Maybe you are one of the lucky ones that landed with a decent host, but most of you will probably agree with me when I say SHARED HOSTING SUCKS.

Shared hosting is perfect for a lightly-trafficked site that doesn’t see a lot of concurrent users. No one would argue that paying $6-$10 a month for your hosting is a rip off. The downside is that depending on how busy the other sites on the server your site is on are, your network performance will be sluggish regardless of how many people are on your site. On top of that, there will be hundreds of other websites running on that box, and you are sharing resources with all of them. In my case, at my previous shared host a little digging turned up that there were 694 domains on the server my site was hosted on. That’s 693 other sites that I was sharing resources with. Not to mention, if any of those sites were banned somewhere, we were all sharing the same IP address.

Another issue is that depending on your host, you have a resource quota for memory and cpu usage on the server. Usually this will be around 20%. If you hit that number in either memory or cpu usage for a sustained 60 seconds, your readers get the dreaded account suspended page for whatever time limit your host has set.

So, either because your network performance on your current shared host stinks, or your traffic is picking up and bringing your site down all the time with temporary account suspensions, you are ready to explore your options for greener pastures elsewhere.

$50
The $50/month ballpark will land you a VPS account, or a budget dedicated server. VPS accounts are still shared. The host will carve up a box into X amount of accounts, with each account running it’s own virtualized operating system. You can have linux or Windows on the same server, because all of the operating systems below the server os are running on virtual machines.

One of the problems I have with VPS is that it is still shared. However, it is a better deal than shared hosting because on a VPS server the host will allocate few accounts per server, and each account gets a guaranteed percentage of memory and cpu, which is usually burstable to double that amount for peaks in traffic. If you’ve ever used Bochs or any virtual machine software, you know that while it’s neat being able to run an operating system within an operating system, the virtualized os does not run as fast as it would on dedicated hardware because much of the hardware functionality is emulated in software. VMs have gotten better, and it’s less noticeable as hardware speed increases, but you still take a big performance hit running a virtualized os.

A modest dedicated server can be leased for around $50/month as well. It won’t be bleeding edge hardware, but you’re only serving web pages. A dedicated server is a whole new world in terms of network performance, provided your host has a good network. The downside is that a lot of the administration that was invisible to you on your Cpanel shared host will now be up to you.

Cheer up though, you don’t have to become a unix sysadmin to enjoy a dedicated server (but it doesn’t hurt). Using WHM in conjunction with Cpanel provides a gui interface that runs in a web browser that will assist you with making sure your accounts are set up properly. Everything that you would have to do via shell (command line) to set your server up can be executed via WHM. It sure doesn’t hurt to have a little unix knowledge, as the support your $50/month buys you is pretty much limited to hardware issues.

$100
$100 a month is not going to get you a dual quad core Xeon box with 16 gigs of ram, but a smart shopper will be able to find a pretty fast box with adequate memory for serving decently trafficked websites. There are some old Xeon dual cpu machines and pre-Core2Duo dual core boxes that will be plenty fast at this price. Prioritize your hardware needs. You’ll run out of resources in this order:

• RAM
• HDD speed
• CPU

No worries buying a box that was bleeding edge 18 months ago but a little long in the tooth today. Just make sure you have enough memory (2 gigabytes is a good starting point) and a disc that won’t chug serving content. I would take a smaller SCSI drive over a humongous ATA drive any day.

Again, $100 a month isn’t going to buy you a lot of support, but if you’re shelling out 100 bones just for your hosting you probably don’t need it.

$150 and up
Now your options just opened up. You will be able to find a fast Core2Duo at a good host for this price. You still won’t get much in the way of support for $150 a month.

And up? Well now we’re talking 8 core Xeon boxes and/or fully managed if you can afford it and need the resources.

Just remember, you’re not Yahoo. Don’t make the mistake of buying more server than you need. The point is to make money off your website, not break even because of mammoth hosting costs. Service account contracts are monthly, and you can always upgrade the box you’re on or move to bigger and better things. Try to find a box that costs as little as possible and also provides your readers the best experience. Better yet, get your hosting free or subsidized by advertising for your host. It never hurts to ask.

A great resource if you are looking into your hosting options is the Web Hosting Talk Forums. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention them. If you have a question, search the threads, and if you still haven’t found an answer, ask away. The people there are very knowledgeable, most are probably people in the hosting business, and if they don’t know, you are asking the wrong question.

The best relationship with your host is the one with the least interaction. Good luck finding the host that serves your needs and does the least damage to your bank account

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