For this long weekend ONLY, all new signups who purchase any shared or reseller hosting plan (including Plesk plans) can take advantage of the most insane offer ever… 90% OFF FOR LIFE!

Believe me. This is insane promotion for Australian-based web hosting. The discount applies to both Australia and US-based shared hosting and reseller hosting. This means you can get their US-based Start Plan (CPanel, 1GB space, 5GB data/month, 5 add-on domain) for merely AUD$5.50/year, or 46 cents per month.

Use coupon code insane when you order, and the offer expires on Monday (6 Oct). Although I already have way more hosting account than I need, I am seriously tempted (although I have no idea what shall I host next). The reseller plans can get you started reselling hosting space from $2.50/month after the 90% discount, like splitting it up and sell them to your friends for $5/month :)

Thanks Dale for the offering!

For example,

• You are going to build a community website using open source scripts, e.g. a phpBB forums.
• Since you are too cheap to pay for advertising, there will be maybe 10-20 users/day at launch.
• You have no problem using FTP to install the script, and you can use cPanel to set the site up — but that’s about it. No command line stuff.
• $10/month is at most you are willing to pay.

Hmm. Pretty much standard stuff and most hosting companies should be able to handle these requirement. But which one?

Google Is NOT Your Friend

One logical step these days is — ask your friend in Mountain View! However it does not matter whether Google is omniscience, the search result pages can be manipulated by this wacky thing called “Search Engine Optimisation”. Because of the competitive nature in the web hosting space, the results when you search for terms such as “web hosting” are usually bringing out the hosting companies who have spent the most on SEO effort, but not necessarily the ones who excel in performance and reliability.

Web Hosting Review Sites Are Mostly Useless

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of “web hosting review” sites out there, listing out the Top 10 web hosting companies according to their “community reviews”. How genuine are those web hosting review sites? Far from unbiased. Some of them are set up by web hosting companies themselves. Many of them are actually set up by the affiliates, who shift hosting companies from positions to positions on their “top 10 list”, base on their current affiliation payout.

Again, what does it say about the web hosting companies that always get listed as the “top host”? Do they really have a great service? Or maybe they have really paid the affiliates well. Many web hosting companies are willing to pay up to USD$150 per customer, who might only spend USD$120/year on their hosting plans. Sometimes I wonder how much they pay for their servers and support staffs.

Use the Independent Forums Wisely

The best resources I found with researching for a web hosting company are independent web hosting forums that are not affiliated with any hosting company. Some of the best I found are:

• WebHostingTalk.com — probably the web hosting forums on the Internet today. It has a very strict rule on how hosting company representatives should conduct on the forums, and that all positive reviews need to be confirmed by the moderators. The Web Hosting Offers forums constantly have special promotions from various companies — one should never go out to get a US-based hosting plan without checking out the offers forums first.

• Web Hosting Forum at Whirlpool — you’ll know Whirlpool if you have been online for a while in Australia. It has great forums for consumer ISPs in Australia, but it also has a web hosting forum where members can talk about hosting and ask for advice. It might be regarded as the “whingepool” by those in the hosting industry, but from the consumers’ point of view it is a great resource. It also has a very strict rule on advertisement and companies promoting each other’s service. Post a question there if you would like to ask about Australia-based hosting.

• Web Hosting Talk Australia — a so-called equivalent of WHT in Australia, although personally I found they work quite differently. What has been amusing to me is the open bidding in the Web Hosting Requests forums. Just post your requirement there and ask for suggestions, and sooner or later you’ll see hosting companies start offering their services.

WebHostingTalk.com is probably the best forum you can use to do research on a specific hosting company. Use the search function there and read through the threads, then you shall be able to work out whether the said company is on the good or dodgy side. If you are not sure, ask a question and hopefully someone in the know will be able to help.

