On Thu, August 3, 2006 13:41, Jared Bellows wrote: > The company I work for is looking for a shared hosting provider. We are > looking for 99.9% uptime (nothing too special). I've been looking at > site5.com. They seem to be pretty good, but was wondering if anyone has any > experience with them or if they can recommend another shared hosting > provider.
I would recommend reviewing any recommendation with http://webhostingtalk.com/ - it's not perfect, but it can be a good starting point. I would encourage you to carefully consider the risks and costs of shared hosting with other hosting options. Perhaps you have already done this. You might also consider a VPS or dedicated server for security/privacy reasons. The extra cost could be worth it. You may also consider checking out a local company like xmission (or the many other Utah based web hosting companies). I would caution you against 'discount' hosting companies. They very rarely offer a 'true' 99.9% uptime SLA. Read the fine print carefully. Many only provide an SLA for the underlying network, not the server. Or they may only provide a maximum 10% discount. They may also indemnify themselves somewhere stating that if their employees "mess up", that isn't covered either (I have seen this at least once). Choosing a hosting company wisely is very important as it can be time consuming and costly to migrate e-mail, web files, and settings from one provider to the next. For example, let us consider someone who has gone with a discount hoster with a pretty control panel. They use the panel to insert many e-mail addresses, custom Apache configurations, databases, different applications automatically installed from the provider, etc. Then, due to a major problem a decision to leave is made. How do you get all of those important settings out of the custom control panel and in to a different system? Will your site even work at the new host? How long would it take you to fix it in an emergency (like at 3am on a Monday)? Perhaps your web site is not as critical, or your e-mail is hosted elsewhere. I offer this merely as things to consider if you have not done so. I do not know your exact situation. Keep in mind that "non-critical" things have a way of becoming awfully important when they interact with your customers. I remember one case where a company suddenly discovered that their web site was pointing to a very embarrassing page. It was pointed to a "joke site" of a flash app that insulted its visitors. What a great first impression! the site was owned by another customer hosted on the same server. The issue was a simple server misconfiguration, but it took several hours to work itself out. Such is the life of shared hosting. Never underestimate the issues you could have. -Ryan /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
