What host do you use?

deronsizemore · 2006-08-27 22:28:12

Right now I’m on a basic reseller account with ResellerZoom (a part of HostingZoom) but want to move into a shared hosting for now. I originally got on the reseller account because I was planning on developing sites for people/businesses/etc and just hosting them on my reseller account. Well I’ve changed that idea and now I’m more or less developing sites for myself. Anyway, what host do you use? I’m not good with knowing how much space/bandwidth would be “enough” so to speak. Then I’m a little afraid of the hosts that offer a lot for cheap even though I’ve read good reviews. What I’m looking at right now are these hosts:

1. <a href=“http://www.textdrive.com”>TextDrive</a>

2. <a href=“http://www.hostingzoom.com”>HostingZoom</a>

3. <a href=“http://www.hostgator.com”>HostGator</a>

I know TextDrive is very good and reliable but I’m not sure about the space/bandwidth? I mean how big of a site could you run with their basic shared plan?

On the surface, I’m wanting to go with HostingZoom’s shared plan as they give you 5Gb of disk space and 100Gb of bandwidth which is great for 4.95 a month and is a lot more space/bandwidth than even TextDrive’s Shared 3 plan.

Then there is HostGator which I was looking at for the 9.95 plan and it’s similar to HostingZooms plan, but not quite as much bandwidth.

I just have no concept of how much traffic it would take to use up 100GB of bandwidth? I mean is that more than enough to occupy a HUGE site? The only thing I’m worried about with them is if my site(s) do start getting a lot of traffic and I go over the limits for the basic shared plan at HostingZoom they really have no inbetween for that plan and their semi dedicated plan. Its 5 bucks a month and then it jumps up to 65 a month for semi dedicated. Seems they might have some plan inbetween the two there.

Anyway, any help you can provide me would be great! Maybe textDrive’s space/bandwidth would be way more than enough for a large site (which my site isn’t, just hypothetically speaking here for future).

Thanks

Last edited by deronsizemore (2006-08-27 22:29:21)

Sencer · 2006-08-27 23:27:06

Unless large images or downloads are the main content of your site, neither space, nor bandwidth will likely become the limiting factor for your site – instead it will be cpu resources, number of concurrent connections etc. I’ve had forum (>1,5Million Pageviews a month) hosted on a shared host, and it draw a total of < 500 MB of space (with ~200.000 posts) and < 30GB Traffic. We started getting problems with the load we were putting on the database. So again: Before hitting any space or traffic restrictions, you’ll likely run up against other limits (exception being: the main content is large images, downloads, podcasts etc.).

You should look for other things when choosing a host. Like reliability, availability of support, flexibility, honesty, offered features, etc. etc. depending on your needs.

Last edited by Sencer (2006-08-27 23:28:20)

ruud · 2006-08-27 23:31:03

This all depends on how much graphics you put on your website of course, I do know the stats of a certain TXP driven website that got around 350000 pageviews in July, which cost around 6GB in bandwidth. And another website that gets only 5000 pageviews a month, but takes 300MB of bandwidth for that. The first example has around 100kB of images on the front page, far less on the other pages (plus browsers tend to cache the images rather well) while the second one goes overboard with screenshots that aim to be educational and around 300kB per page, different images for each page.

Once you offer any kind of multimedia (mp3, video, big photos), bandwidth tends to go through the roof, but plain webdesign graphics and textual content don’t consume all that much.

Neko · 2006-08-28 00:34:38

My most trafficked site makes 350,000~400,000 pageviews a month, has 1,000+ images, a few .mov, almost 400 articles and its monthly bandwidth consuption is around 45~50 GB.

As Sencer said, space and bandwidth aren’t that important, you should look for reliability, customer support and support of the technologies you’re working on. In my experience Textdrive and Dreamhost excel in both of these fields. If you decide to go with DH or TXD remember to sign up by following the links in this page so you’ll support the TXP development.

If you’re worried about reaching the cap of your plan limits, well it doesn’t happen overnight. Depending on your efforts and expecially on your contents it could take years to gather a good amount of readers that will suck up all of your allowed resources. If you’re starting now, you shouldn’t worry about that.

Last edited by Neko (2006-08-28 09:02:05)

deronsizemore · 2006-08-28 00:58:49

Neko:

Dang! So you’re not even using a GB of bandwith for 350,000 pageviews a month? HostGator says that 100,000 hits normally equal around 1GB of bandwith…or are hits and pageviews not the same?

jm · 2006-08-28 02:24:47

I use bdarby hosting, which works with TXP “out of the box”—no tweaks needed for clean urls, file uploads, images (good-color-thumbnail generation). Some specs:

PHP 4.4.x
MySQL 4.1.x
Apache 1.3.x
cPanel (can’t remember the version)

It’s also affordable – I’m on the cheap, 2.95/mo plan, and haven’t come close to using a fraction of my bandwidth and space. Brian, the owner, responds to any support questions immediately too.

Walker · 2006-08-28 02:42:16

Hits and pageviews are not the same.

A pageview generates more than 1 hit on most sites.

Last edited by Walker (2006-08-28 02:42:41)

Neko · 2006-08-28 09:03:08

deronsizemore wrote:

Dang! So you’re not even using a GB of bandwith for 350,000 pageviews a month?

Dang I’m smart: Sorry I meant gigabytes, not megabytes. :(

Just corrected now.

Last edited by Neko (2006-08-28 09:05:18)

Neko · 2006-08-28 10:32:56

And here’s and explanation of hits and pageviews.

Last edited by Neko (2006-08-28 10:33:15)

colak · 2006-08-28 11:23:51

If you are looking for bandwidth try www.powweb.com who offer a 400GB/month at $7.77/month. Yet again reliability, support and community is more important so do think again about textdrive which is where my sites are hosted

Last edited by colak (2006-08-28 11:24:40)

deronsizemore · 2006-08-28 14:34:27

Thanks everyone!

Neko: Thanks for the link. Helps me a lot!

net-carver · 2006-08-28 14:40:02

I’m now using Dreamhost, having moved over from being hosted by a reseller. It has been a very beneficial move for me.

Apart from the quotas and resource limitations mentioned above I can tell you that DH have proven to be very, very responsive to my support issues and have not yet failed to get things sorted out for me. TXP installations just work. There is a good admin panel. However, DH seems to be having a patchy time with their setup at the moment. You can read a little bit about it here.

One thing that really bugged me with my previous provider was thay they were not a registrar and consequently I had some trouble when I wanted to transfer domains out from them. Domain ops seem to be handled very efficiently by DH — but I haven’t tried a transfer out yet.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2006-08-27 22:28:12

What host do you use?

#2 2006-08-27 23:27:06

Re: What host do you use?

#3 2006-08-27 23:31:03

Re: What host do you use?

#4 2006-08-28 00:34:38

Re: What host do you use?

#5 2006-08-28 00:58:49

Re: What host do you use?

#6 2006-08-28 02:24:47

Re: What host do you use?

#7 2006-08-28 02:42:16

Re: What host do you use?

#8 2006-08-28 09:03:08

Re: What host do you use?

#9 2006-08-28 10:32:56

Re: What host do you use?

#10 2006-08-28 11:23:51

Re: What host do you use?

#11 2006-08-28 14:34:27

Re: What host do you use?

#12 2006-08-28 14:40:02

Re: What host do you use?

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