Comments for Web Hosting

Comment on Backing up by Vincent

Vincent — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:40:36 +0000

You might want to a complete web hosting checklist Paul, place it in your page section rather than post and make it the ultimate web hosting checklist. You would be surprised how many don’t know what to ask a hosting provider.

Comment on Backing up by Paul

Paul — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:37:33 +0000

It’s also are you comparing like with like, you might find two companies that appear to offer an identical package except one is slightly more expensive. However the cheaper one may be backing up once a week keeping no history while the other slight more expensive one is backing up every night with a months worth of history.

Without understanding the different backup options a client my simply choose based on price which may not be the best option for their business.

Comment on Backing up by Vincent

Vincent — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:24:28 +0000

That’s excellent advice Paul. It’s something a lot of webmasters don’t give enough consideration. While out looking for the best deals keep in mind ‘you get what you pay for’ this is very true especially in web hosting. While you you may think you have that perfect deal, have you checked that all particulars are in order such as back-ups, 24/7 support, security etc!

Comment on Unmetered is not unlimited by Vincent

Vincent — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:03:27 +0000

I agree with you, it’s a real minefield for site owners simply as they do not understand or know who is right or what is right or what wrong in this business. It can be confusing. wish the business of hosting was more transparent, answering the questions about what you really need and not fully up-selling you on something you don’t need.

Comment on Unmetered is not unlimited by Paul

Paul — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:59:31 +0000

As you say dressing things up is most defiantly not limited to just the hosting industry but with ADSL the limits are very clearly defined and they always say up to 16Mbit thus implying you may get any speed up to and including 16Mbit.

With web hosting when they advertise unlimited or give excessively large hard numbers e.g. 350GB of disk and 3,000GB bandwidth without a qualifier such as “up to”, you could well expect to be able to use those resources and it’s only when you look in the terms of service you discover additional limits such as the amount of CPU you can use or the number of MySQL connections permitted per second or some such.

The problem is the average site owner will look at the massive amounts of disk space/bandwidth offered and have little or no understanding what the additional limits are until their site is suspended or worse terminated for excessive resource usage.

Hopefully the post will help people understand you get what you pay for in this industry and while they may choose to go with a host offering the earth for next to nothing they will make that choice with a little more understanding.

Comment on Unmetered is not unlimited by Vincent

Vincent — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:18:48 +0000

Good post Paul, though I don’t think this is limited to web host providers. Take a look at the ADSL market for example. Nearly all of them including major players like BT offer unlimited broadband, read the small print and you realize this is not so. Yes a ADSL company can offer up 16MB only if is available in your area, only if you live within a quarter mile of the exchange, only if the wiring from the exchange has been modified and updated to new wiring.

The whole thing about offering more than to the consumer is as old as the hills. Just because it is offered doesn’t mean to say you will get it, meeting the criteria to get it is near enough impossible.