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Very so often I come across complaints and accusations directed towards
web hosting providers on their hosting plans that are deceving their
customers. How true it is that the provider is trying to be dishonest
with its clients? I presume most famous or renowned providers won't do
such a trick. After all, providers need the support of customers in
order to survive, why would they dig their own graves? Maybe there is
misunderstanding that exists in between the clients and providers until
clients feel as if they have been cheated in the first place.
Therefore, I see a need in writing this simple and straight to the
point article on how to really choose a suitable web hosting plan so
that no disappoinment or anger exists in the future.
Types of hosting plans:
Shared Hosting
As
implied by the word "shared", this type of hosting plan is shared by a
lot of hosting accounts in the same server. Usually, it's around 200
domains in one server ( as in Exabytes' case). Problems will arise when
one or two black sheeps in the server causes CPU overloading (for
customers, you can actually help to reduce CPU overloading. Kindly
refer "The gists of being a happy and satisfied customer" in the
paragraphs below). First headache, when hosting provider suspends the
black sheep's hosting account, they will protest and got angry and then
started posting bad review in forums on the respective hosting
provider. Second headache, if the hosting provider does not suspend the
account that causes CPU system hog, other 199 customers sharing the
same server will be angry at hosting provider as well and start to post
bad reviews in forums that the hosting providers' speed is slow, regret
choosing the provider and so on. Now, it won't look good for the
provider, of course, as they need to make a wise decision, either to
tackle "headache #1" or " headache # 2".
Hence, whatever decision
by the providers will in one way or another offends the customers.
Therefore, please take note that shared hosting is meant for website
with low traffic, uses less than 1000 emails daily, and will be great
if it's for personal, family, small business purposes such as, personal
websites, informative blogs, company website or photo gallery.
Semi-Dedicated Server Hosting
This
type of hosting plan is almost the same as shared hosting. In fact,
having the same concept as shared hosting but 1 level higher than
shared hosting. Only key difference is that in one server, we have made
it clear that we will host MAX 5 accounts. It's meant to conquer the
problems faced by website owners in shared hosting environment. With
less accounts in one server, definitely, there will be less problems.
It's advisable that website owners especially those who are keen to
involve in community portal, forums or medium-sized enterprise to opt
for this semi-dedicated server plan. Take a simple analogy here, living
in a terrace house is definitely better than living in a flat. Less
noise, less congestion. Shared hosting is like a flat and
semi-dedicated server is just like a terrace house. Think of it, you
need to use lift and wait for your lift everyday.. but with terrace
house, just open your main door, you are already out in the car porch.
Virtual Private Server Hosting
Popularly
known as VPS, this is a hosting plan considered as 1 step below a
dedicated server. It's often used as a test server, or for those who
wish to own a dedicated server but could not afford to. It has root
access which you cannot find in the above-mentioned semi-dedicated
server plan. All in all, it's a great plan for those software
developers or small webhosts.
Dedicated Server Hosting
Needs
no introduction to this "powerhouse" in web hosting world! Dedicated
server is ideal for corporate usage, government, huge community and
also web hosting provider like us, Exabytes. Those who are interested
in media streaming, corporate portal, high traffic forums need to take
serious note in finding more about dedicated server.
The gists of being a happy and satisfied customer:
This
paragraph is specially dedicated to the customers on the roles they
could play in order to ease themselves in the future. I'm sure they are
customers who might think that such roles are to be played by the
providers and not them since they have paid the money, of course they
deserve to be served well. No doubt customers deserve to be treated
extremely well, even better than a king, but sometimes, hosting
providers will have to act sternly (and resulting anger from the
affected customers) on some of the uncooperative customers to protect
the welfare of other customers who happen to be in the "same
neighbourhood". Ain't easy to be stucked in the middle of such a
situation. Any steps taken will definitely cause dissatisfaction among
the affected clients (as aforementioned in the paragraph on "shared
hosting"). So, it will be of best or a Win-Win situation if customers
can just weigh the pros and cons of the suitable hosting plans they
need before purchasing. I'm sure the customer service of any hosting
providers will be able to give you an aid on the suitable types of
hosting plan that can cater your online storefronts' needs. And for
forums or community portal developers, there are just a few side notes
I'd like to add here:
1) Avoid using CMS or forums software that
will cause high CPU resources. This is because most CMS softwares
causes resources hog when building pages or retrieving images from
databases. Those queries that are being run might cause CPU overloading
in the server and causes frustration particularly to those in shared
hosting plan as Max CPU consumption allocated to shared hosting account
tend to be lesser. Try searching on the Internet for a more suitable
CMS software to reduce such problem.
2) Take note on your code
efficiency as well. It's also known that besides queries, those not
well-optimized codings will exhaust the server CPU processing power and
memory in seconds.
3) Pay attention to the forum members' post
and the usage of signatures' size, avatars' size and preferably no
animations and no overused plug-ins.
As a conclusion, hope this article can add extra knowledge to you and create a better hosting environment for everyone!
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