Selecting Your Website Hosting Service

SO, ..... HOW DO YOU PICK A GOOD HOSTING PROVIDER ?

If you do the rounds of all the websites on a Google search for "website hosting" your's going to see lots of the same-old, same-old. Pictures of space rockets, Ferraris, turbo this and turbo that. Some making outrageous claims and others splashing out powerful images around performance and security. Not too many pushing cheap pricing (mostly avoided because of price/quality linkage) and lots and lots of features and lists. That's the same-old.

Truth is ..... they are all really much the same, give or take some, and what really counts is what happens when things go wrong. Or when you need help and advice. It's special features and the quality and level of support that you need to assess.

Google around. Look for "choose a good web host" and you'll soon find that there's rough consensus on the following as a structured process to use for selecting.....

Start with Your Overall Strategy
Special Website Requirements
Owned vs Dedicated vs Shared Public Servers
Reputation and Historical Issues
Uptime Guarantees
Loading Speed
Support Reputation
Server Location
Backups
Security
Secure Certification
Statistics and Usage Reporting
eMail Facilities
So ..... Why Choose Webpro ?
Other General Resources

START WITH YOUR OVERALL STRATEGY

First off - make sure that your decision around selecting a website hosting service will align with the overall strategy that you have for your website. And here we are assuming that you do have a website strategy!

So if you are relying on good SEO to provide focussed, organic traffic to convert to enquiries then you need to select a host that will be helpful with SEO and you will need to consider the SEO implications of using that host at every stage. But if your site was largely to act as a reference point for referred customers then you could instead consider budget hosting and largely ignore SEO benefits which generally add to cost.

SPECIAL WEBSITE REQUIREMENTS

There may be functions or visitor interactivity which will require the installation of special or unique software. Examples could be customer forums, predeveloped scripting to crunch customer calculations, or simply many pages of custom reporting written in a particular scripting language. Or perhaps you have a legacy (from way back) website which requires a specific server operating system. The Linux and Windows server platforms would generally cater for these issues. And this would also include migration of the more popular Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla!, Umbraco, DotNetNuke (DNN), etc.

WordPress needs special attention here. This CMS has become so popular, and there are so many (vulnerable) plugins that a host that offers specialist support is a major consideration. Changes in PHP versions, the updating of core, theme and plugin versions, and the control of hacking, worms, compromises, malware and other security issues are sometimes very WordPress specific. A host who is aware of these issues will provide alerting and many other services to help avoid pending issues.

We generally house WordPress sites with Hetzner as the local preferred specialist host. For US locations, SiteGround would be recommended where location and speed issues are paramount for competitive SEO.

OWNED vs DEDICATED vs SHARED PUBLIC SERVERS

An "Owned Server" is where your website (perhaps with one or two others that you own) are the only wbsites that reside on that server. This ensure maximum performance from the server and also ensures that you cannot be compromised through wak security and vulnerabilities on other websites over which you have no control. The major drawback is that this is an expensive option and these are generally unmanaged machines. Almost all our hosting is on our own, Webpro owned, dedicated managed servers.

A "Dedicated Server" is owned by a developer (or boutique host as in our case) where only websites under control of that developer/owner are housed. That gives us control over the content of all websites as well as the operating system of the server. This is a good mix of cost effective control that excludes other parties.

"Shared Public Hosting" is a cheap option but the danger is that you share the server with literally hunderes of other websites. The hosting farms are inclined to load these servers to be able to offer the cheap rates and this introduces the risk of security problems. Other issues are variable performance, memory leaks, virus and malware crossovers, reputational IP damage from spammers and higher resultant downtime. Shared public servers should always be avoided.

REPUTATION AND HISTORICAL ISSUES

It often seems to make good sense to use a "big name" company for your company website - something like the "big name" corporate ISPs. In practice this is not such a good idea as they house many clients to a server, and while the neighbourhood may be slightly better, you are still open to all the dangers and issues encountered on shared public hosting. And you can add to that the dangers of attacks on corporate websites.

If a web hosting provider has a history (even a short one) where spammers have operated from their servers, then they could suffer reputational damage which is recorded by the major blacklisting services. At the extreme this can result in a visitor to your website being warned by the browser that the website could harm your computer, and in the general cases your website would be marked down in page relevancy by the search engines which would cost you traffic. Some ISPs have more problems than others in this area, but legal considerations preclude too much further discussion in this regard. Best you do some homework here.