Google Can Still Be Your Friend, If You Ask the Right Question

One commonly used Google query to research on a hosting company is “<company name> sucks”. You might get interesting articles or blog entries — however those of them will be one sided view (rather than a discussion from two sides on those independent forums) so digest them with a grain of salt.

Communication, Honesty and Community

If you ask me what is the one most important thing to consider about web hosting companies, I’ll say it is “Communication“. Price is important, so are reliability and performance. However I think it is not worthwhile to go along with a hosting company, if they cannot provide speedy communication during disasters.

When my websites stopped working, I need to know what is going on immediately from my hosting providers, even if it is just a simple “something is broken, but we are working on it”. I hate it when the site just automatically cured itself and the host would pretend nothing has happened.

Of course, it also requires the hosting company to be open and honest. If there is something wrong, admit it and tell us what you have done to rectify the issue and to prevent it from happening in the future. In this day and age people demand timely and honest information, and good hosting companies should provide them.

Another sign for a good company is the communities around it. Basically you do not get fanboys to do support for you for free and be apologetic for your company on the public forums, if you have not done something great. It also adds another level of interactivity between the hosting company and its users. Usually I will look for hosting companies that have at least one of

• Customer forums
• Company blog
• Off-site status page/blog
• IRC/group chat

Again, it goes all the way back to “communication”.

So, Which Host?

It still comes back to the question, “why hosting company should I choose“? Depends, because everyone has different needs. I am also a bit reluctant to recommend hosting companies on my bargain blog because I know what suits me might not suit everyone. However, doing research is still the key. Use Internet forums and search engines, ask the right questions, look for vital signs, do a bit of reading and planning — and hopefully you too will find a hosting company that give you fast and reliable service that fit into your budget.

PS. Please try not to suggest hosting companies in comments.

Over the past year and half there has been many domain and hosting deals posted at OzBargain, mostly under the Internet category. Some are well received, but some got heavily criticised and voted negatively. I think “hosting” is probably a controversial topic, as a lot of people actually don’t know what a “bargain” is. Neither do I actually, most of the time, but since I have been running a few websites (include a few webhosting related), I might be a bit more qualified.

So the question is, “I have a few websites that I would love the world to see, what’s the best bang for the bucks out there?” It won’t be a comprehensive guide, but I will try to look at different aspects on finding a bargain for your next website.

Don’t Host It At Home

This is obvious. Or maybe not so obvious. I had my first website 12 years ago, and have been hosting websites on my own “server” since 1999. Except when I say “server” I actually meant my old K6-200 desktop PC running Linux, connected to the Internet via Telstra Direct on a 56k/33.6k PSTN line. Throughout the years I have been upgrading both the hardware and Internet connection — at one stage I was hosting around 30 websites on an old PC on my 512k/512k ADSL line. It was economical (big hard disks, dedicate server performance, and my box was always on anyway) and convenient (very fast uploading 10GB of images — because it was just behind my desk :) However at the end of day it was a very bad idea, and I have been buying web hosting services since 2005.

Why?

There are just too many things that can go wrong, and when it goes wrong, it is usually too much work sorting things out. The hard disks may die, the motherboard may get fried during storms (yes, got that once), your operating system might go FUBAR, your Internet connection might go down due to someone pulled out the wrong cable at your local exchange, you may loose electricity and I believe diesel generator is not something everyone has at home…

I know things can still go wrong if you leave your data with the web hosting companies. At least they (usually) have qualified engineers working around the clock. I hate to look at the fsck screen in the middle of the night because my “server” crashes. Please. Do yourself a favourite — don’t host your websites at home.

Know Your Needs and Budget

This has to be the most difficult but also the most important question to ask someone who is shopping for web hosting packages — what are your needs? There are some “standard metrics” in the web hosting world. For example the storage space in megabytes/gigabytes, monthly data transfer in gigabytes/terabytes (or bandwidth in megabits per second), number of add-on domains, etc. You then need to work out how much space your website will take, how many visitors will you get each month (which correlates to how much data transfer you will need), etc.

