Note from Editor:

One of the most competitive markets in the world these days is website hosting. Costs can range from high-price selling to major businesses, to low-price selling to the basic consumer. With thousands of web hosting providers in this racket today and hundreds of web hosting resource sites loaded with host advertising, bogus recommendations and dishonest host lists, this seemed like an ideal subject to delve into.

So how then do you find out what you are really signing up for when you choose who to host with?

For your benefit and convenience we have outlined the mystery below from the professional data centers (discussed in blue) as compared to the cheaper hosting services (in red).

Host with the Most

First off, there really is no room for surprises when you choose to invest your money on services that are vital to your business functions. There are so many unrealistic claims on the web today that are only making these claims in an effort to procure your business. For example, vendors like GoDaddy can offer hosting for under $4 per month, and advertise it as a 5 GB of space / 250GB of bandwidth service. This is not a personal attack on GoDaddy, but simply an example of questionable claims. There are tonnes of vendors in the market offering hosting for around $5 per month with equally unrealistically large promised limits.

So let's trace this hosting service from the browser's PC to the website and see what's really going on.

Your Internet Connection

Firstly, there's the internet connection. Major data centers have multiple redundant connections to the internet to ensure continuous uptime and load-balancing over these pipes to allow for maximum traffic throughput. Consider for a moment a 5-lane high-way going in either direction. Traffic just flows but it has an investment to it.

On the flip side, it is possible to connect a computer to the internet with a single phone line connection. It's a cheap service and if it goes down, there's no back-up. Also, there are no "additional lanes" to balance traffic over in rush hour.

The Hosting Server

Along the way, traffic is routed and possibly balanced, and eventually gets to/from the hosting server. Big businesses have multiple servers to host their websites in multiple geographic locations to ensure continuous uptime and good response times. They also use real servers, and there's a huge difference between real servers and what some hosts advertise as dedicated servers - many of them are actually just cheap desktop PC's.

It is very possible to use a cheap PC though, and cram many websites onto it. At $4 a month per web client, it is simply not possible to ever finance a real server, so a cheapy would have to be used, and enough sites have to be hosted on each machine to cover the cost of the data center, machine, bandwidth, and support overhead.

Servicing, Repairs, and Support

Cheap machines mean cheap parts and little to no redundancy. If a hard drive blows up (and they do), then the machine needs to be taken down for service resulting in website down-time and likely lost data and potential lost business. Proper business-grade servers have redundancy built in, so that if a hard drive were to crash, the server can continue to fully function until the hard drive can be replaced at an off-peak hour - often with no noticeable downtime at all.

The hundreds of sites that share the physical machine, also need to share the bandwidth and throughput of that machine. If too many sites have too much traffic at the same time, then all the sites on that machine will suffer. Maybe we should read between the lines a little more; The 250GB bandwidth limit advertised probably means that you won't get billed extra for the first 250GB, and not that you're guaranteed 250GB. Let's face it, no PC with hundreds of sites will be able to deliver that unless most of the sites are totally inactive, which is another point the budget hosting providers probably rely on.

Oh yeah, and we mentioned support earlier. Most adults work for a living, and need to earn a certain amount to survive (not to mention government minimum regulations). At $4 per month, it would be silly to expect a lot of educated human help that's actually insightful and of any help in any way.

Hosting Plans

In all likelihood the cheap plans are sold as a loss-leader, in the hopes that people will upgrade to more profitable plans, and they probably try to sell you on the back-end, meaning lots of advertising and promotions in your inbox.

At the end of the day, that's business, and what they're doing is classic over-selling. Hotels do it. Airlines do it. So why not Web hosts? For people and personal websites, this is a great fit, and even through all the noise of complaints, it's a thriving business.

There's nothing really wrong with this business model, just make sure you understand what you get for your money. Take your time to know that the host you choose is reliable and capable of handling your specific needs.

For serious businesses though, I'd think twice about entrusting your business website's dependability on anything less that proper business-grade servers.

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