Choosing The Best Blog Host
Choosing the best blog host is now more critical than ever, with Google’s recent focus on site load times, it is time to take a fresh look at what is on offer, to see if we can find the best blog host! We will show you what we feel is important & with a little guidance from us, hopefully you can find the best web hosting for your website or blog.
Over the last few weeks I have been lied to, brushed off & mislead by many of the bigger hosting companies, why..? Simply because I was not dazzled by their marketing strategies (the unlimited this & that) & only focused on one aspect SPEED !
In Search Of Quality Hosting
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take a look at the current offers in the hosting market. I already knew that site speed would soon become an important issue, more important in fact than unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited emails, unlimited databases, blah blah blah! I did not realise however, just how many of the big boys, the sort of companies offering dot net hosting, managed or even dedicated web hosts would try to hold us to ransom over site speed.
The vast majority of web hosting companies will happily offer you unlimited storage, bandwidth etc for the simple reason they know damned well that in 99.99% of cases you will never use it! Yes that’s right my friends it is one big marketing strategy and add to that the fact that most will advertise a low monthly price, but fail to mention in their adverts that the low monthly price is only available to those that pay at least 12 months up front!
Tips On Choosing The Best Blog Host
1. Don’t just ask “do you enable gzip or any other compression” ? The answer in most cases will be a resounding yes, but it will probably mean that they enable compression so that their server will accept compressed data, this is not the same as “output compression”. Be specific & ask “is output compression enabled”..? If the answer is still yes then ask for email confirmation. JustHost assured me that gzip compression was enabled for output, it turned out to be untrue & the only reason I got my money back, was because I kept a transcript of the live chat I had with a member of staff!
2. Irrespective of what these companies advertize as their price per month, always ask what the payment terms are & does the advertised price apply to monthly payments. More often than not you will discover that a quoted price of $3.45 suddenly jumps to $6.95 if you choose monthly payments, this is certainly the case with Just Host & Blue Host. Oh & in case you think that paying 12 months up front aint too bad eg. $3.45 x 12 = $41.40, what happens when you discover that the service is terrible & offline as much as it is online..? Too late my friend, you paid up front so now your stuck with it !
3. Don’t be dazzled & conned by sneaky marketing tactics eg. unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited emails, unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited database! It is all rubbish & purely designed to make you feel like your getting value for money and therefore will accept a higher price. My Blog Review has now been running close to 9 months, my blog space is less than 150mb even though I have it set at 1gb & monthly bandwidth is well within 4gb even though I have it set at 8gb.
4. If the net hosting company offers live chat, then ask them for an IP address for their server because you wish to do a traceroute to check how many hops are required to reach their server. If their setup is not up to par, then they are likely to refuse as Just Host did. But you can always go to whois.domaintools.com search for their domain & then run traceroute from there. High hop counts or servers timing out are going to give your site a high connection latency which is no good at all when your trying to speed it up!
5. If you run multiple blogs or sites, consider getting a reseller account instead of individual hosting accounts. Very often you will find that it works out cheaper & you will get more resources to split amongst your sites / blogs. This is the option I chose with Web.com.ph my own hosting company & who I consider to be the best blog host. Their starter reseller account is only $11.00 per month which means each site costs me a mere $2.00 / month more or less, plus I get output compression enabled, plus I can pay monthly, so all in all it’s a bargain.
No related posts.
Posted by Steve Nickson
on May 1 2012. Filed under Blog Tips.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