Now, determine the “need” is not really a rocket science itself — just take a measurement from your current host for a month. It might be a good idea to work out how much you might need in the next 2-3 months especially if you have a growing website, however I think predicting the next 12 months is probably too excessive. You can always upgrade your hosting plans (and most hosting companies will let you do that) to accomodate the needs. If you are just starting out — unless your website is backed by a brilliant business plan and expects a gazillion of visitors on the launch day — just take a small hosting plan and start monitoring the usage, and hopefully you will be able to work the pattern in a month or two.

As of budget, I think USD$10/month or AUD$15/month makes a good starting point for web hosting packages. I know this is the bargain blog and things are usually cheaper the better. Best if you can get them for free! Again, if you are looking for a reliable host that will still be here in 2 years, I think my figures for a small business hosting package is quite reasonable. Obviously your budget also needs to be adjusted depending on the need — it would be ridiculous to expect USD$10/month can get you hundreds of gigabytes of storage and thousands of gigabytes a month of data transfer.

Except if it is massive overselling. Did I just open another can of worms?

You Cannot Compare Two Hosts with Standard Metrics

We need to get this right — no two hosts are the same, and you cannot simply compare them with those standard metrics (storage, data transfer, etc). We are not doing a price comparison of the same product on staticICE, but we are comparing two services — one might jam 500 customers on an old Celeron server sitting in a cheap data centre in US with single-homed network, providing only email support, and the other might put only 100 customers on the latest quad-core box with tier 1 network and 24/7 phone support.

Therefore it is just wrong to say A is cheapter than B because A’s plans have more storage and data transfer at the same price. There are simply way too many factors to consider.

Australia or the United States?

There are advantages and disadvantages of hosting your sites in Australia or overseas.

In reality, things are more complicated (like most other things in reality).

Low latency — yes you still cannot beat <20ms pings from Sydney ADSL to sites hosted in Sydney. On the other hand, 180ms ping to Los Angeles is really slowing down the web pages, to a point where your customers are all going to flee like scalded dogs, unable to bear the slowness of your website — not! Out of the top 10 websites accessed by the Australians according to Alexa, only 1 is hosted in Australia (NineMSN.com.au in Adelaide). Yes your pages will load slower, but no slower than hosted on a overcrowded server.

Support Australian business — hmm I think it is up to you. It just does not occur in my mind when I buy from Amazon.com and DealExtreme :)

Business hour support is important if both you and your visitors also work in business hours, which is usually not the case when you are operating a website, where visitors from everywhere come to you 24/7. There is still a pattern though — like the majority of OzBargain visitors come between 8am-10pm AEST. Also Australian hosts are less likely to do maintenance work during peak hours in Australia. But if you are just talking about “support” — you really need one that can provide it around the clock.

Now just for the record, OzBargain used to be hosted on a Sydney server, then on a Melbourne server, and now on a California server, thousands of miles across the Pacific. It still loads fast enough to me (if not faster than when it was in Melbourne, which really has performance issue). Except now I am only paying 1/2 the price, 4x the monthly data transfer (which I really need it), plus working with a team who really knows what they are doing.

Australian host or US host? You decide :)

Overselling is the Norm

However one problem with hosting in US is that it can be difficult avoiding those mega oversellers. For USD$10 a month they promise you that you can download the entire Internet — until they cut you off for “over-utilising server resources”, when you are only using 10% of the allocated quota. It is like going to an all you can eat buffet with 10 minute limit. Evil!

Unfortunately this evil seems to be the norms these days. Actually overselling is not all that bad when the economy of scale is your friend (which is why Australian hosting plans are less oversold), but it does put up a warning — you are not likely to use what they have promised in the hosting plan. That’s why “Know your needs” is really important. There is no point shopping for a hosting deal that can give you 10TB/month of data, when your site struggles to send out 10GB/month. You might as well find one that provides only 20GB/month, but also speedy servers + fast support.

