Hands-on Web Hosting Blog

I received a phone call today from a potential client who asked the ultimate question – “What’s the BEST web hosting package?“.  He didn’t ask which one was right for him, he just wanted the best and for me to not beat around the bush giving him examples of what is better under what circumstances.  The fact of the matter however is that there is no BEST web hosting package, heck, there’s not even a BEST Web Host out there, it’s all relative.  The correct question would have been – “What’s the best web hosting package for me?”

What’s the best car?  What’s the best shoes?  What’s the best piece of meat?  It’s all relative as to what it is that you want to do with it.  What’s good for Bob may not be good for Joe, and just because both of those guys like something, it doesn’t mean that Mary is going to like it!  So let’s have a look at what makes up the best web hosting package for the various people.

If you’re running an online store, you will want to not only choose a host who knows how to secure a server for online transactions, but also one that is reliable, and preferably one that knows about the software that you plan to run.  X-Cart and Magento are two of the popular software stores that we get requests on, and each has their own quirks.  X-Cart is a memory hog, so if you don’t have a server optimized for it, you’ll find the store running slow, and sometimes failing.  Magento on the other hand requires certain modules to be installed on a server in order to operate correctly.  MOST hosts do not have those modules installed, so you’ll want to be with someone who knows about the product.   Can the software work on a small hosting package?  In most cases, yes.  But if you decide to put 100+ products online, you’ll probably want to have a server that can keep up with those demands, and more often than not a $5.00/month package can’t keep up.

If you’re running an online store, get a hosting package that is geared for eCommerce hosting.  Also, see if you can get a host that monitors their servers and doesn’t overload their servers with clients.  Remember, the more clients on a machine, the less resources you have for your site.  Here at Hands-on, we generally have no more than about 20 eCommerce packages on a single machine, whereas other hosts may put up to 1000 customers, and then shut you off because you used too much CPU or too much memory.

Free hosting generally isn’t good for most people, but there are some that it can work for.  Small organizations on a budget, even some church websites will run just fine on a small package.  Be aware of advertising – the last thing you want is your organization devoted to children being sponsored/advertised with Adult XXX pictures and sites.

The small UltraLite hosting package that we offer is usually a good fit for just about everyone from a blog to a picture site and even some online stores.  The budget and standard packages are generally the same package, but with more space and bandwidth.

Mini eCommerce hosting is a great step into the online commerce world in that it allows you to have an SSL Certificate installed on your site (needed for encryption of sensitive information – passwords, credit card information etc).  The eCommerce package is the final step prior to having your own server.

VPS or Virtual Private Servers are your next step up from the eCommerce package and the step before getting your own machine.  You can do pretty much everything that a larger dedicated computer can do.  Customize modules, control the environment and even do reselling of hosting if you wanted to.  Once you outgrow this package, the Dedicated Servers are your next step.

Dedicated Servers take on a whole new set of problems and solutions in that you can run multiple machines so that you never have a site offline.  You can position servers at various parts of the country or the world so that your users get the information as fast as possible.  Multiple machines also means faster processing of information.

So what’s the right hosting package for you?  My personal recommendation is to always start small and build your way up to the larger products.  There’s no point in spending $200/month on a dedicated server when $36.95/month can accomplish the same tasks!  The more traffic you get, and the busier your site becomes, then the faster the machine you need, and you’ll need to move from a low end dedicated server to a high end server.

If you need help making a decision on what direction to go, feel free to contact any of our sales agents and they’ll help you evaluate your needs and system requirements and help make a decision for you.  Any hosting company that says “this is the best package” is likely not taking YOUR needs into consideration.

More information on Hands-on Web Hosting can be found at http://www.handsonwebhosting.com

r1soft Continuous Data Backup

You’ve heard it for years – “make a backup”, and web hosts remind you on a somewhat regular basis saying “did you make a backup” or “remember to make a backup”, and then your website gets defaced or your sever crashes, and the first thing you do is contact the web hosting company asking “where is my backup?!”  Are you tired of your web host saying that you should have made one and that you’re now out of luck?

Enter R1Soft Backup Solutions.  This is the software that Hands-on Web Hosting uses to make backups of all our web hosting accounts.  The software integrates easily with cPanel, the control panel that we use here for web hosting.  There’s a simple button within the control panel that will take you to the backup system and let you choose the date and time from the backups that you want to restore.  You can restore a single file, a directory or the entire site if you wanted.  Currently automatic restoration of MySQL Databases is not possible, however a simple ticket to the system admins and they can restore a table or the entire database with a few clicks of the mouse.

Hands-on Web Hosting not only employs this type of backup system for our own customers, but we also have dedicated servers for other hosting companies in which they backup their sites and/or servers.  If you own a dedicated server and you want it backed up, you can do this for as little as $10/month!  You can read more about the backup system and the implementations at the following location: http://www.handsonwebhosting.com/services/backups/  There’s also an order link on there if you want to order it and test it out.

If you have the need to backup more than just a few sites and need a few hundred gigs of data for storage, we can configure a dedicated server for you with the backup software.  You can backup as many servers as you want for the single price, you’d only be restricted on the size of the hard drives that you have installed.  We run multiple backup systems in multiple data centers so that even if a server failed due to a catastrophic event in one city, the data is still backed up in another city and we can still access it.

If your host is not using r1Soft to backup their servers, tell them they need it, or switch your hosting to Hands-on Web Hosting as we actually care about our users and their data!  Hands-on Web Hosting makes HOURLY BACKUPS of all shared hosting accounts!