In the last article I went into some detail about shared hosting. Today we’re going to talk about the other types of hosting that are most applicable to bloggers, starting from the smaller and going all the way to having your own dedicated server and so on.

Just to do a quick recap, shared hosting is where many people get together to share a webserver. Everyone is guaranteed a certain amount of space and bandwidth, but that’s it. However what’s not mentioned is that all other resources are shared. So for example, if someone is abusing their account and overloading the other computer resources (processing power, etc.), then you’ll probably feel the effects. Now with cheap hosts, since they’re generally already overloading the servers, this will happen fairly often, which is why I recommend going with a more reputable host and paying a little more.

VPS (Virtual Private Server)

What do you think the next level up from shared hosting is? Pretty much the exact same system except that you’re now also guaranteed a minimum level of computer resources. So for example, you’re guaranteed at least X amount of memory, X amount of processor performance, etc. This is great in that you now know the minimum performance you’ll get!

However there’s an additional bonus with this. Since we all know that most people don’t use their full resources, the people who designed this technology decided to let unused computer resources be shared with other accounts on the same computer. In un-technical terms, if for example you’re allocated 500Mb or memory and you only use 100Mb of memory, the system will give away your unused 400Mb of memory to whoever wants it. If all of a sudden you need that memory back, it gives it right back to you! It only shares what you don’t need, nothing more.

Why is this great? It doesn’t really help you if your the person using less than your minimum guaranteed resources, actually you wouldn’t notice anything at all! But if for some reason you use more, maybe you get a spike in traffic at 3pm every day, or you’re growing faster than your resources, you can now temporarily have access to other people’s unused resources. So although you may only be guaranteed 500Mb of memory, you might end up using 1Gb of memory (1GB = 1000MB) or more. The disadvantage is that it’s not guaranteed, it can be taken away from you at any moment. So all of a sudden your site might be performing well then it gets really slow because you had to give back the extra resources that weren’t really yours, and back and forth. It also almost acts like a buffer to give you some warning for when it’s time to move up your account, to make sure that you get those resources consistently!

This type of hosting also gives you a virtual root access. It acts as though it’s your own computer. You get what’s called root access. You can modify the webserver settings for your own little VPS (the keyword being “virtual” private server). Therefore you can host multiple domains with one VPS account, you can configure the server to your liking, etc. This is great if you need some more advanced features.

Of course, as you can expect, VPS hosting is more expensive than Shared Hosting. Firstly, the hosting company needs to purchase software to manage the VPS accounts (so that the resources are correctly guaranteed). They also now need to guarantee the computer resources, and have some additional resources to run the software to manage the VPS’s. Generally, expect to start paying around $50/month for a decent VPS. I’ve seen it as low as $20/month, but I can tell you from people I know who’ve used these cheaper accounts, you get what you pay for.

Now VPS accounts can quickly climb in price. They can get into hundreds a month. It’s possible to get some very large VPS accounts that are more powerful that dedicated servers (which we’ll talk about next)! The good news with VPS is that you can start with a smaller package and work your way up. Generally all you need to do to move to a higher plan is tell your host. They just change your account settings to increase the minimum guaranteed computer resources and you’re ready to go.

Dedicated Server

This is the next level of hosting, and most bloggers never get here. However I think it’s worth mentioning because it offers some great advantages. A dedicated server means your the sole account on the whole computer. You get the full resources! But what’s more than that, you can configure it however you want! You basically get a full computer server to do with as you want.
Very powerful! You no longer have to worry about anything but your own mistakes!

Dedicated servers come in two flavors, managed and non-managed. Managed means that your host will apply the latest patches for you, check your server here and there for certain things, etc. The one thing to remember about managed solutions is that they’re not all created equal, there are some large differences in what they offer. It’s important to look at what you get when you choose a managed solution, as well when comparing the prices of different managed solutions.

An un-managed solution means that you’re responsible for everything on the server, including installing the patches, upgrading the operating system, etc. Basically you have to take care of everything. Of course this type of dedicated server solution is generally cheaper as you’re paying for resources and bandwidth.

I won’t get into any more details of dedicated servers, but needless to say, its a nice growth path for when you outgrow VPS hosting.

