend. We actually use a few of these ourselves for hosting some of out own sites. They are all pretty much the same. We like lynux servers they are more stable and offer pretty much everything you will need. They all have database stuff, scripting, blog software, build it yourself site constructors. You could say that hosting-wise they are identical the company culture might be slightly different between them, but honestly you will probably only call them once if that. We generally choose hosting companies whose servers are located in the USA, since most of our traffic is from here, it just makes sense.

Go ahead, choose any of these.

Company	monthly cost	disk space	monthly bandwidth	extras
	$6.95/month for 2-year sign up $7.95/month for 1 year	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited domains. Registrar services Standard Lynux feature set
	$4.95 - $7.95 - $12.95	350gb - 600gb - 1000gb	3000gb - Unlimited - Unlimited	unlimited domains on higher level plans standard lynux feature set reseller packages available. dedicated servers available
	$5.95 - $8.95 based on length of contract	Unlimited	Unlimited	Doimain registration services Free domain name with hosting Standard Lynux Feature set California Server Farm
	4.95/mo billed annually	Unlimited	Unlimited	Standard Lynux feature set Modern server farm architecture
	$6.95/month billed in 6 month increments longer contracts have additional free months	2500gb	20,000 TB	Standard lynux feature set Reseller plans available
	3.95/mo - 7.95/mo depending on length of contract	Unlimited	Unlimited	Standard Lynux Feature set
	$4.95/mo - $12.95/mo	1500gb	15,000gb	Standard Lynux feature set Windows hosting available Reseller hosting Dedicates servers
	$3.88/mo - $7.77/mo	1500gb	15,000gb	Standard Lynux feature set