What is the Best Web Hosting Provider
You're looking for a good web hosting provider because your website is precious to you. It has to be hosted in the best place, right? Discover the answer here!
When it comes to putting your website up on a host, the last thing you want is for it to spend a lot of time off the air because you chose a low quality company. There are several reasons why a particular host will suffer a lot of downtime where another will not. Let's take a look at some of those reasons.
Why Hosts Go Down
Some hosts provide excellent service and up-time, while others do not. Those that are down more often than you'd like them to be suffer problems because:
- They grossly oversell their space and their servers simply can't cope with the weight of sites and the traffic they are generating
- They are using cheap, unreliable, old and outdated or otherwise below par hardware
- Their software is not updated and security is poor allowing their servers to be hacked
- Their telecoms connection speed is not fast enough to cope with the weight of traffic
- The servers are frequently under attack from DDoS and service degrading groups
- One, some or all of the above
In some cases, even the best setups in the world cannot cope with heavy DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks designed to overload servers with requests they simply can't handle that slows the service down so much that to protect itself, the host has no option but to take the server down temporarily while they deal with the problem. This is outside the control of hosts and should not be a deciding factor in any host's quality of service.
However, where a host is using tactics to maximize their profits at the expense of users by overselling, not upgrading equipment or software or trying to get away with the least amount of bandwidth possible to cut their costs, they should be avoided as the inevitable consequence will be poor service to customers.
What is a Good Choice of Host?
A good choice when it comes to hosting your website is one that is recommended by many users because they know first hand how good the service they are getting is. You can't beat customer recommendation and when a host is really good, their customers will say so in many web host reviews (see: sites.google.com/view/web-host-review)!
Similarly, when a host is bad, there will be a lot of noise made in hosting forums like webhostingtalk.com for example. So listening to what customers are saying is the best way of learning which host(s) are likely candidates for the privilege of hosting your precious website!
Another is to read reviews, although most will be biased in favor of a company they are affiliated with and a consequence will earn commission for sending you to them. This is not always a bad thing, as many affiliates promote the company they host their own websites on as a matter of course and to help pay for their own hosting.
What About the Author's Recommendation?
This site in particular is not really biased in favor of one particular webhost. That's because the author has hosted the bulk of his own websites spread over a number of different accounts (shared, reseller and VPS) since 2007 and cannot praise any one over another!
You will also find many website owners similarly praising a variety of different companies for their solid, robust and high quality service as well as their excellent customer support. While others will bemoan the bad service or whatever of other hosts whether deservedly or not.
In the end, the company that you choose will be decided upon thanks to your own researches in that direction. All companies will have their naysayers and detractors, but you will find that those with a big majority of positive reviewers and praisers will be the ones that are held in highest esteem by their users.
Resources: Find more information here on: Distributed Denial of Service Attacks and Customer Account Fraud and here: Monitoring the Macroscopic Effect
of DDoS Flooding Attacks.
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