Web Hosting - Dedicated Servers or Cloud?

[SouthernBusiness]

I've got two websites and three web domains (2 point to one site). We sell about £500 a day online so we are looking for more than just a £5.99 a month hosting. However, I don't think I'm currently getting a good deal and I want to know what I need. I phoned a couple of companies but they were just salesman and promised everything which made me stop.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Cheers

 

[ServWise]

You don't really give enough information to make a suggestion.

Any shared hosting should be able to manage a couple average sized websites.

First things I would ask is do you have the in-house skills to manage a dedicated server, otherwise the cost for a managed server will be substantially higher.

What *Type* of cloud hosting are you after, there are many types, Shared hosting in the cloud, app hosting in the cloud, VPS in the cloud.

What I would suggest is to look at a host that defines your limits explicitly. Although unlimited space and bandwidth look attractive, they are really just another way of saying "we don't really want to tell you what the limits are, but hay it sounds good eh".

Regards

 

[ITsoldUK]

I take it you are on shared hosting currently?

If so, one thing you need to factor in to make an informed decision is how savy are you with servers?

Dedicated could be the right move but do you know your apache from your php? If not, then it can quickly become quite expensive when you opt for a managed server with more than 1 domain.

Have you considered VPS? It is like a halfway house between the two and is a lot more affordable.

I use a UK based company (not affiliated, just a happy camper) and have used them since day one in 2004 and have just moved all my operations onto a VPS.

Regards
Daren

 

[SouthernBusiness]

This is the problem I just don't know what I need. Others say only use companies that host it themselves? I just don't want to be ripped off. I don't mind paying what is reasonable. But the internet is ripping the crap out of prices and I need to cut costs if I can. What should I be paying? What do I need to find out? How big my database is? or how many people clicking through to the site? I'm a bit blown away by all the information and I have some many other things I have to get done. Running the shop/Amazon/Payroll/Accounts/VAT returns I just need help with what to go with what I should be paying and a company that will play fair.

Cheers

 

[SouthernBusiness]

what is managed hosting? a managed dedicated server?

 

[ServWise]

SouthernBusiness, there are some really good hosts on this forum (I like to think I am one of them) and all the good ones run their own servers and generally offer very good value for money. You can usually find out how much bandwidth you use from your current website logs, maybe even from within the control panel, space usage from your control panel also or download the whole site and view the folder properties of the folder all the files are in to find out how much space they take up.

Take these numbers to any of the hosts on this forum who have a large number of posts and a good bunch of thanks on there profile and they will advise you of the best package for your needs. Normally it is not necessary for you to have a dedicated server / VPS unless you have a lot of traffic or a website app that uses a lot of resources like Magento, if you don't know server management and don't want to pay for someone to look after it for you then look for an enterprise or semi-dedicated plan that offers more resources.

regards

 

[SouthernBusiness]

Thanks for the quick reply. I don't mind paying if I understood what it was. I most likely would need it as I am going at this blind. What would be the costs and would are the advantages?

 

[ServWise]

what is managed hosting? a managed dedicated server?

More than likely, but it may just be shared hosting where they do all the maintenance. Double check with the host. a *managed dedicated server* is a dedicated server where they manage it. How much management you get will depend on how much you pay.

 

[ServWise]

Thanks for the quick reply. I don't mind paying if I understood what it was. I most likely would need it as I am going at this blind. What would be the costs and would are the advantages?

for a dedicated server or VPS?

Our Dedicated servers start at £75, we offer cloud based VPSs at £35/m although prices and quality vary with different hosts. That is for unmanaged servers. We offer management packages for an additional £50/m for 2 hours/m or £100/m for 5 hours/m. Additional hours outside this are charged at £50 per hour.

 

[Websitehandyman]

Not a lot to work on there.

Really need to know the traffic levels and where your customers come from before offering any advice but as someone else said the are some good hosts on here. Not all feel obliged to post responses and also the are some not so good I've recently found out.

 

[WolfStores]

Hi SouthernBusiness,

Judging from your posts on this thread I would guess that you are not very experienced with servers (and hosting). Also based on your annual turnover of about £180k (if I got that right from your figure of £500/day) I would also not recommend to hire an in-house IT technician to manage this for you.
You would be better of outsourcing this to professional hosting providers. I would agree with other posts that there are may of us on this forum selling hosting space at very reasonable prices.
To get a bit more insight on what you have today you should ask your current hosting provider to give you access to the server (to your cPanel). From there you can easily see the amount of disk that you are using, your daily/monthly bandwidth usage, the size of your database(s) and much more useful information like for example daily visit/hit statistics for your sites. Once you know these you would be in a better position to describe your needs to a new hosting provider.

