Web Hosting is More Than Just Computers

Cheap Host

Cheap host web hosting is now an option if you have a website, blog, forum or your own social network.  Whether for business, hobby, passion or non-profit – your credibility is on the line.  When your site is down, you will lose money, customers, respect, business and your message.  A good web host will prevent many, if not all of these headaches.

Why should you listen to me?

I am front line support for 3 large data centers.  I have been in computer support since 1981.  Starting as a Field Engineer (mostly hardware support) I have had the following positions – field engineer, technical analyst, LAN Administrator (Novell, Microsoft NT and UNIX, Technical support for a world wide help desk, Telephone ACD administrator AT&T and Fujitsu phone switches, and presently Analyst for 3 data centers supporting 15 IBM mainframes,  700 large UNIX systems,  11,600 Intel servers and blade servers running Windows 2003 and Linux.

The bottom line for a good web host – whether a cheap host or expensive one is “uptime“.  Unless your site is up, you have nothing.  The best web host will have the following:

• Secure Data Center facility

• Quality servers with redundant power supplies

• Redundant Power feeds to the datacenter

• Redundant diesel generators

• Redundant cooling units (CRAC)

• Redundant UPS – (Uninterruptible Power Source – battery)

• Redundant Network connections

Do you see the key to quality web hosting above?  Redundancy, if a device fails (and it will) you have a backup device to take the load until the broken device can be repaired or replaced – ZERO DOWNTIME!

I also run several websites and blogs.  I currently use 3 different webhosting companies – I have used probably 10 different hosting companies in the past, so I am speaking from experience.  For what I am doing, it can all be handled under one web hosting account and that is what I am moving towards.  I am migrating from 2 of my other expensive hosting accounts to my cheap host,  Host Gator and that will be my one web hosting company from then on.

Host Gator is not my most expensive web hosting but it is my best performing and most reliable.  Some of my other website hosting has been unreliable, the most expensive one lost 4 years of my emails (used for taxes and other legal purposes – NOT GOOD).  I have applications monitoring my websites and blogs and in 8 months, I have not had 1 second of downtime with my 4 sites on Host Gator.  I can not say that about my other hosting accounts (one was so bad I moved my blog off after 1 month – 4 outages – problem is I paid for a year upfront – lesson learned).

Host Gator has several plans:

All plans include unlimited email accounts, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth – all important.  I recommend the Linux web hosting over the Windows web hosting for most people – the ones that want or need Windows hosting will know.  Most of the training materials out there is for cpanel control (Linux).

Hatchling – $4.95/mo – All the above – 1 domain limit

Baby – $7.95/mo above + unlimited domains/sites

Business – $12.95/mo – Above + dedicated IP, private SSL & 800 telephone number.  You can run a sizable business under this plan.

Reseller – $24.95/mo – All of the above and you can resell hosting or sell websites

Dedicated – $174.00/mo – Your own server, not shared

You may be unfamiliar with some of the above terminology, don’t sweat it.  Just know you want 99.9% guaranteed uptime, unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth(traffic/visitors).

I personally am running on the baby hosting package.  My websites and blogs have fast response times, so far 100% up-time.  I will probably go to the Business package in the next year to get an 800 number of my own and private SSL certificate (security – allows you to sell off your site securely) and dedicated IP address.

Whether you consider this a recommendation or a web hosting review, This is many years of experience from both sides of web hosting – as customer and as web hosting support and I can vouch for this quality cheap host.

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