UPTIME GUARANTEES

A standard statement at most web hosting sites is that uptime is guaranteed, sometimes even at the remarkable rate of 99,9%. That seems impressive - until you work out that the 0,1% of "acceptable" downtime is actually the better part of an hour, or 43 minutes and 10 seconds to be more accurate. Would you be happy with a Google crawl or a visit from a potentially big customer during that time.? Probably not.

A guarantee of 99,99% is better with only 4 minutes out, and you'd want a free hosting month in compensation. Now there's a deal. But - bottom line - is you don't want to be down at all. The outages we have seen after 20 years in this business, when they happen, can be several days in duration. We experienced that ourselves in the 9/11 Twin Towers attack when a building that housed our server was destroyed by the second tower collapse. And again not so many years back when an entire server farm was seized by the FBI along with the backup systems.

We've discussed some issues with using "big name" hosts - but bear in mind that there are even more dangers in using hosting operations that are too small. A small operation can suddenly close, and it certainly happens as we have often been approached by website owners who have been told to find alternate hosting providers. And there have been some where the hosting contact (or developer) has simply vanished - along with the access codes and authority for the domain registrar. These issues can be resolved with legal processes but you would not need to go this route if you had the access codes in the first place. Know where your physical hosting is placed, be on the authorised list of site and domain custodians and know that you are dealing with a substantial entity.

If your site's uptime is mission critical, then you should be asking questions about the security of the host farm installation and the contingency plans for natural disasters and total term failure.

LOADING SPEED

When you read statements about the average visitor moving on when a site has not loaded in 4 or 5 seconds you may not be convinced. But see how quickly you get frustrated by sites that still seem dead after 10 seconds, and that's quite common. Hence the reason for little spinning doo-dahs and messages asking you to "please wait" in attempts to assure you that all is well. But these are phycho machinations and don't fool Google. A slow loading site will be penalised in page rank. And be aware that left unoptimized, WordPress can be a resource-heavy application and slow to load. Those big front page sliders and hero images could sink you in the rankings.

So you need a host that uses solid state (SSD) drives, and not the old hard disk drives. And you need to ensure that, if you need them, there is access to content delivery network services such as distributed DNS and website caching services. You don't want the agony of having to move hosting providers because of a speed issue.

Be aware that the major search engines are reportedly escalating loading speed as a ranking signal. Hence Google backing the AMP (accelerated mobile pages) project. Use GTmetrix (www.gtmetrix.com) to test sites at your target host. It's a great tool for fixing your current pages as well.

We make sure that our servers use SSD, are overloaded with RAM, have powerful processors and are underloaded with websites.

SUPPORT REPUTATION

When there is drama, and there always will be some, you certainly don't want support people who are reluctant to help or just plain useless. They need to respond fast, drive the issue, and resolve the problem. A recurring problem is that it may become clear that the problem is "client side" or outside the areas of expertise and responsibility for the server support personnel. Often this presents a crisis point.

In this respect we provide the perfect solution as we fill that gap. We are the interface between you and the webfarm support. Your query or issue comes to us and we take it to the support staff. Where they can't help - we bridge the gap. It's all somewhat transparent to yourself as we speak their language and yours - and the problem gets resolved which is your primary objective. Nobody falls in the gap.

End of the day, it's the users that are the final arbiters of the quality of support. In the South African webspace, a good place to get end-user opinion is at www.mybroadband.co.za

SERVER LOCATION

It used to be be (many moons back) a much touted myth that the domain country designator (ie .co.za vs .co.uk) effected rankings depending from where the search was made. The SE spokespeople denied that, but today Google can pinpoint you and the server location and you will logically be served up local sites before "offshore" sites. They also identify the country being targeted from the website content. Google allows webmasters to even specify (in Search Console) the target country for the content. So the physical server location, technically, does not pose a problem for SEO.

But it can be a problem for the visitor in terms of the speed of "loading", as perceived by the viewer. The international links often introduce latency at the busier times of the day, and again the user experience may result in site abandonment and the loss of business. The site speed loading tests may be fine, but a visitor from the other side of the world may still have slow page delivery performance. You need to assess this one based on where the target visitors are relative to the position of the hosting location.