Hope this helps

Best Regards,

Tim

 

[ITsoldUK]

He can gleam his package usage and resources direct from his own control panel be it plesk cpanel or any other flavour that is installed.

His host doesnt need to nor will they give him access to the server outside of that on a shared package.

 

[WolfStores]

Ok, let's clarify this a bit better:

As a website owner you normally have access to your website's administration panel (from there you can upload content, change images, upload product and prices in the case of an ecommerce site, etc.).

In addition to this access you should also ask your current hosting providers for access to the back-end of your website, i.e. your cPanel (control Panel) where you will see the info on your disk usage, bandwidth, stats, etc.

In any case we always give access to both the admin panel and cPanel to all of our clients.

I hope that this has now made my previous post more clear

Thanks.

Tim

 

[Optegris]

To the OP, once you have found the details about disk usage, bandwidth etc then do post back on here and we as hosts can give you a much better idea of what you would expect to pay.

If you are unsure where this information is then do feel free to contact me with your existing hosting panel login and I would be happy to advise you further...

 

[SouthernBusiness]

We have 3 sites. I was told by another hosting company that two domains were to one site and I only had two. However the stats seem to show that this is not the case as they have different data.

Do you need anything else?

 

[smo]

From the stats those sites are tiny (in terms of bandwidth).

You could host them on just about any old package and not have a problem so no need to go throwing money at a VPS or dedicated server unless you have operational reasons to do so.

We host all of our sites with TSOHost, they are part of the paragon group who also own Vidahost - both of these brands are well known and offer exceptionally good service for a very low cost. Our preference is their Cloud hosting which offers superb performance and redundancy as its load balanced across many many servers.

 

[SouthernBusiness]

Really? So what is it that makes a site slow. What should I be spending to get these sites running quickly and to make sure the payment side of things go through quickly?

 

[JustJohn]

I agree with smo regarding Tsohost / Vidahost. Their a friendly bunch and professional in their approach to your hosting needs.

Why not give them a call and discuss your requirements, no need to sign up, just explore your options.

John

 

[smo]

Really? So what is it that makes a site slow. What should I be spending to get these sites running quickly and to make sure the payment side of things go through quickly?

Far too many factors to cover without considerably more information.

Site speed depends on everything from the software the site uses and the way its coded to the gateway the payments are made through, server load (some cheap packages are over sold hence become slow but reputable companies dont do this) all the way through to the end users internet connection.

If you are concerned about the hosting then your best bet is to move to a trusted host like TSOhost/Vidahost. They will ensure the setup meets your needs and runs as well as it possibly can. From there look at the software and optimisation and see if gains can be made there if they are still required.

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Hi

I agree with smo, in that your bandwidth figures are pretty small so on the face of it there shouldn't be any issues on a decent shared platform.

However this can depend on database usage (and other things), so it is possible that you have a site which does lots of database queries and then produces a very simple page (if that makes sense)?

However my gut (which has been wrong before) says it is probably your current hosting not being up to it.

Would it be possibly for you to PM me the URLs so I can have a look and see what kind of site you have? That should give everyone a better idea of what we are talking.

Thanks

Leo

 

[Optegris]

We have 3 sites. I was told by another hosting company that two domains were to one site and I only had two. However the stats seem to show that this is not the case as they have different data.

Do you need anything else?

This numbers are not big, do you know how much disk space you are using? I'm inclined to agree with others at the moment that it may be the host at fault but without seeing the site and a bit more detail it would be hard to make a recommendation.

Are you using any kind of control panel for your hosting?

 

[ServWise]

Yes your numbers are not big at all? If you still need help PM me your URLs and I will be happy to take a look and see if I can understand the reasons for your site slowness.

 

[WolfStores]

Hi SouthernBusiness,

Now that you have provided us with your bandwidth usage (which is very low by the way) one would need another two bits of information to make an informed recommendation:
1. Your disk usage, i.e. how many megabytes (MB) your websites are taking up (this will determine the hosting package size that you would need), and,
2. The URL's of your websites to try to find out (if possible) why the loading speeds are low.

Best Regards,

Tim

 

[kerrylinux]

Hi SouthernBusiness,

1. Your disk usage, i.e. how many megabytes (MB) your websites are taking up (this will determine the hosting package size that you would need), and,
2. The URL's of your websites to try to find out (if possible) why the loading speeds are low.

I would not bother about 1. because sufficient hard disk space is available with almost all packages, but the amount of available RAM will make a difference when it comes to performance. If you can use only 256 MByte of RAM for your server (if it is shared hosting) your webserver process and database processes will eat up this memory fairly quickly.