That’s It for Today…

Thank you for reading through Part 1. Choosing a web hosting company for your next killer website is not easy — it is a jungle out there so be prepared! In the next part I will be writing about “Where” to look for the ideal hosting company. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, comments are welcomed. However, please do not suggest hosting companies, unless you want to have your comments mysteriously disappeared. I am trying to work out a guide here but not endorsement of any company’s service here — so please do the same as well.

MD WebHosting was having hardware issues with their racks, resulting many hours of downtime for their customers. Depending on how important a website is to you, but for me I will become anxious if OzBargain is offline for 5 minutes, frustrated if down for more than half an hour, and angry if last for more than 2 hours! OzBargain was in fact having availability issue a couple of times before. Half of them were due to my own stupidity, but if your provider is not helpful and communicating during down time, the first thing that comes up in my mind is usually — “Enough!! I want to ditch you guys!! I want my sites to come back as soon as possible!”

Exactly the mentality other hosting companies are looking for.

There were at least 4 different web hosting companies offering “special price” on OzBargain for refugees from MD WebHosting.

• Unlimited-Space.com — 50% off first invoice
• Jumba.com.au — 50% off first invoice
• GDWebHosting.com.au — 50% off first invoice
• HightekHosting.com.au — 60% off first invoice

All are Australian companies offering Australian server space. Not sure whether you need to prove whether you are indeed a MD Web Hosting company.

On an unrelated note, you have probably find the theme of this blog is now in sync with OzBargain. Finally my last year’s new year resolution has been completed. I will also use this place to test out some new theme ideas before I push them out to the main OzBargain site.

• Tuesday: 50% Off Hosting for NEW Customers!
• Wednesday: $26.95 .au Domains!!
• Thursday: 10% Off Day
• Friday: Pink Day!

Do check out the fourm for details. Also a word from Joseph that the 50% off hosting for new customers has been extended to today! That’s an amazing 50% off from already incredibly cheap price, hosted on either their Canberra, Melbourne, or US Dallas servers.

For today .au domain is also selling at $26.95 — even cheaper than IntaServe‘s deal! Too bad that I’ve just bought a .com.au domain from IntaServe last week :(

Sorry that there’s only 3 more hours to go before this deal finishes. Should have visited their forums more often :)

To celebrate nine years in the hosting biz, we’re having an absolutely CRAZY one-day-only sale! TODAY! This offer is good for accounts that sign up on October 3rd, 2006 before 11:59 PM PDT only! Don’t miss the boat!

Sign up for any of our hosting plans TODAY using either the one or two-year prepay option and use the promo code “9999“. You’ll get an INSTANT discount of $99.99 off your bill!

What’s more is that they have increased their storage 10 fold, and doubled monthly data transfer, i.e. “you’ll never use all that space and bandwidth”. It would be once off so better be hurry if you are looking for cheap shared web hosting.

Too bad I am already with DreamHost (for the past 12 months).

VPS-JUL06

VPSLink, a virtual private server hosting company based in Seattle and part of Spry, has been running 50% off VPS sale if you pre-paid for more than 6 month. They use OpenVZ technology (which is an open source version of Virtuozzo). I have a server running there for the last two weeks (using the 50% discount), and it has been rock solid, so I can (sort of) recommend them.

The 50% discount applies not only for the period that you have prepaid for, but for the entire lifetime of your VPS with them. Quote from their website:

VPSLink will offer 50% discounts on all 6 month and longer subscribtions. This discount will be valid for as long as your account remains in good standing. Imagine — a year of VPS hosting for under $50!

However this 50% off discount won’t last long. I was going to write a review, but it appears that they will withdrawal this promotion after 26 June 2006. It would be difficult to get this unbeatable price of VPS hosting. Check this out:

The price up there is the monthly price if you prepaid 6 month. They are reasonably fast for Australians. VPS sets up in minutes after signing up. Have a good forum community. The VPS is unmanaged so it is probably only suitable if know what you are doing.