In terms of cost, dedicated servers will be more expensive than VPS as you get the full machine. Managed is more expensive than non-managed. After that, other issues play different roles. The type of machine you get makes a very significant different. What type of processor, how many. How much memory? How much disk space? And so on. These greatly affect the price, probably more than anything. Then it comes down to the hosting company. What type of service do they offer. What type of internet connections do they have (redundant, etc.). What about backup generators, etc.

All in all, expect to pay at least $100/month for a dedicated server, but closer to $200+/month for a decent system. For a higher end system, you can easily go to $500-1000/month and more!

And Beyond

Although I won’t really talk about it, I’ll just quickly give you a teaser of what’s next. The next level is renting a “rack”. This is basically space in a Data Center. In plain english, you can rent a physical rack to stack up computer servers in a building that’s made just for this (for example it has multiple connections to the internet backbone, etc.). You bring in your own computers and do what you want.

As well, you can also rent multiple dedicated servers. That’s another option. Have them all acting as one through something called clustering. You can also separate your dedicated servers into a database servers and web servers, etc. You can do a lot with multiple dedicated servers!

After that, well you get into another level where only corporations go!

So now that we know about hosting, what’s next? Well, we need a website. How do we start blogging? That’s the next topic in this series.

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Lots! However what I’ll try to do is focus mainly on the types of hosting a blogger is most likely to encounter. This will greatly limit the scope, as well as keep it interesting. I can tell you for example that some companies I’ve personally worked with (more than one) have many computers acting as one, each with multiple processors and Gigs of Ram. However I doubt many, if any, blogger needs this kind of horsepower. So let’s looks at the realistic options for blogging from the smallest to probably the reasonably largest most bloggers will get to. And if you need hosting beyond the largest, you’re knowledge is probably beyond the scope of what I’m going to offer for this series. So without further ado…

Shared Hosting

This is typically the type of hosting most people start with. Why? Because it’s by far the cheapest! Hands down, you can’t beat the price. Of course with the lower price comes some issues, especially if your hosting company is not as ethical as it should be. Because this is going to be the most common type of hosting for beginner bloggers, I’ll take talk about this type of hosting more than the others (this entire post will just be about shared hosting). However do note that the last type of hosting I’ll mention in the next article in this series, dedicated hosting, is generally more involved than shared hosting. I’m just not going to cover it in as much detail because most starting bloggers never make it to that point. Unfortunately much like exercising, most bloggers start with great intentions but usually stop within a short amount of time..

Getting back to shared hosting, what is shared hosting? Shared hosting is where many people share the same computer to host many domains. This can be as little as just two domains, but often it ends up being many domains on the same computer. Each person’s domain is seperated by their accounts, although they are still hosted from the same computer. There are many pros and cons to this setup, of which the biggest pro is pricing. Let’s say you can get a dedicated service (you’re very own computer) for $200/month, which is relatively normal for an intermediate level dedicated server, then could you not divide that server up to host many smaller domains that have smaller resource needs and charge them individually? So let’s say we charge $10/month, then if we had 20 people we’d be breaking even (not counting time and effort), assuming those 20 people used less combined resources than the dedicated server has.

The reality is that most shared hosting accounts use very little resources, almost negliable. Some do use a lot, but the majority use very little. Which is why shared hosting can be done so cheaply. I’ve seen it go as low as $3/month per domain! That’s cheap! For less than the price of one Starbucks coffee per month, you can host your very own domain. That’s great!

However for $3/month, you can’t expect to get great service. Think about it a little. Firstly, that means they’re charge you $36/year for hosting. Now even though they can automate much of the sign up process, let’s look at the support costs. A qualified person will cost at least $30/hour for technical support. And remembering that most people who use shared hosting are new to hosting, they’ll probably have some questions. Yes you can template a lot of the questions, but to a point.

Therefore to compensate what many of the less ethical hosting companies do is overload their servers. If you remember as I mentioned a few minutes ago, the majority of the people who purchase shared hosting rarely even use a small portion of their resources, so why not use this into the equation. So what they’ll do is oversell, much like airlines oversell their tickets to compensate for people who miss their flights. However they’ll greatly oversell it. For example, they’ll have a dedicated server that can handle up to 100Gb a month, but what they’ll do is sell 1000Gb of bandwidth a month, knowing that most people will barely use 1% of their resources. That’s server overloading.
And unlike an airline, when a plane is full, it’s full. With unethical shared hosting, they’ll just keep stuffing people on until it literally bursts. With these types of companies you’ll find that if you contact technical support it will take a long time to get a response, if there is an issue with your hosting, it will take forever to get it fixed, as well, the service will be bumpy (the money just isn’t there).

