How To Choose A Shared Web Hoster?

[A_SN]

I'm about to start a web site for my upcoming commercial program, a fancy sound making program that uses images, based on my ARSS' technology. I tried looking for a good web hoster on my own but it's a jungle out there. Can't tell which review site to trust, can't tell which uptime statistics to trust, can't tell how badly they over-oversell, can't tell how will sneakily shut you down for suddenly enjoying too much popularity, and so on. As I'm establishing, this is a jungle a newbie like me can't afford to throw himself into, considered what's at stake for me, i.e. I'm trying to in professional.

So here what I need. I think that due to the strong novelty effect of my program, my site is (relatively) likely to go "viral". If that happens, it's necessary that the hoster sustains a strong surge in traffic until I upgrade the plan, because in that cause a DoS or worse, an account lock-up during such a surge would mean a significant loss in sales! So that's the most important thing here. The second most important thing is, if my site gets really successful, a shared hosting plan won't suffice anymore, so it would be important that I could seamlessly upgrade my plan with the same hoster.

Finally, the obvious stuff : a great uptime/general reliability is essential, the hoster can't be an over-overseller, and well the hoster can't be generally crappy, I'm not looking for something necessarily cheap. Oh also, I can't have a plan that would charge me extra if I get overly popular.

So my question to you people is, do you know of a hoster that you know for a fact fits the bill, or do you know of a way to determine this? Thanks a lot in advance .

 

[PoisonedV]

hostgator. thats all you need to know as a beginner- its like dreamhost, without the horrible downtime

 

[A_SN]

hostgator. thats all you need to know as a beginner- its like dreamhost, without the horrible downtime

I looked thoroughly at this hoster during my initial search due to its apparent popularity and according to what I read it's a massive overseller and iirc they lock accounts.

 

[PoisonedV]

hostgator. thats all you need to know as a beginner- its like dreamhost, without the horrible downtime

I looked thoroughly at this hoster during my initial search due to its apparent popularity and according to what I read it's a massive overseller and iirc they lock accounts.

i had good experiences and several people I know did too, using large amounts of our plans. most other shared hosters don't oversell, but then again they cost the same or more and you get much less space

 

[zacaj]

Im currently using WebHostingBuzz, you can get a lot of hosting very cheap, and i havent been locked out like at my last host(vexxhost), which locked me out because my forum was using too much CPU power?

 

[maciek_urbanski]

I have my site at midphase. There's no downtime and customer service is very fast. I don't know how it compares to others, though.

 

[todd]

I'm quite the fan of http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net . Granted, I don't host popular stuff: just some personal pages. But they claim to host several sites that get slashdotted regularly and to deal with them in helpful ways. And for a small fry like me, they are dirt, dirt cheap. I know cheap isn't always best. But I like their policies and have never had any issues with downtime.

--Todd

 

[PokeParadox]

I use Servage <-That's a referral link, earns you a bit more space on your account if you signup, also earns me a bit more space on mine + a month of free hosting.

 

[A_SN]

I use Servage <-That's a referral link, earns you a bit more space on your account if you signup, also earns me a bit more space on mine + a month of free hosting.


Interesting. What if I get suddenly more than 5 TB in a month though? Quite unlikely, but do I get charged extra? Does my account suddenly get locked?

I'm quite the fan of http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net . Granted, I don't host popular stuff: just some personal pages. But they claim to host several sites that get slashdotted regularly and to deal with them in helpful ways. And for a small fry like me, they are dirt, dirt cheap. I know cheap isn't always best. But I like their policies and have never had any issues with downtime.

--Todd


I quite like the concept of the adaptive pricing, that sounds great for when your website suddenly scales up. I quite like their Slashdot policy as well ( https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq.php?#Slashdot ), $10 for a major Slashdotting sounds good considered a fifth of an extra sale would cover that . I'm sold on this one actually, I like their philosophy, looks like a hoster ran by sysadmins and no marketing/BS department.

 

[PokeParadox]

I use Servage <-That's a referral link, earns you a bit more space on your account if you signup, also earns me a bit more space on mine + a month of free hosting.


Interesting. What if I get suddenly more than 5 TB in a month though? Quite unlikely, but do I get charged extra? Does my account suddenly get locked?

It's never happened to me, but I've seen what happens, basically the monthly bandwidth is calculated on a per-day basis. If it's exhausted in that day, a polite message is displayed saying the bandwidth has been exhausted or similar. The site is accessible the next day.

And no you don't get charged extra.

 

[A_SN]

I use Servage <-That's a referral link, earns you a bit more space on your account if you signup, also earns me a bit more space on mine + a month of free hosting.


Interesting. What if I get suddenly more than 5 TB in a month though? Quite unlikely, but do I get charged extra? Does my account suddenly get locked?

It's never happened to me, but I've seen what happens, basically the monthly bandwidth is calculated on a per-day basis. If it's exhausted in that day, a polite message is displayed saying the bandwidth has been exhausted or similar. The site is accessible the next day.

And no you don't get charged extra.

So the real limit is 167 GB/day? That makes a difference in case of a Slashdotting!

 

[PokeParadox]

I use Servage <-That's a referral link, earns you a bit more space on your account if you signup, also earns me a bit more space on mine + a month of free hosting.


Interesting. What if I get suddenly more than 5 TB in a month though? Quite unlikely, but do I get charged extra? Does my account suddenly get locked?

It's never happened to me, but I've seen what happens, basically the monthly bandwidth is calculated on a per-day basis. If it's exhausted in that day, a polite message is displayed saying the bandwidth has been exhausted or similar. The site is accessible the next day.

And no you don't get charged extra.

So the real limit is 167 GB/day? That makes a difference in case of a Slashdotting!
Slashdot is pretty much a special case... it may be worth asking them if they treat it as so! :lol: