How to choose hosting? What to look for. Hosting selection

Choosing a hosting seems to be a daunting task because the service itself is not technically simple and has many features. Starting from its various types (shared hosting, VDS / VPS, etc.), ending with
parameters for evaluating the hosting provider (reliability, performance, etc.)
and features of tariffs.

In fact, in order to choose a hosting, it is enough to consistently decide:

• WHAT TO CHOOSE HOSTING? (VIEW)
• PAID OR FREE?
• IN RUSSIA OR ABROAD?
• CHOOSE A HOSTING PROVIDER
• CHOOSE TARIFF PLAN

Shared hosting

(or in English "shared hosting") - the most budgetary and most common type of hosting. It is called virtual because many customer sites are hosted on a single physical server using virtualization tools. In addition to the server, they have common software. Shared hosting is the easiest to use. unlike the following options, everything is already installed and configured on it. And if there are problems, technical support will solve them. There will not be a guaranteed amount of resources, but if you have a not very demanding project and a good hosting provider, this will not hurt you. As a last resort, you can take the tariff more seriously. Tariffs differ, as a rule, in disk space, number of sites, maximum load limitation.

It is difficult to say in general, for projects with what kind of attendance virtual hosting is suitable, and for which it is better to think about something more serious. the tariffs are very diverse. For example, Beget has VIP hosting plans that will handle even very demanding projects. In any case, the vast majority of corporate websites, blogs and even small online stores will have enough virtual hosting capabilities.

Hosting providers often offer two options for shared hosting: UNIX / Linux hosting and Windows hosting. At the same time, the second option is usually more expensive. The difference lies in the possibilities of using technology.

The difference between Windows hosting is that both technologies developed by Microsoft (ASP.NET, MS SQL, etc.) and technologies that were originally created for UNIX / Linux hosting (PHP, MySQL, etc.) .P.).

Sometimes, you can find tariffs with the names "hosting for WordPress", "hosting for Joomla", "Hosting for Bitrix" or "hosting for an online store", etc. In fact, this is all the same virtual hosting. Functionally, it almost never differs from the usual tariffs. Simply, the hosting provider tries to adapt such parameters as disk space, number of sites, etc. for those projects that, in his opinion, most often use these CMS.

VDS / VPS

(Virtual Dedicated / Private Server) - virtual dedicated server.

This is an intermediate option between shared hosting and a real physical server, in which you rent a part of the capacity of a real server. Each such virtual server can have its own software and settings. You are given full administrative (root) access to the system and all configuration files are available. This means that you can:

1) create as many sites, databases, ssh, ftp users, etc.

2) install and run your own software and scripts, for example, Perl, Oracle, django, tomcat, RoR, etc.

Moreover, most of the important server settings are available from the control panel.

Unlike virtual hosting - your share of resources is clearly defined by the tariff. In addition, VPS / VDS clients on the server usually accommodate about 10 times less than with shared hosting.

Сollocation or Dedicated server

Сollocation - when you pay a provider to host your own server in its data center. That is, you rent space in a rack with power supply, communication channel, etc. This option assumes that you already have the server itself.

Dedicated Server - You rent a provider's server. Absolutely all settings are available to you, but the administration service of such a server is paid additionally.

In any case, these options are extremely expensive due to the high tariffs and the need for administration. And in order to configure and maintain performance on your own, you need competence in this matter.

The need for your own server can arise only in the case of a very highly loaded and demanding project with a huge number, not even just visitors, but resource users who will perform certain actions on the site, other than normal page views.

Cloud hosting

With this option, payment is charged for actually consumed power such as processor time, RAM, disk space. At the same time, the cloud platform is not limited to one server and, if necessary, can use the resources of other servers, which makes cloud hosting the most reliable type of hosting. However, despite the fact that you have to pay only for the actually consumed power, cloud hosting is comparable in price to a VPS / VDS or server rental, rather than to shared hosting. In addition, not all hosting providers provide this service.

Paid or free hosting

As already mentioned in the article about free hosting, due to its critical shortcomings, such as

• third-level domain (consequence - you are not the owner of the domain + damage to reputation),
• the likelihood of losing the site at any time,
• lack of PHP, ASP, MySQL and more,
• inability to deliver a full-fledged CMS - only the provider's constructor,
• intrusive adware,
• problems with promotion
• and many others,

it is only suitable for a very small number of users.

Let's remind someone.

1) For example, those who want to try creating and running their own blog. To understand if there is enough strength, time and desire to be active in this area.

2) A site on free hosting can be used to promote and advertise your main full-fledged site. Which, of course, will be on paid hosting.

There is an opinion that free hosting can be used for practice in the field of html programming, but given the fact that all free hosting services are strictly limited by the capabilities of their own designers, all that can be learned is how to masterfully use them. Experimenting with SEO won't do the trick either. and these possibilities are also severely limited.

With a sufficient level of unpretentiousness, free hosting can be used for a business card site or portfolio, but for visitors you will always be the person who saves on the image of 100 rubles per month.

Thus, free hosting is a very useful product, but only for the companies that provide it. They make good money on advertising, selling extra. functionality, gradual transition of users to paid tariffs and other monetization options.

Therefore, if your option is not one of the two described above, we recommend choosing a full-fledged paid hosting. Moreover, the price of the issue is 100 - 200 rubles. per month.

In Russia or abroad

Of course, foreign hosting has a number of advantages over Russian, and of the serious disadvantages, only the language barrier. If it is not a problem for you, it makes sense to seriously think about it. In addition, it is quite possible to find foreign hosting with Russian support.

However, if this option does not work, and your English is not so good, do not be upset. The best hosting services from ours in terms of service quality are already very close to their foreign competitors.

Choosing a hosting provider

What is the difference between hosting providers? Except for tariffs, of course?

Until recently, users had a set of those. requirements for a hoster, and the ability to satisfy them was the determining factor in the choice of hosting. As remnants of those times, you can still find posts on the forums with words like: "I'm looking for hosting with PHP, MySQL, FTP, etc.".

Now almost any hoster (self-taught students who run their own server do not count) is able to satisfy all such wishes. There are many acceptable offers on the market and everyone has everything... So how do you choose?

The success of a web project depends on the reliability of hosting. Newbies often cannot choose the best option for themselves, both because of a lack of understanding of the technical side of the issue, and because of the misleading advertisements of some hosting providers. There are five types of hosting offerings:

• Shared or virtual hosting;
• Cloud hosting - or a cloud-based way of hosting data;
• VPS, VDS hosting or virtual dedicated server;
• Dedicated - or dedicated physical server;
• Сolocation or placing the client's computer in the provider's data center.

For different types of web projects, you can choose your own hosting solutions, knowing their features.

Choosing a hosting type

For a small web project, virtual hosting is suitable. It is a single server that can host up to a thousand small sites. All sites offer the same software packages and scope of services.

The advantages of such hosting will be:

• low service cost;
• no need for site administration.

There is only one drawback - such a hosting can only host a small project that does not require a lot of disk space and equipment power.

Cloud hosting differs from virtual hosting in that the resources of not one, but several servers are used to host the site, which ensures the independence of the site from the functioning of a single server. Additional advantages of this choice will be:

• high performance;
• transparent pricing - the cost of the service directly depends on the amount of power consumed;
• power allocation is automatically adjusted, depending on the decrease or increase in load, the client does not have to worry about choosing a tariff or calculating capacity consumption.

VPS hosting is a certain analogue of a virtual server, but it has its own differences. Among them:

• different software can be installed for different sites;
• server resources allocated for the site depend on the selected tariff.

Dedicated physical server (Dedicated) is provided to the user with the right to install any operating system and software depending on his needs. The server is located in the data center. This type of hosting will be convenient for projects that require a large amount of resources, for example, online stores or online game portals.

Colocation will become the most functional way to host your web project. The client's own server is located in the data center. The provider provides a high-speed Internet channel and a number of additional services. The advantages are complete freedom in the choice of servers, their capacity, software.

Paid and free hosting

In addition to paid hosting, the market for this type of service makes it possible to use free hosting, which can be a good solution for a beginner. The problem will be that the capacity of such hosting can only ensure the operation of sites like "business card" or home pages that do not involve active traffic. This is due to the fact that the stability of the free hosting is not guaranteed. In addition, the work of free hosting often has the following disadvantages:

• the lack of software and tools necessary for the work of the web project Perl, MySQL, PHP, mail;
• the presence of advertising;
• the domain name of the project will be of the third level;
• almost complete absence of the hosting owner for the quality of the service.

All these disadvantages make the owners of commercial projects choose paid services. There are four points to focus on when choosing a hosting.

• amount of disk space;
• technical support and other tools;
• scope of technical support services;
• the ratio of the cost of a service to its content.

Disk space

There are standard and non-standard solutions. For a business card site or landing page, 30-60 MB will be sufficient. Using libraries, databases, graphics in the site solution will require at least 100 MB. If the volume of content is large or users have the opportunity to post their materials, the required number of MB will have to be calculated individually, based on the needs of the project. Some providers offer VIP-hosting, which will become a solution for this type of sites, the client is allocated personal disk space and RAM, and the time of script execution is determined. Since such a service is sometimes equivalent for the provider to the loss of several regular customers, its cost is high.

Technical support

Among the offers of paid hosting providers, you can most often find:

• the ability to connect databases;
• the ability to use scripts;
• unlimited traffic;
• access to the site via FTP;
• data backup;
• support of technologies PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Parser, Zend Optimizer, PERL, Python, SSH access and others. If the site is created not on HTML, but on WordPress or similar engines, you need the ability to use MySQL;
• support for frequently used CMS (WordPress, 1C-Bitrix, Joomla, Drupal);
• interface for mail and the presence of several mail accounts.

Technical support

On paid hosting, the continuity of technical support and its quality are important.

Among the services provided, there must be:

• round-the-clock server monitoring, prompt troubleshooting;
• protection against hacker attacks and viruses;
• assistance in administration;
• protection of information.

Price

You can determine the fairness of the offered price if the provider provides a free trial period. In a few days, you can study all the hosting functionality and make a conclusion about the correct pricing. The quality of the service does not always directly depend on the price level; in order to make a decision on choosing a hosting, it is necessary to analyze the provider from different points of view, including:

1. Information about the company provided to its clients, its completeness and reliability.
2. Term of work on the market.
3. Availability of our own data center. If the capacity is rented, it is necessary to study the terms and conditions of the contract
4. Ability to transfer a site from another hosting without paying.

The third point is especially important, it guarantees the reliability of the service provider. There are service providers reselling the capacity of other hosting providers, resellers. The quality of technical support in this case may be lower.

The provider can cause interest in himself with a package of bonuses, for example, a set of domains or additional services.

A clear idea of \u200b\u200bthe popularity and quality of the provider's services can help make an analysis of its market share in the domain zone. These statistics can be found at Statonline.ru.

Thus, the choice of hosting depends on the purpose of the web project. Free hosting is fine for initial steps and trials. Shared or cloud hosting is suitable for sites with low traffic, but requiring technical support and regular server operation. Websites with specific technical needs are best placed on VPS hosting. Serious and resource-intensive projects will require renting a physical server or colocation.

From the author: You have created a new website and now you are thinking "How to choose a hosting?" The correct choice of hosting is a responsible occupation, since everything depends on your choice: speed and stability of work, security and uptime. And if you have already chosen hosting, but realized that another will be much better, the migration will only cause one headache.

Having worked in the web industry for many years, serving my sites and my clients' sites, I have worked with many hosting companies. I have learned a lot and know what to look at when choosing a hosting. Bad hosting is a constant headache and possibly a loss of money. On the other hand, good hosting will make your life a lot easier.

In this guide, I will share the most important points that I have learned over the years, help you understand the basic principle of hosting, show you what to look at first when choosing a quality provider, and what types of hosting are suitable for various projects. I will also give you some tips on how not to fall for common mistakes when choosing a hosting.

Note: The main goal of this article is to cover all topics and help people choose hosting without regard to their goals and limitations. In fact, there is a lot of information here, some of which will be useful to you, the other part will already be known to you. If some sections are not relevant to your project, feel free to skip them. By the end of this article, you will be more confident in choosing the hosting that will be the foundation of your site.

Introduction: what is hosting?

When deploying your first site, it can easily get confused by a lot of new terminology and concepts. Let's start at the beginning: the precise definition of hosting.

JavaScript. Fast start

Note: If you already understand how hosting and domains work, you can skip to the "list of questions" section.
In a nutshell, web hosting serves a variety of configured computers (servers). The servers look something like this:

In many ways, these computers are no different from your home computers; they run on Linux or Windows operating systems, store files, and connect to the Internet. The main difference is that the servers are publicly accessible, people can view their content on the internet. Every time you browse the site, you are actually connecting to a server somewhere on the other side of the world and downloading the site's files through your browser.

Company Hosting refers to companies that lease server space so that you can store your site there. You upload your site files to the server, and the hosting takes care of ensuring that people can connect to your server location and view your site.

Hosting, domain and how they interact

Now that you know the basics of hosting, it is imperative to understand the differences between hosting and domain and how they interact with each other. This will help you better understand the meaning of the major differences. Let's get to the basics.

When you buy hosting, you are given an account and a certain space on the company's server, and you are also assigned a dedicated IP address so that people can access your site. For example, the hosting IP address of the main Google site is 173.194.68.102. If you go to this address in your browser, you will be taken to the Google website. Try it: http://173.194.68.102

The main problem with IP addresses is that they are very difficult to remember. Can you imagine how every time you tell someone about your site, you give them the numbers of your IP address? To simplify this task, we came up with domain names.

Domain names are easy to remember names that refer to your hosting IP address. When someone types the domain name of your site in the address bar, they are discreetly redirected to your IP address. So instead of memorizing 173.194.68.102, you just need to remember "google.com". Much easier.

Hosting and Domain: An Analogy

To explain what hosting is, I like to use an analogy with the rental space in a shopping center that you rent for your store. You can force this space with your products and it will become yours. It's the same with hosting your website files.

In order for people to find your store, it needs a name like “store №5, Mega Mall, Vishnevaya street, city…”. You can also compare the address of your store with the IP address of your hosting space.

To help people remember and find your store, you give it a name like "Cool Store". People easily remember this name and by it they find the address. Domains work in a similar way, making your site easier to remember.
And if you want to move to another location, your address will change, but the name of the store will remain the same "Cool store". This means that people can still find your store by name and find out its address. A similar situation occurs with hosting and domain. When you move your site, your IP address changes, but you can attach a domain name to the new address so that people can find you by your site name.

Tip: Usually companies provide both types of services, hosting and domain. But in my opinion and observations it is better to work with different companies for hosting and domain. The company must fully focus on a particular topic. This way you won't be storing "all your eggs in one basket." Now that you have understood the basics of web hosting, let's move on to how to choose a provider.

List of questions: What you need to know first

Even hosting with great service may not be right for you if it doesn't fit your project requirements. Therefore, before you start comparing hosting services, you need to know all the details and requirements of your site.

By answering the 10 questions below, you will have a whole picture of what kind of hosting you need, and therefore, you will better understand which sections of this article are suitable for your project.

Question 1: What type of site am I creating?

This is the question where it all starts. Different types of sites like WordPress, Ghost, or static HTML require different technical approaches to web hosting. Before you start, it is imperative to know what your site will be built on. In the next section, we will discuss in more detail the most common types of sites.

Question 2: What are the technical requirements for my site?

After you figured out the type of site, you need to make a complete list of technical requirements for the site; programming language or database type. Below we will analyze the requirements for the main types of sites.

Question 3: What level of security do I need?

Most sites require a minimum level of protection, but there are certain types of sites whose security needs special consideration. If you will process customer credit card data on your site or store their personal data, such as passwords, mail, you need to make some efforts to keep user data safe.

Question 4: Do I need hosting mail?

You want to create an email attached to your site's domain like [email protected]? If so, do you want your hosting service to handle mail and not a third party provider? If you want, you need to check if the hosting suits your requirements.

Question 5: Will I need to run multiple sites?

Do you want to host only one site or several on your hosting? If there are several sites, will they be stored on subdomains like myothersite.mydomain.com, or does each site need its own top-level domain like myothersite.com? And what are the requirements for another site, such as an additional database?

Question 6: How much data will I store and process?

The bandwidth requirement for your host is not just traffic, but also file size. The larger the file size, the more space and bandwidth your hosting needs. For example, sites with predominantly textual data need less space and bandwidth, while sites with a lot of high quality images need more space.

Question 7: What traffic can you expect initially?

Almost all hosting services are multi-tiered and handle different traffic flows. Most new sites will have low traffic. However, if you know that your starting traffic will be high, you need to make sure that your hosting can handle it.

Question 8: What traffic can you expect in the future?

Even if you expect your starting traffic to be low, do you have a clear plan for driving that traffic? If so, then you need to think about this plan that will increase the capabilities of your site over time.

Question 9: How much will I spend per month?

You don't need to know the exact amount that you will spend on hosting, but you should have at least a rough idea. If your budget is tight, then you have to prepare yourself for the fact that you give up various bells and whistles. If you have a more flexible budget, you can also benefit from various bonuses. Below we will also talk about the price levels of various types of hosting.

Question 10: What technical challenges can I solve?

Almost any site can be created without much experience, but individual maintenance tasks require different levels of technical expertise. If you are confident enough in yourself, you can tackle tasks such as running your own server. If you are a less confident user, you most likely want to find a fully serviced service that will do everything for you. We will tell you more about this below.

