When a website needs to be available 24×7 and performance must be top-notch, shared hosting accounts often fall short when it comes to performance, flexibility and responsiveness.

That’s mainly due to the inherent consequence of sharing a server’s finite resources (memory, CPU, disk space, database connections, etc.) without a strict service-level agreement among users and the operational model of shared accounts where if one account uses too many resources (it makes too many database calls, for instance), it will affect the rest of the users on the server.

That’s where private hosting comes into play. Contrary to a shared service, a private hosting service offers a guaranteed level of performance, along with the tools to have complete control over all the aspects of everything that goes on inside the server. In fact, you get to set up your own software, in any way you need, and manage it however you see fit. Within private hosting services, there are three main categories:

Virtual Private Servers, commonly known as VPS, are not really servers standing on their own machine. Instead, they are created and managed by virtualization software that splits a single physical server to establish multiple virtual servers inside it, each operating its own operating system and applications and with its own set of pre-allocated set of resources, such as memory size, CPU time, disk space and the like. This process allows a number of isolated environments to work as if they were operating on an individual machine, completely unaffected by the other VPSs in the machine. A VPS provides a much more guaranteed resource set, better performance and security than a shared hosting account, with much greater flexibility, all that with a price tag that makes it a very balanced platform between power, flexibility, features and cost.

Dedicated Servers. They are the flip-side of shared hosting in pretty much every respect. To start with, every piece of hardware in the server is devoted to your account. In consequence, no resources are shared with other users and there are no other websites or applications that might affect your applications’ performance, security or stability. Also, since you have full control over the server, you can configure it as your application requires it, providing you with an unmatched degree of control, flexibility and tunability. This is an platform wherein you can pick every piece of software, from the operating system, database engines, email servers, etc. allowing you to set up the environment your website or application need to run at its best. Because of this, dedicated servers are not recommended for inexperienced users, as they do require technical knowledge and skills in order to setup, configure and run the server. Cost is also high, when compared to a shared hosting account or a VPS but the features and power provided by a dedicated server are well worth the money.

Managed Servers. They are, in simple terms, dedicated servers with an added layer of management services on top of it. This kind of hosting is aimed at providing management services to client who lack the technical skills (or the time) to do it themselves. These services may vary from regular tasks such as backing data up on a regular basis, to more complex tasks such as configuring security and the rest of the server’s features. Although it can be the right solution under some circumstances, managed hosting solutions often come with a heavy price tag, so customers should consider all options before settling for one of these solutions.

Nevertheless, even if you already decided which kind of hosting you want, you still need to pick a provider. So where can you start looking? One plausible option would be Web Hosting Geeks, an online web hosting directory with providers from all over the world, with literally thousands of offers and independent reviews from other users, making it a very interesting starting point.

As any architecture students would tell you, if you are building something that needs to last and withstand the forces of nature, you need to plan ahead and build the strongest foundations you can.

This applies to most other areas of work, and Web development isn’t an exception. If you want to develop a new website, you need to assure your foundations (web hosting service, in this case) are strong and that they can stand the heat of many concurrent users, prevent security breaches and on top of that, a good price.

But how do you know which webhosting service provides what you need. How do you know which one is better? Or even more important, how do you know what you need? If you are an experienced developer, you might already know the answer to the last question but you might need a hand when it comes to picking the best web hosting package money can buy.

And one of the best ways to find out is to read what other experts have to say about the hosting services they’ve tried. With that in mind, a good place to start would be WebHostingGeeks’s web hosting blog, where many industry experts analyze each service available on net, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages, so that you don’t fall prey of bad hosting providers and ensuring that you always get the best out of your hard-earned bucks.

WebHosting Geeks

Knowing your requirements is everything. When my clients and friends ask me about what web hosting plan is best for them, I answer back with a simple question: What are you looking for in a cheap web hosting provider? I tell them to think about what they want to use it for, what type of website they’re building and from there, it’s much simpler to find out what it is that they will need. Once their requirements are defined, it’s only a matter of finding out which providers offer them and the cost of those services.

Cheap web hosting is important, because you do not want to be paying more for your service than a fair price. And you do not want to be paying for something that you do not need either, and that’s why defining requirements before making a purchase (or developing a project, or just about anything in software development) is so important.

Although I’ve wandered around many providers (I do mean many), I’ve found myself purchasing accounts from Hosting Metro. There you will find a company that offers you a variety of packages that can possibly be what you need.

Whether you are looking for a personal web site, or a web site that is for business, or a web site of the ecommerce variety, they can customize their services to get you just exactly what you need. You can get a great price on their services and if you sign up for a 2-year contract, you can take advantage of the increased savings by getting discounts for the extended coverage. That coupled with top reliability has made me decide.

I have had bad experiences with a few hosting companies, and it’s not something to leave unnoticed. When servers are down, or database/file data is lost, it impacts the website (and its visitors) in a very important way. No matter whether you’re running a big or a small website, it’s never a good thing for a website to suffer technical issues caused by the hosting company.

I am really tempted to name the hosts that I have had trouble with, and ultimately terminated my contracts before the end of the paid period, but as they may have since improved their service (and customer service, hopefully), I’ll pass (for now).

Okay, now the title of this post is “Making hosting companies compete with each other”, because I want you to check out all the competition that’s taking place in the web hosting sector thanks to sites like Web Hosting Rating. This site here that offers web hosting rating is actually pretty good, because it has web-hosting discount coupons right on the site, so you don’t have to Google around looking for one.

They’ve setup an web hosting awards page, where they list the best of the best hosting services, according to different criteria, such as customer satisfaction Best Blog Hosting, and so on. These awards are given to the hosting companies that excel at their job and are entirely based on customer opinions, so that if you’ve had a bad experience with a web host, you go and write a review and let others know to stay away. The same goes for those web hosting companies that really do their job and deserve some love from you.

And while you’re at it, and if you’re a complete newbie (don’t feel bad, we all have been newbies at some point), you can read some web hosting tutorials, and learn the differences between the different types of hosting. All in all, just take the time to do your research, and learn from the mistakes of others.

It is a known SEO fact that if you have your own domain, you have a much better chance to boost up your rank in search engines. Some of my clients are already thinking about buying their own domains, with a catchy name, so that they get more opportunities and earn more money thanks to the increased traffic and the better “brand identity” a catchy domain provides.

Many hosting providers claim to be the best but as I have found (sometimes painfully, I might add) that not all hosts can be the best! If you have a hard time in picking up a good webhosting provider, you should head your way to this hosting rating site. Webhostingrating.com is an Independent company that provides customer-satisfaction ratings of many web hosting companies.

Their host rating system is based on the customer satisfaction, affordability, reliability, uptime and technical support, so you have a full picture of each provider’s real ratings. Don’t forget to look at their articles section. It can be a real boon thanks to its interesting articles, such as tips to choose a domain, what kind of domain you should choose, etc.