I have been designing websites for more than 10 years, and I have used the services of many different hosting companies. I have hosted with some of the biggest names in the business – 1and1.com, AIT, Jumpline, and even Cobalt Raqs a few years ago.
One of the first clients I worked with had a small site on a shared server. It just so happened that it was on the same server as Ticketmaster, and some big-name group’s tickets went on sale and the resulting spike in traffic crashed the server. I complained to the hosting company about being unable to access my client’s website, and the technician told me what had happened, and that they were moving Ticketmaster to their own server.
Since that time, technology has rapidly improved. Now there is technology that can spread the load over a number of servers, if one server gets too much traffic. There is linking of different servers if your website needs grow beyond the constraints of one server.
I have thought about getting my own T1 line and just setting up my own hosting company – but then I realize that I would need to monitor the server 24/7, 365 days a year. No thanks. Not only that, but I live on the Space Coast of Florida, and we have certainly been hit with our fair share of tropical storms and hurricanes which could knock out power for days.
Currently, my hosting partner is Midphase. They are based out of Chicago, and they have recently been acquired by an English hosting company. However, their base of operations will still remain in Chicago. While Chicago might have lots of wind and cold – there are no hurricanes. As long as they have top-notch technical staff that keep the servers running 24/7, I am happy.
I chose Midphase for several reasons:
They have free individual (not shared) SSL certificates. An SSL certificate is what makes any communication between your browser and the server much more secure and provides the https designation instead of the standard http address in the address bar. Most SSL certificates cost at least $100 per year.
Most hosting companies have bandwidth limitations – meaning that if your website suddenly gets thousands of hits per second then they are going to charge you a great deal more per month because they have to allocate more available connections to your server, or your part of the server. Midphase allows for unmetered bandwidth for one low price – although, I would like to see what their true limitations are. I think they are just banking on the fact that most websites get only a few hundred visitors a day, not a few hundred visitors in a minute.
I was looking into setting up an account with Hostgator recently. I transferred a few websites over there for a test run of their servers. After the sites were set up, I logged in to the control panel and I found out that I am almost at the limit for the amount of disk space I am allowed. If I am at my limit of disk space, well then I can’t expand. Midphase allows for unlimited disk space. Now I just need to cancel my Hostgator account.