How to check hosting capabilities

Most hosting providers have charts or tables listing all sorts of tariff options. You just need to spend a little time and browse the site to find these tables. Rates are often presented in comparison to others.

Advice: if you cannot understand exactly what technical capabilities are included in the tariff, it is better to refuse it.

Types of websites and requirements for them

If you know how you will have a website, WordPress or an online store for example, the first thing to check is whether the hosting you choose supports the technical requirements for the site. If not, then you don't have to think any further.

Types of technical requirements. What programming languages \u200b\u200band frameworks should the site support?

Basic programming languages \u200b\u200bHTML, CSS and JavaScript do not need any special hosting requirements. However, there are separate languages \u200b\u200band frameworks that need to be handled in a certain way on the server, which means they need some support.

You need to know not only about the required programming languages \u200b\u200band frameworks that will be needed on the site, but also about their versions. For example, a common language for CMS is PHP. If your site needs PHP 5 and hosting only supports version 4, then the site will not work. Languages \u200b\u200bor frameworks you may need: PHP, Node.js, Ruby on Rails

Once you have decided on the type of site, find out what programming languages \u200b\u200band frameworks you need, make a list and compare with hosting options.

Do you need a database?

If you are building a dynamic site (like WordPress) rather than a static one (HTML template), then you will most likely need ways to create a database. If you need a database, you need to find out the type of database you need and your hosting support. As with programming languages \u200b\u200band frameworks, you need to check the version of the database system.

Are there any special requirements?

Sometimes a site may require additional features such as PHP extensions or additional hosting features. We will discuss additional requirements below.

If you are working with WordPress

If you're running a WordPress site, there are two types of technical requirements to consider. The first is the requirements of WordPress itself, and the second is support for the specific themes or plugins you want to use.

WordPress requirements

The two main requirements for WordPress are PHP and MySQL database support. Right now, you need at least PHP 5.2.4, MySQL 5.0.15. Ideally you should have: PHP 5.6, MySQL 5.5

Almost all hosting services meet these requirements, but it's still better to check.

If you want human-readable and search engine friendly links for articles like mydomain.com/my-awesome-article and not mydomain.com/p?\u003d134, you need mod_rewrite support on Apache or Nginx. Most hosts have this feature enabled right away due to the popularity of WordPress. A complete list of requirements and recommendations can be checked at the link: https://codex.wordpress.org/Hosting_WordPress

Requirements for themes and plugins

Sometimes plugins and themes require additional requirements besides WordPress requirements. For example, suppose you have a plugin that needs special tools to pull information from third-party links like Amazon or to automatically start tasks at a specific time. If you will be using special themes or plugins, make sure they are supported: cURL, Cron tasks, ImageMagick, Ioncube Loader

Review your themes and plugins and compare their requirements with the pricing options.

If you are working with static HTML

If you're just running a static HTML site, the requirements are pretty simple. If you want to create a contact form, make a plan for how it will work. Some scripts require CGI to send email messages. In this case, you need to check the support on the CGI hosting. If you don't want to mess with CGI, it's easier to find services that offer embeddable contact forms and leave message processing to a third party server.

If you are working with CMS

There are many uses for a CMS. In most cases, the requirements are almost the same as WordPress. PHP and MySQL are almost always needed, but sometimes different types of databases like PostgreSQL or SQlite are required. After choosing a suitable CMS, find out all the requirements and which of these is supported by your hosting.

As with WordPress, if there are any themes, plugins or extensions you want to use, check the requirements for them.

Usually, all the technical requirements can be best found on the download page or in the installation documentation. Below is a list of requirements for several popular content management systems: Concrete5, Drupal, Joomla, ModX, Moodle

If you are running a commercial site

Generally speaking, there are two types of commercial systems; independent commercial sites and plugin sites. For example, you can create an independent online store using Prestashop, or you can use the Easy Digital Downloads plugin in WordPress.

In a nutshell, independent online stores are another type of CMS with the difference that the UI and security are optimized for online sales. Therefore, you can understand that the basic technical requirements almost always coincide with the usual CMS. Most systems require PHP and MySQL.

Below is a list of technical requirements for some of the most popular independent commercial sites: Magento, Prestashop, Opencart, Shopify, ZenCart

If you connect any plugins and extensions, first of all, you need to make sure that the CMS you are creating is supported on the hosting, and also check the support for these plugins / extensions. Below is a list of requirements for some of the more popular commercial plugins: Easy Digital Downloads, Jigoshop, WP-Ecommerce

Whether you work in an independent system or in a plugin-based system, in most cases you will find that you need hosting with additional security measures, such as an SSL certificate. We'll talk more about security in the last paragraph of the security section.

If you work with Ghost

Ghost is a blogging platform that is slightly different from the systems we discussed above, it uses Node.js on the back-end side. This means that regular hosts do not support Ghost sites as they do not support Node.js. Two ways to work with a site on Ghost:

Host your site on the Ghost (Pro) service

Host the site on your server and manage it through a service like Digital Ocean, designed specifically for Ghost

The first option is best for you if you have little experience with command line and server management. The second option can be chosen if you already have your own server and know how to maintain it.

General specifications

Along with the technical characteristics for your site, there are other features that need to be considered when choosing a hosting.

Safety

Unfortunately, there are always people who are looking for unsecured sites to hack or send out spam. It is very important to have high security. You need to measure the security level of your CMS using special plugins, but apart from that it is important to know that your hosting provides good protection.

Check carefully how your hosting provides security. Look for something like firewalls and antiviruses. Personally check if the server is checking for suspicious activity. The options will vary slightly from hosting to hosting, and you will have to carefully read all the options and sometimes even call the provider. Don't be afraid to ask employees about security measures.

SSL certificates

In almost all cases, if you want to host a commercial site, you will need an SSL certificate. So, you need to make sure that SSL connectivity is included in your plan.