Unfortunately this applies to VPS also. I think with the choice of available RAM you can directly influence the performance of your website. 1 GByte will not create a limitation for a standard webserver and database, but much more RAM will not pay off, unless your website is very interactive and uses a lot of other programs to be run in the background. But I don't think this is the case in your environment.

The most important reason why a shared hosting or VPS solution can be slow is the fact that usually many websites and servers run on a single physical machine, but the machine itself has to transfer all traffic through a single network connection. Even though the network connection may be fast, sharing it with dozens or sometimes several dozens of servers makes all these sites slow at times when some of the servers have huge traffic at the same time. And the problem is you cannot predict these unfortunate events as you have no control over what happens on the other hosts at the moment.

That's the reason why I think you should consider a dedicated server as this machine would not share its RAM nor its network connection with other customers.

You can get dedicated servers for 25/mo with Hetzner, so it is not much more of an investment than VPS are. It goes without saying that you'll need someone to setup and maintain your website on this server, but that might be the case with a VPS too.


Another suggestion will be to test the speed of your own website with the program httperf. I did a survey a while ago in which I compared the speed of small business websites with some of the big names like Dell, Apple or Google. It showed to my surprise that small business websites in fact are pretty fast and can compete fairly well with the big names. Although the results are more than a year old you can see this comparison here:
http://securesolutions.ie/performance/test-21.6.2011.html

With a dedicated server you could be sure to rank high up there.

 

[SouthernBusiness]

Firstly thank you so much everyone. I am s l o w l y getting the idea. Leo mentioned it may be an idea to move 'demo' version of my sites on another host and see how it runs. I'm happy to go to dedicated but I just want to know how I work out what I need in respect to the speed ram etc. What price should I be paying?

 

[marketing9]

do this. use a website speed test site.

just go with the faster server.

Google now only ranks fast servers.

 

[Optegris]

do this. use a website speed test site.

just go with the faster server.

Google now only ranks fast servers.

How will that help? The hosting companies own site is highly unlikely to be on a shared account (or at least a genuine hosts site shouldn't be) and you wouldn't be able to run a speed test on a vps/dedicated box as there wouldn't be anything there until the site was moved over to it!

 

[smo]

Google now only ranks fast servers.

Really??

Can you please link to a paper/document that states this as fact??
Also what constitutes fast?

 

[ITsoldUK]

Google now only ranks fast servers.

There you have it, SEO is dead



Please turn the light out and shut the door on your way out guys...

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

There you have it, SEO is dead



Please turn the light out and shut the door on your way out guys...

Can we include the wannabe fly-by-night hosting companies that won't be here next week in this?

@ the OP - I sent you a fairly detailed PM with some points to consider,

 

[KM-Tiger]

... Also what constitutes fast?

As I understand it, it's not the actual speed, from Google's POV, but what measures you have in place to optimise for speed, eg gzip compression, image optimisation, minifying javascript.

You could have all that in place, but still deliver a slow user experience if your site is on an overcrowded server.

 

[Optegris]

Can we include the wannabe fly-by-night hosting companies that won't be here next week in this?

I wish

 

[SouthernBusiness]

again appreciate all this advice. I have been given quotes around £50+vat pa shared and £33+Vat pm for VPS. Sound good enough or should I find out ram etc

 

[Optegris]

again appreciate all this advice. I have been given quotes around £50+vat pa shared and £33+Vat pm for VPS. Sound good enough or should I find out ram etc

The shared sounds about right but the VPS quote is a little low. Did they give you a spec for the VPS and is it fully managed?

For comparison we offer shared hosting from £30+vat pa. For the following VPS you would be looking at £70+vat per month or £700+vat per year:

768MB RAM
768MB Swap
60GB Hard disk (RAID)
880GB per month bandwidth
cPanel/WHM
10GB offsite backup space
Full server management.
24/7/365 proactive monitoring
Clustered name servers

Edit to add: You also need to look at other things. What sort of support SLA do you get? How quickly does the host respond to your questions/issues etc. You might be able to get cheaper hosting elsewhere but generally if you pay peanuts you get a monkey

 

[SouthernBusiness]

I completely understand you get what you pay for! With all the VPS would it cover all my emails and backups or is that all extra?

 

[Optegris]

Check with the provider as backups are often extra for VPS/dedicated servers. That quote I gave above includes the off site backup space. Without it you would save £10+vat per month but would need to arrange your own backups.

cPanel would fully support all your sites, databases and email.