[NTLUG:Discuss] Web hosting.

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 10:24:14PM -0500, Chris Cox wrote:
> Stuart Johnston wrote:
> >> On 8/31/06, Chris Cox <cjcox at acm.org> wrote:
> >>> Love to get a good Linux VPS style solution...
> >>
> >> How does the VPS solution look at:
> >> <<http://www.a2hosting.com/vps_hosting.php>>
> > 
> > That's three times more than UnixShell.  I don't understand why someone 
> > would pay $75/month for a 192M VPS when you can get an actual dedicated 
> > server with 512M for the same.
> 
> Yes and no.. it gets complicated.  A lot of dedicated hosting or
> colo's will have some bandwidth or other restrictions that make
> life difficult.  Not saying there aren't some good deals out there...
> just haven't found one... so everyone... continue to share!!!

It does indeed get complicated, and price is not at all the only
factor to look at.  My sites are currently being hosted through
powervps.com, after having gone through some really bad experiences
with other hosting providers, all of which had very high recommendations
and ratings but ultimately went south due to changes in management
and ownership (both performance and technical support quality
rapidly deteriorated).

However, given my background, my situation is somewhat unique,
and possibly instructive for other things to look for...

#1.  Find a provider that fits your profile

As a result of my bad experience with several hosting services, 
especially with tech-support, I finally decided that I really 
wanted to find a VPS provider that *didn't* also offer the 
low-cost shared hosting account options.  (PowerVPS focuses
on VPS and dedicated server solutions, and doesn't offer much
in the way of shared hosting accounts.)

I came to this conclusion after noticing that nearly all of
my technical support requests came back with an initial response
of "We're forwarding your request to tier-2 support, who will get
back to you within 48 hours."  I realized then that for a provider
that is serving thousands of low-cost shared-hosting accounts,
the vast majority of technical support requests are coming from 
people who don't have the network/server administration background 
that I do.  Thus the tech-support structure at those organizations 
is designed around efficiently handling the 95% of simple problems 
-- the effective equivalent of walking the customer through 
"is it plugged in?" questions before escalating to a higher tier 
of support.  

Since in my case I will have already done the basic troubleshooting 
steps before ever contacting technical support, that extra day or 
two of delay of waiting for someone with the skill/authority to
address my issue was rapidly becoming very intolerable to me.
(Especially when the issue is something like "I can't log into
the server because you're blocking ssh at the firewall.")

Since moving to powervps.com, where I fit the typical client
profile instead of being a minority, technical support is 
much more tailored to my needs.  I've had very few technical
support requests with powervps.com, but the ones I've had 
have been quickly (within 20 mins) answered by someone with 
the technical background to know exactly what I was saying 
and the skills/authority to address it directly.

As I said, my situation is quite unique in that I'm actually
using the VPS for online product development as well as hosting
a number of sites, so my answer isn't right for everyone.  But
the point to remember is to find a provider that has support
that matches your background and needs.  This is especially
important when considering...

#2.  The costs of switching providers can be huge

Having gone through three different hosting providers before
arriving at PowerVPS, I can tell you that moving an existing
site to another provider can quickly get very costly, especially
in terms of time.  While it's not too difficult to FTP a lot
of static HTML pages, many sites today are running forums,
bulletin boards, mailing lists, user accounts, email accounts,
wikis, etc.  If things start going badly at whatever provider
you choose, moving that stuff somewhere else can be a real pain --
the downtime and hours expended during the migration can quickly
eat up any savings you might have made at the front end.
(What's worse, you don't have much control over the timing when
these things occur.)

So, it's important to get a provider that is going to be fairly
stable in the long run.


Hope this is helpful, or at least mildly interesting.  :-)

Pm