Ban by IP

"Ban by IP" is a function available on individual hosting, with which you can block access to the site for certain IP addresses. The function can be very convenient, with its help you can determine the IP addresses of hackers and spammers.

Backup

Sometimes, even with all the preparations, you cannot predict that your site will be harmed by hackers or other unpredictable events. Therefore, it is important to choose a hosting provider that makes regular backups. If all methods of protecting your data have failed, you can restore your site.

It is worth checking that your hosting does not just make backups, but also check with what frequency. Ideally, a backup should be done every 24 hours, especially for sites that change frequently. This way you will never lose data in more than one day.

Email

If you want email to be tied to hosting, you must first check support for this feature. If such a function is supported, you need to find out how many accounts you can create for your needs. Most hosting sites support the ability to bind email to a domain, usually the number of accounts is not limited. However, this is not the case on all hosting services, so it's worth checking again.

If you find the ideal hosting plan, but it does not support this feature, then you can alternatively use third-party mailboxes such as Gmail.

Stored data size and bandwidth

In the list of questions at the beginning of the article, we asked a question about the amount of stored data and the expected traffic. These two factors determine how much space you need to store your data, as well as how much bandwidth you need to transfer it.

Server space refers to the amount of data that the hosting allows you to download. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that hosting allows users to download from a drive on the server.

In most cases, if your site contains mostly text only, for example, a blog or a site for business, you will not have problems with storage. But if you have a lot of data, for example, a large number of high quality images or videos, digital products, you need to make sure that the hosting has enough space.

After checking the storage location, you need to check the throughput. General rule of thumb: Bandwidth \u003d data * traffic. Let's consider an example: You have a gallery of 10 images of 200Kb, only 2Mb. If the gallery is viewed by 100 people, 200MB of bandwidth is consumed. If the gallery is viewed by 1000 people, 2GB of bandwidth is consumed.

Basically, most startups have enough bandwidth of regular hosting. But if: you serve large amounts of data ... you know that on a certain day you will have a huge influx of traffic ...

... then you will choose a hosting that allows you to configure the bandwidth yourself in such a way as to stay within reasonable limits.

Growth plans for the future

Once you have decided on the size of the disk and the bandwidth, you should find out about the possibility of an upgrade. It is not uncommon for you to want to increase your site's traffic, and if your site grows, you would like to know that your hosting can provide you with a more powerful plan without causing any downtime.

The easiest way is to ask a representative of the hosting company before purchasing a plan. Ask about available upgrade plans in the future, and also check the details of these tariff plans.

Also ask your hosting representative if they can transfer you to a more expensive plan without having to do it yourself and switch between different accounts. Finally, make sure that this process does not cause any downtime for your site. If you have a simple personal website, then a little downtime won't hurt you. However, if you have a business site that users depend on, before buying another tariff plan, it is better to get guarantees that your site will not be interrupted for a long time.

Domain allowed

How many sites do you want to run on hosting? In many cases, you will find that the cheapest package allows you to create one site with a top-level domain. Many hosts have unlimited subdomains available. You can also use subdomains as long as the mysubsite.mydomain.com address does not irritate you.

If you only want one site with a top-level domain, you won't have any problems. But if in the future you want to create another one, check if you can painlessly upgrade your tariff plan. Well, if you need several sites from the very beginning, choose the appropriate tariff plan.

Database

Allowed databases

If you will be running multiple sites, you will need multiple databases. As with domains, one database is often included in the minimum rate. Make sure your plan can create multiple databases, or your plan can be upgraded.

Database types

As we said earlier, the most common type of database used by CMS and commercial sites is MySQL. But you may also need PostgreSQL or SQlite. You need to know the type of database that you need, and then the database support by hosting.

Shared shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS, dedicated server, managed hosting services?

If you go to a typical hosting company's website, there will be 4 types of rates; virtual, dedicated, VPS and reseller. You can also opt for fully managed hosting. Let's quickly go over the main types of hosting.

Shared hosting

Remember how at the beginning of the article we wrote how, when you buy a tariff, you rent space on one of the servers served by the hosting? When you buy a shared hosting account, you are sharing one server with other buyers who also rent the same server.

Pros of shared hosting

The lowest price

Often designed for beginners

Minimum maintenance

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Cons of shared hosting

Performance degrades if servers are full or if other users are taking up most of the resources

Limited space and bandwidth

Who is virtual hosting suitable for?

Shared hosting is the most common type and is usually suitable for any startups or sites with little traffic and bandwidth.

Dedicated server

If you buy a dedicated server, then the entire server is at your disposal. You do not share resources with other users and can control everything that happens on the server down to the operating system. However, a dedicated server is a typical self-service server. That is, all the technical tasks that providers perform for you on shared hosting fall on your shoulders. There are fully managed dedicated servers out there, but you'll have to look for them.

Pros of a dedicated server

Other users do not affect performance

Large disk space and bandwidth

Ability to change server settings

Cons of a dedicated server

Highest prices

If the server is completely under your control, this requires in-depth technical knowledge.

Who is a dedicated server for?

A dedicated server is perfect for you if you need a large disk size and high bandwidth. If you or your assistants do not have the technical skills of server administration, you should look for a fully managed dedicated server.

VPS hosting

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server, which can be translated into Russian as "virtual personal server", and this is another great feature of dedicated servers. These servers can be considered "practically like private servers." With VPS, one server is divided into separate "virtual" servers, each of which has its own operating system. In a sense, such a server is similar to shared hosting, since there are several users on one server, but only much, much fewer users. As with dedicated servers, VPS hosting requires you to perform some technical tasks.

Cheaper than a dedicated server

Usually good performance

Large disk size and high bandwidth

Ability to customize the server

Cons of VPS

More expensive than shared hosting

If hosting is self-service, advanced technical knowledge is required

Who is VPS hosting suitable for?

