Web Hosting performance
 

I'm looking for cheap hosting services right now, but I can't find any sites that compare web host performance well. Most only compare features, such as space and bandwidth. I'm looking for speed mostly as well as reliability. Pretty much every host brags about having a 10Gbps connection and 99.5% or 99.9% uptime but that still leaves a few hours per month of downtime. Also, I've seen plenty of cheap hosts provide slow service despite having large connections and powerful servers. Is there any way to really find out about which ones are good in those areas without trial and error (purchasing the services)?

Here are some hosts I've looked at, many with very statistically good plans:
MyMarkdown.com
Forge Hosting (gotten some good ratings)
Serverway.net
QualityHostOnline (very good rating at FindMyHosting.com)
ULTRAsurge.com
CyberTec (very popular and good ratings at c|net.)
ROUThost

Unfortunately, with hosting, a lot of the time the best you can do is "I had a great experience, but ymmv." If I host at xyz and can consistently max out my 5 Mbps cable connection downloading from my server there, maybe you'll have to connect through a crappier route than me, and get higher latency, and worse speed. Furthermore, maybe you and I both get great performance from my site on host xyz, but then you get put on a server with some site that gets DoS'd or slashdotted all the time, so your performance sucks.

Another factor to consider is where the data center (DC) is located. There are various major "hubs" for internet traffic, so if you can get a DC located near one of those, you're better off. For instance, I'm located in Minnesota, USA, and a *lot* of my traffic gets routed through level3 backbones in Chicago, Illinois. I know a bunch of people interested in hosting midwest gaming servers, and they're all looking for DCs in Chicago, because of this fact. I'd like to assume that most hosts will put their own web site on the same network as their client sites, so if you traceroute to their site, you can get a feel for where they're located. Their 10 Gbps link won't matter if they have a backbone 30 hops away from everyone and connect through a NOC with crappy peering agreements.


Getting back to the point, though, my recommendation is to ask for like, a 15-day or 1-month trial from these various hosts. You can set up test sites to really evaluate your performance there (and perhaps ask the community for help testing ... ping times, download speed, traceroutes).

Also, you're quite right about 99.9% uptime not being tremendously impressive (and much less so, 99.5). 0.1% downtime is about an hour a month, 0.5% is almost 4 hours. Even though I just noted this is rather unimpressive (to me, anyhow ... my desktop PC has less downtime than that...), I still find that 4 hours of downtime in a month is probably acceptable, probably won't actually be that high, and will generally occurr late at night. It's reasonable to ask them what their policy on notifying you of shceduled downtime is, though (I've only ever used one host that reliably notified me of scheduled downtime).

In closing, the two sites I've ever used for shared hosting are DigitallyJustified and Site5. I also have a dedicated server on xlhost. I don't really have serious complaints about any of them, and speed was acceptable for general purposes (though, I never taxed the former two significantly, I can attest to having sustained 1 MiB/s transfers from my dedicated xlhost server).

Just signed up my new hosting last week..

-$22 for 1 year
- 4.8 gigs
- 120gig transfer
- free domain
- unlimited domain hosting

the panel is kinda shat but its loaded with features.

yes.. its legit. www.dreamhost.com
PM me for more info ;)

I never even thought about physical distance. That's a good point. None of those sites seem to be real focused on reliability or speed, just price. Even though they seem to be good values, if the servers are down often, the features are useless.
After looking around findmyhosting.com, I sorted a search according to ratings as opposed to price and saw a lot of good reviews and a relatively high uptime for WebHostingBuzz. Their servers are located in Dallas in a data center connected through Time Warner fiber lines. That's pretty close to where I'm located, and those who will be using it will be in my area.

I think I'll take your advice and try it out if I can. If not I can just buy it and I'll have a 30 day money back guarantee.

Stinky, how'd you get that for $22 a year? It says $8/month on their site.

Bluehost. 100$ per year...but so worth it......

Do all hosting services require you to provide your mailing address?

Yes, because if your website is linked with illegal activities it can be tracked.

promo code ;)