Try to keep your hosting provider in the same time zone you are in. There is nothing worse than needing urgent help and finding out it's midnight in Seattle and you are dealing with junior support on the graveyard shift. Advance technical support, with most hosts, is only available during their business hours and you really don't want inexperienced people undertaking major surgery on your data. Online chat support might also be unavailable outside their daytime hours. Another problem with big time zone differences is that performance sapping admin (such as backups) are usually undertaken in their "small hours" times which are often our peak times for visitor access. USA backups (Pacific/Central) at 2:00am are slowing the server for your local visitors at 10:00am. Asian and Australian locations are even worse for this effect.

We offer servers located in the USA, Germany and South Africa.

BACKUPS

The backup function is fairly standard and is usually automatic and a hosting function. Typically, backups are run on a daily basis at low traffic times which are often after midnight. They are usually kept for about 21 days and then the oldest backup (no 21) is overwritten by the newest. They are not always "complete" in that a database may be open or in an unreadable condition which means that some individual files can be missed. This is a particular danger where sets of matching small databases occur (as in accounting data sets). Large singular databases (as in CMS systems) can also fail when restored.

Add to this the situation where you find you have a ongoing corruption, or content error, which was present a month or so back but has only been discovered now. When this happens you effectively have no backup as the server backups only extend back three weeks. We recommend that you should take an off-server backup at least once a month which should be downloaded and stored locally. This will allow you to go back to whenever you choose, especially with static data. We can provide this service.

The control panel software should also offer you self-service in "file by file" backup. It happens often that you only require one file, and it is really convenient to simply pick it from the backup day you want and restore it either to the live website or to a different folder.

Never scrimp or cut corners with the backup chores. It does not matter whose fault it is - when the data is gone, it's gone - and it's worse whenyou know you could have prevented that loss.

SECURITY

Server Security refers to the likelihood of your web hosting server being compromised by a virus or trojan that allows access to your website files or to a visitor's computer. A Denial of Service (known an DoS Attack) can remove the server from being visible on the web. These are the results of malicious actions from third parties and they threaten you, your visitors, and the availability of your website due to the web server crashing.

The level of server security, and the discipline and rules that the security staff apply to users of the server, usually determine these security standards and the resulting possibility of trauma and drama.

There is little you can do to to change these issues so it becomes an act of selection on your part to ensure that the reputation of the hosting facility is a good as possible in this regard.

We have found, as a general rule, that Linux servers are usually more secure than Windows servers, with Microsoft Server being a more vulnerable server platform. However, applications for Linux (user's websites) are generally more compromised than Windows applications. The majority of security problems do come via vulnerabilities in the websites but poorly maintained servers can contribute to the subsequent spread of the compromise incident.

This type of damage can be minimised by keeping off public servers and ensuring that your own website is well maintained from a secury aspect.

SECURE CERTIFICATION

The use of secure certification (https:// vs http://) has become a critical SEO issue. Coupled to that is the negative UX (user experience) when a visitor to your website is presented with a "This site is not secure" warning. So it's a given that you need to adopt secure certification.

At the minimum level, your web hosting service should be able to provide free site certification such as "Let's Encrypt". The additional benefit is that data communicated between the visitor and the website is far less likely to be compromised or stolen.

All our server's offer "no charge" secure certification as well as the top end commercial products.

STATISTICS AND USAGE REPORTING

All servers record visits by saving basic information related to each visit. These are known as server logs and are stored in the hosting space. Statistical analysis software such as AWStats and SmarterStats can then present reports which give insight into how the site works and how visitors find it. This is basic usage data. Make sure that your hosting service provides these facilities and that they are easily available to you.

Analytics and Behavioural Metrics (such as Google Analytics) are embedded in your website code and your developer assists with setting that up. You need to set up an account with an analytics service which then receives data from the website via javascript as the visitor moves through your pages. This is not a web hosting activity. Analytics analysis provides insight into user behaviour and user interaction with your website content.

Our servers provide both AWStats and SmarterStats for server stats analysis.

Related Topic ; xxxxx

EMAIL FACILITIES

The hosting of email, because of the common domain use, is often bound with website hosting and falls under the same hosting service. The facilities and tools offered by the hosting service to manage mail services make your life easy or difficult. This is an important enough subject to have its own section.