VPS hosting is suitable for you if you need more disk space and more bandwidth than shared hosting, and a dedicated server is too redundant. As with a dedicated server, if you don't have anyone to administer, look for a full service option.

Reseller hosting

Reseller hosting is a form of virtual server, but it is configured so that you can sell some of your space to other users. But even if you do not want to sell part of the hosting, this type should be taken into account when choosing a provider, since sometimes you can find a tariff at the level between shared hosting and VPS. You can get more disk space and bandwidth than with shared hosting plans, but for less money than a VPS. Plus, you don't need to administer the server.

Reseller hosting provides you with a user interface where you can divide your disk space into sub-accounts and allocate them the appropriate bandwidth. If you will be using reseller hosting for yourself, you can create one account and work with a full disk and the maximum available bandwidth.

Pros of reseller hosting

More disk space and more bandwidth than shared hosting (sometimes)

Cheaper than VPS

No need to administer the server both on a VPS and a dedicated server

Cons of reseller hosting

Additional admin panel for sub-accounts

Performance may be affected by other accounts on the server

Who is reseller hosting for?

Reseller hosting is suitable for you if you need more resources than on a virtual server, but less than on a VPS, and you are not annoyed by additional panels for subaccounts.

Managed hosting

All of the above types of hosting require some degree of self-service. Even on a virtual server, you can contact the server administrator, but the site management is entirely on your shoulders. For example, if you have a fully self-serving WordPress or commercial site, you will need to:

Install site

Updates regularly

Protect your website from hackers and malware

Evaluate plugins and themes for malicious content or exploits

Create backups

Block spam and brute force attacks

Set up a CDN (Content Delivery Network) if you want to use it

If you have user registration, then you need to protect personal data

If you process credit card information, you need to protect it too

Managed hosts on the other hand usually focus on specific types of sites like WordPress, Ghost or online stores. Some or all of the above maintenance tasks will be performed by the service.

Also, managed hosting is usually highly optimized for speed and performance, usually to such an extent that it would take a lot of time and a lot of knowledge to customize it. Most managed hosts also strive to provide a very high quality of customer experience. However, usually this type of hosting is much more expensive due to additional features and has stricter restrictions on the number of sites.

Note: If you are building an online store that will handle credit cards, managed hosting will be of particular importance to you, as many countries have criminal penalties for insufficient security on your site. Managed hosting is a reliable leverage for online stores.

Pros of managed hosting

Site management, security and updates for you

Optimized for speed and performance (typically)

Optimization at the VPS or dedicated server level without the need for administration

Cons of managed hosting

More expensive than shared hosting

Usually, one account can create fewer sites than on a shared hosting

Who is managed hosting for?

Managed hosting is suitable for you if you want to spend as little time as possible with the site, and the budget allows you to purchase something more expensive than shared hosting. Also, this type of hosting will suit you if you will be processing data from credit cards.

Customer support / service

On web hosts, support and service are of paramount importance. I could not help but note this.

The fact is that hosting with the highest quality of service cannot 100% guarantee that you won't run into problems. It doesn't matter what kind of hosting you have, it is important to understand that there are various technical problems, even if they are insignificant. Therefore, efficiency and speed in solving hosting problems is extremely important.

Available support channels

Before buying, find out what support channels are available, i.e. live chat, phone, email. Make sure the suggested methods are right for you. For example, don't buy a hosting that only uses live chat if you don't like typing and it's easier for you to call.

Service time

Also check what hours support is available. Is support available 24/7 or only during business hours? What time zone do they work in? What about the holidays? Try to see what type of support you will get if your site crashes at 10pm on Sunday. Good hosting always has a person ready to help you at any time.

Quality of support

Another aspect of support, perhaps the most important and difficult to determine before purchasing an account, is the quality of the support. Some hosting services serve huge business projects with a large number of clients. The response there may be fast enough, but they don't solve problems very well. Other providers work with small businesses, but the quality of service is much higher there, and they solve all problems very quickly.

You can find out about the quality of support in Google. In general, you should not look for something like "reviews", because you will see a huge list of positive reviews, whose authors write them for a fee. I advise you to search directly for quotes from reviews like "Hosting A sucks", "My site on Host A crashed", "Downtime on Host A" or "Site on Host A was hacked."
Remember that problems happen on all hosting services, so when choosing, do not limit yourself only to reviews on the Internet. Instead, use the information you find to understand how quickly the company was able to resolve the issue. Also, pay attention to the revocation date to make sure you are reading the latest information.

Finally, below I have collected a few additional tips to help you avoid problems.

Look for cPanel

Most hosting providers provide a control panel through which you can interact with your account. It is through the panel that you install sites, manage databases, make backups, set up security, manage email accounts and much more. If your hosting provider has a bad control panel, then these tasks will be difficult.

There are different types of dashboards, but users love cPanel the most, and I personally vote for it. If you are a beginner, check that the plan includes a cPanel panel.

"Unmeasured" does not mean "unlimited"

It is not uncommon to see the word “unmeasured” in combination with bandwidth in the rates of virtual servers of various hosting providers. A rate may offer a good combination of price and quality, but you always need to be clear about what you mean.

The reality is that there are several clients on each shared hosting. The performance of their sites depends on whether your site is using too many resources. In this case, "unmeasured" bandwidth will allow you to go to the extent that you do not affect the performance of other users. There are tariffs in which a clear value of the bandwidth is hidden, but in practice there is a clear limit - you just do not know the exact value of this limit.

In tariffs with "unmeasured" bandwidth, which is described in the terms of service, if your site's traffic grows to a certain unknown level, it can simply drop without a single warning at any time. And you will have to upgrade your plan to VPS or even to what an expensive tariff just in order to raise the site.

If you are just going to launch a site with modest traffic, you may not have such a problem at all. But if you plan that your traffic will grow, it is better, in my opinion, to choose a provider that will tell you directly what bandwidth you will have. You will be able to track your resource consumption every month and stay within available limits. In this case, you will not encounter site downtime or unexpected tariff upgrades.

