Hosting: shared or dedicated server

Posted on October 12, 2007 
Filed Under Tools

I’ve been hosting sites for myself or for clients for over a decade. During that time I have gone through my fair share of hosting services. Some good, some bad and some others just flat out horrible. About 2 years ago I developed a site that ended up hitting pretty big and was pulling in a huge amount of traffic. The site was very database intensive and caused me to piss off a couple different hosting companies who didn’t like having my site on their shared boxes. So off I went and ordered up a dedicated server.

Fast forward a couple years and I’ve since sold off the site and the hosting for that site is no longer my concern. Even thought I host about a dozen sites on the dedicated box, my traffic levels aren’t nearly what they were back when I was desperate for the dedicated solution and yet I’m still paying the higher monthly cost for my own server.

After some talk with a few guys I know who host sites in various locations, I settled on BlueHost.com. They have a decent package that lets you have unlimited domains for a set monthly fee. They offer cpanel, which was too expensive to install on my dedicated server, Fantastico, and several other niceties that don’t come with having your own server.

After the mammoth task of moving a dozen or so sites, databases and various config files that will need updating, I’ll be saving about $500/year on hosting. I’m looking forward to that!

So what do you other bloggers do for hosting? Do you have your own server? Do you host on a shared package? Do you host on a server sitting on your kitchen table?

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Comments

4 Responses to “Hosting: shared or dedicated server”

  1. Nick on October 15th, 2007 8:04 am

    I actually signed up for a reseller account at http://www.hostgator.com yes I know the name sounds a bit corny, but they have been great with me. It’s shared hosting, and give you full control to build out as many domain/sites as you need.

    They have a great set of tools including cpanel for each of the sites you create as well as WHM (web hosting manager) for your main account to manage and control all of your sites.

    The only thing I do not have is root to the box, aside from that I have yet to miss anything.

  2. Mike G on October 15th, 2007 11:33 pm

    Pretty funny, on Thursday after the conference I decided it was time for me to get a blog so I can post my horrible/rotten thoughts for others to see. Quick look on wordpress.org lead me to this site too. So far its pretty nice. Really easy to get things setup. Now, i just have to start using it.

  3. Tim on October 26th, 2007 5:57 am

    I have a dedicated server but I keep my blog on a DreamHost account. It’s pretty good. They been having a bunch of troubles lately, but all in all the site loads fairly quick and I don’t have to deal with it.

  4. John on October 26th, 2007 9:53 am

    @Tim - I’ve had several friends use DreamHost over the past few years and have had great results with them as well. I was in a toss-up between DreamHost and BlueHost when I chose my latest provider and they were so close that I went with BlueHost because I had a buddy who had a referral link for BlueHost and opted to help him out.

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