Reader Question: What Web Host?
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Mike sent me an e-mail recently asking about web hosting:
I’m starting a blog (wordpress). I’m having difficulty finding a web host. Based on my research, all web hosts are garbage?!?!
I would greatly appreciate any advice. What web host do you use for your blog? Are there any resources that will aid my search?
Thanks in advance for any advice. I enjoy reading your blog.
Glad you enjoy both of my blogs, Mike.
Not all web hosts are garbage, but there are many out there that are. You’ve got to tread carefully to find the diamond in the rough.
There are several different places you can for recommendations, just Google “webmaster forum” or something similar. You might head over to DigitalPoint.com, a forum for webmasters, and read through the forums. Ask your question after you’ve searched the forum, or be prepared to get flamed… for not reading.
For the record, I use Go Daddy for my hosting. Why? A year and a half ago I had a few ideas for some websites and Go Daddy offered an insane deal. 100GB of storage plus 100GB of bandwidth per month. After a coupon code, it cost something like $4.38 per month if I bought in for two years. I did just that and registered some domains with them as well.
Moving along in my blogging and hosting career, I begin to hear of poor business practices by Go Daddy. Specifically, NoDaddy.com. I read of horror stories as they made the front page of reddit. It began to concern me. However, I haven’t left Go Daddy yet — I’m locked in until October of this year. After that, I will probably move to Nearly Free Speech. Nearly Free Speech won’t take your site down at the first sign of trouble, unlike other web hosts.
Also, they explain how most web hosts over sell their services. For example, Go Daddy is hoping that I won’t use up 99GB worth of space, and I won’t use up 99GB of transfer through the month. There is always a catch in web hosting, and if I had 99GB worth of transfer flowing to my website, then the site would probably go down because I was over my database connection limit (hidden in the fine print) or something like that.
Nearly Free Speech is set up to avoid that.
Additionally, they only charge for what you use which seems extremely fair to me. The FAQ there mentions that many sites are hosted for less than 25 cents per month because they don’t get a lot of traffic.Of course, if you get a lot of traffic, then you pay for it as well.
The only true catch with Nearly Free Speech is it is designed for the technically savvy user. There isn’t a lot of intuitive GUI-based setup options that you might get with other hosts. I don’t have a technical degree, but I was able to figure it out. They also have a customer forum that you can use.
I would recommend doing some research and finding a select group of hosts that you are interested in. Compare the offerings, and Google “(Company name) sucks”. If you find something that makes you uncomfortable, consider not using that host. However, do keep in mind that you are a lot more likely to find the negative comments than positive comments. Positive customers don’t usually share their experience with the world.
You’re making a good choice with WordPress. WP2.5 is simply amazing. Go find a domain — I recommend NameCheap — then get yourself setup with a host. Let me know if I can help.
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I’ve used a few hosts, including Dreamhost - they’re definitely not the quickest or most reliable, but in terms of value for money and range of features they’re pretty good. I’d say for starting a blog they’re brilliant (One-click installs of the latest version of Wordpress), but for a more established blogger it might not give you the reliability you’d need.