Choose a provider completely focused only on hosting and with a good reputation

Hosting is a complex and technically demanding service, for this reason I recommend that you check that your company is 100% focused on hosting services only.

You should also try to find out that your potential provider has a lot of experience in providing high quality services. Above you read about reseller hosting. There is a possibility that you will unknowingly buy a reseller subaccount from a person who does not understand hosting at all, which means that he does not have good equipment to fix the problems that arise. It takes a lot of experience and dedication to create a good hosting company.

Conclusion

Let's quickly brush up on everything we've learned:

Buying hosting is renting server disk space

Answer all 10 questions at the beginning of the article and write down all the requirements for your site before choosing a hosting.

Check that your hosting meets all the technical requirements of your site, plugins and themes.

Check that the basic hosting features are right for you, including security, backup, email, disk size, bandwidth, domains and databases.

Shared hosting is very cost effective and suitable for most startups and small sites.

Dedicated servers are the most expensive and suitable for large projects with high resource requirements.

VPS hosting is somewhere between virtual and dedicated and it is suitable if the virtual hosting does not have enough resources, and the dedicated server is too expensive.

Reseller hosting from some providers provide more resources than on a virtual server, and are cheaper than a VPS.

Managed hosting is tailored for specific sites like WordPress, Ghost or an online store and takes care of some aspects of site management and security. A good option if you want to spend as little time as possible on site maintenance, and your budget allows you to buy something more expensive than shared hosting.

Time and quality of support is of the utmost importance for any provider.

Better to look for hosting with cPanel control panel. This panel will make your life easier if you are a beginner and do not know about hosting.

Keep in mind that there are no completely unlimited resources - there is always a limit, even if at first glance it is not visible.

Look for a provider with extensive experience, as well as someone who is focused on serving complex business projects, so you can be sure that someone will solve your problems.

This guide is a squeezed-out experience of many years of creating and managing websites for yourself and your clients. With the help of this guide, I hope I've helped you avoid some mistakes when working with hosting.

The success of your project may depend entirely on the hosting foundation. There are absolutely fantastic providers on the web, and when they work well, you have a huge advantage in promoting your projects. I hope, after reading this article, it became much easier for you to choose a hosting!

Finding hosting is not a problem, I typed the query "hosting" into the search engine and got a lot of options. The only problem is which of this heap to choose? Each has its own individual rates, which can often be very different from each other. Below I will tell you what you should first of all pay attention to when choosing it, as well as how to choose a tariff.

1. Positive feedback

Most importantly, choose a verified hosting with reviews. Better not to take a new one or one that few people use. If you are looking for cheap prices from an unknown hoster, then the risk that one day your sites may not open and the technical support will be silent is quite big. Situations are very different. If you then do not want to urgently transfer all your projects to another hosting (and this is sometimes problematic), then look for reviews about it, do not chase cheapness.

2. Availability of a support phone number

Try to choose a hosting that has a support phone number. I understand that this is not the main indicator. It's just that most of the time, these hosting services are quite large that you can rely on. Correspondence by mail from those. support sometimes takes a long time, and it is much more convenient to call and clarify all the problems.

3. There is a suitable tariff

When choosing a hosting, you should pay attention to the tariffs. Look for the tariff that suits you. For example, some hosting providers provide a lot of disk space for a small fee, but the number of sites can be very limited. The other may have the opposite (there is not much space, but the amount is unlimited).

One user will have disk space as a priority, while another will have a large number of allowed sites. From here, the choice can be completely different.

Look also at the rates that are more expensive in order to immediately focus on the possible prospects for expanding your resource. Don't look for the cheapest prices. Remember the well-known saying: "free cheese is only in a mousetrap." And I would not advise anyone to take free hosting.

And I would like to dwell in a little more detail on the tariffs.

Choosing a hosting plan

When choosing a hosting, you should pay attention to the offered rates. The main characteristics of the tariffs are:

• Price;
• Disk space;
• The number of sites (how many domains you can hang on one hoster);
• Php, mysql support;
• Number of databases;

Do not forget that if you have a site on the engine (WordPress, DLE and others), then you will need php and mysql database support. If you have a completely static site (100% of html pages), then you will not need php and mysql (though now it will be rather rare to find a hoster without their support).

In my opinion, the optimal hosting rate is 150 rubles, with 1 GB of space, 10 sites, php and mysql support. Large hosting services have similar prices.

In addition to these moments, many may be interested in the following points:

• Free trial period. You are given a free opportunity to use any tariff for a certain period. Most often it is 7-10 days.
• Hosting location. The closer it is to users, the faster the connection will be and the less likely it is to break. In other words, if your traffic is mainly from Russia, then there is no point in ordering a foreign hoster.
• High percentage of hosting uptime (99.5% and higher). Ideally, it should be equal to 100%, but we all have problems when it is idle due to problems.

Personally, I have been using the following hosting for a long time:

I can't say anything bad about these hosting. I've been using it myself for more than a year. Also, I am now starting to use faster hosting, or rather a dedicated VPS server.

Stable hosting \u003d stable website operation. And this in turn leads to trust from the search engines. It is not for nothing that the list of factors includes a criterion for site availability. So take your hosting choice very seriously. If your hoster is stupid and often does not work, then feel free to switch to another, since there are a lot of them.

Greetings friends! We continue to deal with the questions of website creation. In the last part, we learned. Today we'll talk about which hosting to choose for the site and where to buy it.

I will tell you what characteristics you need to pay attention to and make an overview of the TOP 7 hosting providers, from which you can easily choose the best option for your project in terms of price and quality.

I will not dive deeply into technical issues, so even a beginner will understand.

To choose the best hosting option, you need to understand the site with what characteristics you are going to host on it.

For most people who build a website from scratch, any cheapest shared hosting will do. For example, Beget.ru (1 month free). Because young sites do not have high traffic and load.

