Finding a decent host is the hardest thing about setting up a site that should be able to handle a reasonable amount of traffic. Period.

If you’re setting up a blog or a family album, hosting can be done with a shared host. There are plenty of good ones out there, even though they too can be hard to find sometimes given that the industry is totally flooded with less than serious companies.

A tip for finding a good shared host is to look at what Wordpress.org is recommending. Sure, they are probably affiliated to all of the ones in the list and will make an extra buck from referrals, but Wordpress and Automattic is a good product and company, so why not support them?

It’s when you have a need to move beyond shared hosting the real challenge starts.

Finding a good host for Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or even dedicated is tough. There are so many offerings out there, and so many forums with “experts” telling you how great their offering is.

This brief document is perhaps not suitable to call “a guide to hosting”, but it’s at least my tale of how I finally found the host that works for me, and what pitfalls to avoid in searching for the perfect host.

What to look for in a host

First of all, it’s not easy finding credible information about a specific host since there’s virtually a million different hosting companies out there and everyone claims to be the best and the cheapest with the best support and uptime.

The core issue is always how is this hosting company making its money?

I know it sounds like a pain, but really it’s the only way to be able to sort out the really serious players out there from the ones trying to sell you hot air.

You need to use your own good judgment and common sense when looking at offers from hosting companies. A hosting company that can offer you the same spec as other hosting companies can, at 30-50% lower price has a business model promoting volume sales.

Volume sales in hosting is a bad thing. Beware of it.

The tell tale sign of a volume selling hosting company is its low price. It can only mean one of two things: either they are selling you a sub standard service, or they are overselling the services they have. Either way you end up in trouble.

One of the key parameters in hosting is bandwidth. It’s a key parameter because it is what costs the most for any hosting company today. Premiere bandwidth is costly to come by, so any host that offers you a truck load of bandwidth at no extra cost is either using really low-grade bandwidth or  (again) overselling, counting on the fact that no one uses up their allotted bandwidth anyways.

Other key parameters to look for is computing power (not memory and disk space, that’s generally really cheap, so those parameters are nearly always equally impressive no matter the host) but CPU utilization makes a machine use more electricity which in turn means more money out for the hosting company.

The final key parameter to check and re-check is how they act and interact with their existing customers. Not potential customers, but customers. This is a tough one. The classic is to google for warnings about a given company name and such, but you can also check how easy it is to find a phone number to the company and get a hold of a person over the phone. If you can only find a green sign saying “we’re online now for chat” then you know it’s not someone you want to do business with. Business is done in daylight by real people, not in a virtual company somewhere in never never land with sales reps shooting off prepared answers designed to give you the answers you want to hear.

Common Sense Wins Again

Using your common sense will get you far in finding a VPS or dedicated host.

• If the price is so low you cannot understand how they make their money, avoid them.
• If you find 10 sales reps in the general forums out there on hosting, it’s a warning sign their offering may not be so good. I’d rather see 10 technicians on staff full time than 10 sales reps in the forums arguing their cause
• If the promise of the costly parts of hosting – bandwidth and computing power – seems too good to be true, it is.
• The measure of a good host is not how fast their support answers mail, it’s how often you need to contact the support.

I’m hosting most of my sites on VPS, and some on shared hosting accounts. My premiere site – PurposeGames.com – is hosted with ServInt. Having gone through five different hosts, and not being satisfied with any of them (some of them with really high brand recognition) I finally found ServInt.

They work fine for me and let me be clear: I would not endorse their product if I didn’t have a good record with them. The hosting business is tough and full of companies and people who don’t know what they are doing. When I found a company who did, I’m endorsing them. By doing so I’m able to keep PurposeGames.com running at a less cost than would otherwise be possible and that hopefully helps the site as well.

Whatever host you finally choose, make sure they are available, that you have talked to them and know how to reach them, and that you understand how they do business. If you can’t understand how the company does business, it’s very likely they’re in trouble already or will be if they don’t oversell to get what they lack in margin from volume instead. That’s not a good model for hosting.

Sincerely,
David Andersson