Make sure you read our page on eMail Hosting before making any decisions on a web hosting provider.

It is important to understand that your website hosting and email hosting do not have to both be on the same server. Linux servers have always provided superior mail administration services and many of our clients split the website and mail hosting for this reason. Some web hosts offer better support than others within the Linux community.

Related Topic ; Mail Administration
Related Topic ; Solving Missing Email Problems

SO ..... WHY CHOOSE WEBPRO ?

There is quite a spread of hosting fees around the market at present. They seem to range from the American DIY hosting operations at $5/mth through to the small South African outsourcers at R50 to R150 mth up to the big corporate ISPs who start at R225 and R300 per month. It largely all seems to be a matter of service, services and internal costs. There were several SA hosts a year back or so marketing quite vigorously and offering R75/mth but they have disappeared. It's pretty much a case of you have to research a whole lot and then decide if there's minimal risk in going with one of the cheaper suppliers and if you have the skill sets to do the stuff they don't do or perhaps charge heavily for.

We couldn't advise you on any of these hosting services as we don't know what they offer, or what the services they supply are like.

We can only speak for ourselves. We've been around since 1983, have been a web dedicated business since 1997, have over 500 clients, and provide a one-stop all-service boutique product. We operate both Windows and Linux platforms and offer high-end scripting services in the Windows ASP environment. Whatever you want, we just do it or get it done. Due to the large client base we get to experience most technologies and innovations and work with many clients on their business strategies and operational problems. This broad exposure equips us to advise and help with the problems that the next client has. We think we do it pretty well and the fact that most clients who move return within a year reassures us of that fact!

Our pricing is R190+v/pm for standard low support business clients. R100+v/pm for not-for-profit, charitables and NGOs. Higher pricing for heavy traffic sites and those with databases, shopping carts and payment gateways to support. Ad hoc consulting, minor maintenance and search engine advice is free to our hosted clients whereas non-hosted clients pay R425+v/hr for that work. Like the other guys we used to offer a slew of packages but found it only confused customers. So all pay much the same and we do what's needed, generally without any extra charges.

Email administration, particularly in ensuring deliverability and tracing the causes for missing mail, is another specialist service. As is newsletter administration and other functions not covered by most hosting ISPs. We are also optimised for the needs of Worpress hosting and support.

We have not increased our hosting charges since 1999. And in 2006 we dropped our base rate from R240pm to the current R190pm. That drop aside, it means we have effectively reduced our price by 7% to 10% per year depending in the inflation levels. The increase of hosted clients has helped make that possible but we certainly to not foresee any major price cuts the future. And certainly no price increases.

In this business, you get pretty much what you pay for. Something like the logic behind why you don't choose the cheapest dentist around to look after your teeth. There's always a reason why he's the cheapest.! But if you don't use our services to the max then you could well figure that you are not receiving fair value. That would be a reasonable conclusion and perhaps good motivation to look at making a saving. That is a decision you would need to make.

When changing servers there is often some rescripting to be done for form mailing functions but that should be rather minimal in your case and, at worst, you may pick up maybe an hour or two of charges. If you do plan a change, then please contact us well in advance if you have any enquiries so that we can attend to the technical and other aspects of the change. Due thought needs to be given to mail arrangements, preventing mail loss during the DNS propogations, parkings, dedirectors, search engine routings, historical visitor access stats, archiving the site, database setups, etc.

Having said all this, we understand that these are difficult times and that you may be under huge pressure to look at cutting costs wherever you can. Should that be the case then we would consider reducing your hosting rate until things are back to normal. We do not onsell on a narrow margin and obviously can make those decisions without incurring loss. But we do believe we are good at what we do and that our pricing is fair, so we consequently would not consider a cut in our hosting rate if the argument for this is based on the lower pricing of perceived competitors.

Anything we left out, stuff you don't agree with.?
Good article, bad article.?
Please give us your comments and suggestions.

OTHER GENERAL RESOURCES

My Broadband
A forum for disussions on web hosting providers in South Africa

Best Web Hosting in 2018
Reviews and comparisons of top international hosting operations

9 Best Options for Managed WordPress Hosting
Comparisons between major hosting operations located outside of South Africa