The competition is far ahead customer needs, god knows what
to offer to charge customers as hosting is so cheap!
Updated January 2004
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- text has to be updated sorry -
How to choose then?
- For most sites without a direct e-commerce activity a very basic and
cheap hosting is enough. A majority of sites use less than 5 Meg (1Mb
or 1Mo) disk space (100 full pages already) and a new site stays under
10 Meg (Mb or Mo) traffic for a few months before to rise... if it is
valuable and really marketed.
- As soon as you choose your registrar correctly it'll take you a maximum
48h to change of hosting provider, so don't bother too much about their
solidity and try it yourself. Cheap hosting providers usually quit the
business after a couple of years as they don't make enough money, so be
ready to jump for a new one if you choose a cheap one. Cheap hosting for
us means less than $15 a year for a full account including PHP and MySql.
- Windows or Linux. Well if you're not tired to have viruses and hackers
in your site you can use a Windows server! Be sure that Microsoft will
release a patch once it's too late. Otherwise you can have a quiet Linux
server (which can still be hacked if your server admin is stupid or naive).
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| CHEAP WEB HOSTING - providers
that have been there with the same prices for years |
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| see ressources here under ofr a US cheap one (since Cyberwing collapsed,
I lost track) |
| Alive WWW (UK) - Good hosting provider
and Reseller hosting provider. Highly skilled customer service. |
| Online.net (France) - Sister company
of Free.fr a local leading internet access provider, part of an online company
created with the Minitel in the 80's. As they where among the first to offer
free hosting whithout advertising they eventually added a domain name management
at the top of their existing service to become a real hosting service (years
ago already). They also have their own registrar service. See Iliad (or
Illiad) in Freanch or Euro stock market.. |
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Other ressources:
Try to find a valuable directory with fair listings and easy to search
database. These ones used to be fine (but...):
HostIndex - HostSpot
Does LOCATION matter?
The location of the server matters yes. Otherwise the registration of
the company matters only for the currency conversion charge from your
bank if you deal with a foreign company.
Server and main users shouldn't be too far from each others so users don't
wait too long for their data. So you have to clearly identify where the
server is. Note that the company may be in India or UK and the server
in Texas.
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