What does it mean the service will get bumpy? Well, like the example above, when they get close to overloading a server, that is as it’s running close to its real full capacity (it’s actually using 100Gb of the 1000Gb sold), it will start to get slower responding to requests for the webpages on your website. Eventually it will get so slow that it will time-out, which means the web browser will just assume the web server is down rather than wait forever. At this point these hosts will generally try to re-balance themselves.

Now that I’ve talked about the cons, please don’t let me disuade you from shared hosting. If done right, it can be an amazing resource for you when you’re starting! I started this way myself. It’s just that you need to be careful like anything else. The cheapest is not always the best, especially for shared hosting. Reputation is worth a lot! Look for it. One of the best forums I’ve seen to read about other people’s experience on almost every hosting company I’ve ever been interested in is WebHostingTalk.com. Great site! It’s worth the time.
Shared hosting done right is marvellous if you find it. It can drastically bring down your hosting costs, especially if you’re starting. No one wants to pay $200/month for a dedicated box when they can pay $10/month for shared hosting that will be more than enough to fulfill their hosting needs!

Honestly, expect to pay at least $100/year for hosting. I’ve tried many services when I first started, and I know many people who’ve done tried others as well. We’ve all found that this is where the service gets reliable and they don’t overload their servers.

Also, as a disclaimer, let me say that I personally offer shared hosting for $100/year for the first domain and $50/year for each additional domain (once you’re in the system I can amortize your setup, support, etc. costs from the first year and just charge resource costs). This is also why I’m saying you should be able to get reliable shared hosting at this price range. I’ve managed to offer it, and it makes economical sense from a business perspective without overloading the servers. I refuse to overload my servers, I’d rather have to charge more and have less customers (all of which are happy) than charge less and have unhappy customers! If I offered the price any lower, I don’t know that I could do it without sacrificing something else… If you’re interested in getting hosting from me, you can contact me directly at steph@followsteph.com. So far the hosting I’ve offered has been solely through word of mouth. I’ve been happy with the results!

Getting back to the article, now one thing to remember is that shared hosting doesn’t offer unlimited resources (avoid those that do, it’s not economically possible). Eventually you will outgrow shared hosting if you become successful. For example, with the hosting I offer you get 200Mb of disk space and 10Gb of bandwidth. For most people, that should last them for quite a while. However if you get very successful, this will eventually become too small for you (I hope you achieve this, it’s great to have to pay more for hosting as it shows you’ve grown!). This is where you’ll need to start looking at other hosting solutions, which will be the discussion of the next article in this series.

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Today I just came accross a post by Darren Rowse where I just found out that WordPress.com is now offering free “VIP” hosting which is not available to the public, only high profile bloggers with lots of traffic. The hosting package is pretty nice, with some features including version control, SSL, etc. What really struck me though was the price, $500 setup fee and a $250/month hosting charge. I find this extremely steep, and Darren is already suggesting that it’s being criticized by the blogging community. I don’t doubt it!

For example in comparison, the hosting package that I’m offering through my company is similar, except that you don’t get version control, and of course the bandwidth and server load is not balanced (which I have some serious doubts about how they really do this myself), but I do install WordPress, I setup Askimet for you, I setup your domain, I’ll install one theme and a plugin or two (within reasonable limits). I also don’t force you to put a “Powered by…” link on every page on your website, or force you to put statistic hooks so that I can know your metrics.

I also only charge a $20 setup fee, and $100/year for hosting (that includes 200mb of disk space and 10Gb of bandwidth). After that, the second domain is only $50/year. I charge a little more than the really cheap hosting services for the same bandwidth, but that’s because I provide a higher quality and more reliable service. I also refuse to overload the bandwidth on the server! That’s something I personally really hated when I first started out, so I refuse to do that. I’ll charge a little more instead since it’s worth it, trust me I know from experience! Downtime, or an unresponsive server, is money lost. By the way, if you’re interested in getting a hosting package from me, you can contact me directly at: steph@followsteph.com

Anyways, it really struck me as an expensive hosting solution. For that price, I’d be ahead just getting my own managed dedicated server. It would cheaper and I’d have more power and options!

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