I do not recommend buying an expensive powerful server right away. Start with the simplest, then as the load grows, you can easily upgrade the tariff or move to another hosting.

Think about it when the hosting can't handle the load. I transfer my informational sites to dedicated servers after they reach 20,000 visitors a day.

I suggest starting the selection with the initial data. I understand that most modern hosting services support any site characteristics and this section is, in fact, useless, but still, let's figure it out.

Site characteristics

What kind of website are you going to create?

Site type

All other characteristics depend on the type. If you are creating a simple project: a blog, an information site, a project business card or personal portfolio, landing page, an online store, then you do not need high performance, any of those listed in this article will do.

If you are going to create a portal or service where you will upload heavy data or complex computational algorithms, then simple virtual hosting may not be enough. In this case, I can advise you to take a VPS or a dedicated server.

Load

Hosting load is expressed in terms of CP. CP is an abstract quantity that is calculated in many ways. In simple terms, it depends on how many users access the resources (data) of the site, and how much these resources consume server power when used.

When the site is young or under development, it will not be possible to estimate this load. In other cases, you go to reports and see what the load is daily on your resource.

Volume

Volume is the size of the storage for site data, like the size of a hard drive on a computer. You can find it out if you already have a website ready for launch.

For example, a landing page weighs on average up to 3 MB. If you are making an information site that will be updated daily with content (articles and photos), then for the next year or two, 1 - 2 GB will definitely be enough.

The problem is that newbies do not know how to optimize data, thereby uploading very heavy files to the site and managing to spend all the disk space that has to be bought in a month.

In 4 years of blogging, I only used 1.5 GB. Come to me on, I will teach you how to properly optimize the content so that the pages load quickly and do not load the hosting.

Platform (CMS)

Another parameter that you need to know is on what engine your site is and whether it is supported by the hosting. If WordPress, Bitrix, Joomla or another popular CMS, then you don't have to worry. All hosters support them.

We estimate our parameters, taking into account plans for the future, and choose the required hosting based on them.

Hosting characteristics

What else to look for when choosing the best hosting provider?

Test period

All normal providers provide a test period from 1 week to several months. This allows us to get acquainted with all the functionality, stability of work and launch the site without investments.

Data center locations

According to the law on personal data (152-FZ), all databases of sites that collect personal data of users of Russia (phone numbers, e-mail, names, surnames, etc.) must be stored on the territory of the Russian Federation. Otherwise, access to your website in Russia may be blocked.

When choosing a hosting, look where its data centers are located.

Interface

An individual parameter that only you can evaluate. How convenient and intuitive is your personal account with all the functions and settings.

Technical support

The speed and quality of the support response is an important factor of choice. When working with hosting, there are often situations when technical support assistance is needed.

Variety and flexibility of tariffs

Considering your goals and plans for the future, see if it will be possible to increase the performance characteristics of your hosting without moving to another.

Don't take free hosting

There are so-called free hosting services, I would even say shareware, because you know where free cheese happens.

Such providers do different things, they can display their ads on your site and thus monetize, take no responsibility for data problems, technical support may respond for a long time or demand many times more for upgrading the tariff if there is a lack of performance.

If you just want to practice making websites, then use it, but I do not recommend it for serious projects.

TOP-7 hosting

Review of the best providers according to reviews from webmasters in Russia and the CIS. They run on Linux and Windows operating systems and have everything you need for the functioning of any site.

Beget

Beget.com is the best hosting in my opinion, most of the sites I have on it. They recently added a flexible rate feature, a very handy thing that makes it easy to change parameters as needed.

For example, if you run out of storage space, you can increase it. You choose only what you need without overpaying.

• Has been working since 2007.
• Price: from 115 rubles per month.
• Test period: 1 month.

Quite convenient and intuitive interface, supports all modern programming languages \u200b\u200band CMS. It is possible to upgrade to a VPS and a dedicated server.

Read a detailed overview and instructions for working with Beget.

REG.RU

Reg.ru is the most popular Russian domain name registrar. Provides hosting services and a bunch of other useful tools.

• Has been working since 2006.
• Data center in Moscow.
• Price: from 84 rubles.
• Test period: 1 month.

Makhost

Mchost.ru is a popular Russian provider. A bit ancient interface of the personal account. As it was 6 years ago, when I kept the sites on it, it has remained.

• Has been working since 2004.
• Data centers in Moscow and Amsterdam.
• Price: from 52 rubles per month.
• Trial period: 10 days.
• Number of sites in the minimum rate: 1.

Timeweb

Timeweb.com is an average hosting with various tariffs in terms of performance and cost.

• Has been working since 2006.
• Data center in St. Petersburg.
• Price: from 99 rubles.
• Test period: 10 days.
• Number of sites in the minimum rate: 1.

Sprinthost

Sprinthost.ru is a good inexpensive shared hosting. A simple and intuitive interface that any beginner will understand.

• Has been working since 2005.
• Data center in St. Petersburg.
• Price: from 98 rubles.
• Test period: 15 days.
• Number of sites in the minimum rate: 2.

Offerhost

Offerhost.ru is a young hosting provider, perhaps with the most favorable conditions for newbies. But if you look at the prospects for the development of your project, then the following tariffs are more expensive than those of competitors.

• Has been working since 2016.
• Data center in Moscow.
• Price: from 49 rubles per month.
• Test period: no.
• Number of sites in the minimum rate: 5.

FastVPS

Fastvps.ru - only powerful VPS and VDS servers from Russia and Europe. This option is for those who no longer have enough regular shared hosting.

• Has been working since 2006.
• Data centers in Russia, Ukraine and Estonia.
• Price: from 320 rubles per month.
• Test period: no.
• Number of sites in the minimum rate: 1.

It remains for you to wish only success and prosperity in creating your Internet project. Subscribe to the blog news and follow the release of new interesting articles for webmasters.

Write in the comments which host you have chosen and why.

In the next part I will show you how to buy hosting using an example.