Shared Hosting Question....

[Dave-Neslon]

Hello,

This section is for questions about the Base-Host and Tera-Host shared plans, and I have a pre-sales question (or two).

Our small, non-profit organization is currently using a shared hosting plan with a local provider at $30/month. Of course, that's a billed-by-the-month price, not a two-years-in-advance price. As webmaster, I have no issues with their service, but our Board of Trustees believes that we can obtain equivalent service for much less. Given that our operating budget is tight, this is not something to be dismissed.

I've been doing research of hosting alternatives, and HostICan is on the "short list". We have a pretty simple web site. Most of the content is static. We don't have any blogs, forums or database usage. We use MS FrontPage 2003 as our primary authoring tool, although we also have Dreamweaver 8. Your support for FrontPage 2003 server extensions is one reason you are on the "short list"

I've been browsing this forum to see if I can glean any additional insight as to whether HostICan would work well for us. I've looked at the CPU usage monitoring threads, among others. Quite frankly, I have no idea what "footprint" our site currently presents. The "stats" aren't working at our current provider. I'm a little nervous, though, that we might move our hosting here and run into unexpected issues. None of us are web authoring or hosting experts.

I'm quite sure that we wouldn't exceed the space or bandwidth limitations.
I'm not sure how we could tell if we would exceed any other limits (such as CPU or traffic spikes cause by web crawlers).

How many distinct web sites are typically hosted on a single shared server?

What is the CPU-power of these serves (CPU clock speed, memory speed, bus speed, disk speed)?

Do you have any average (or better yet guaranteed lower limits) on the page load speed of some standardized unit of HTML?

I understand that transit times through the Internet will vary, but some indication that our website will be at least as "responsive" when hosted at HostICan as it is now would be helpful in making a decision.

Quite frankly, most of the "review" information one can find via Google searches on web hosting seems pretty suspect to me. Either some disgruntled customer or a competitor trashing the provider or an employee or affiliate
boosting the company. Neither case is very helpful.

Regards,

Dave Nelson

Greater Derry Arts Council, Inc.
Greater Derry Arts Council Home Page

[seoguru]

Hi Dave,

Not sure about quantity of web-sites, I believe around 150-250 however I am familiar that HIC using fresh hardware like Xeons Quad Core machines.
They have no speed restrictions as well.

I've been hosting my web-sites with HIC around 2 years now and still happy!

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by Dave-Neslon

Hello,

This section is for questions about the Base-Host and Tera-Host shared plans, and I have a pre-sales question (or two).

Our small, non-profit organization is currently using a shared hosting plan with a local provider at $30/month. Of course, that's a billed-by-the-month price, not a two-years-in-advance price. As webmaster, I have no issues with their service, but our Board of Trustees believes that we can obtain equivalent service for much less. Given that our operating budget is tight, this is not something to be dismissed.

I've been doing research of hosting alternatives, and HostICan is on the "short list". We have a pretty simple web site. Most of the content is static. We don't have any blogs, forums or database usage. We use MS FrontPage 2003 as our primary authoring tool, although we also have Dreamweaver 8. Your support for FrontPage 2003 server extensions is one reason you are on the "short list"

I've been browsing this forum to see if I can glean any additional insight as to whether HostICan would work well for us. I've looked at the CPU usage monitoring threads, among others. Quite frankly, I have no idea what "footprint" our site currently presents. The "stats" aren't working at our current provider. I'm a little nervous, though, that we might move our hosting here and run into unexpected issues. None of us are web authoring or hosting experts.

I'm quite sure that we wouldn't exceed the space or bandwidth limitations.
I'm not sure how we could tell if we would exceed any other limits (such as CPU or traffic spikes cause by web crawlers).

How many distinct web sites are typically hosted on a single shared server?

What is the CPU-power of these serves (CPU clock speed, memory speed, bus speed, disk speed)?

Do you have any average (or better yet guaranteed lower limits) on the page load speed of some standardized unit of HTML?

I understand that transit times through the Internet will vary, but some indication that our website will be at least as "responsive" when hosted at HostICan as it is now would be helpful in making a decision.

Quite frankly, most of the "review" information one can find via Google searches on web hosting seems pretty suspect to me. Either some disgruntled customer or a competitor trashing the provider or an employee or affiliate
boosting the company. Neither case is very helpful.

Regards,

Dave Nelson

Greater Derry Arts Council, Inc.
Greater Derry Arts Council Home Page

Just to answer some of your questions:

If you exceed our resource limitations, we do have a script that suspends the site temporarily, and it'll put up a notice about it. We'll soon have a Flash-based display that our customers can use, but I can't give you a release date yet.

As to the number of customers on each server, I think the previous message was essentially accurate. Our servers are all current issue Core 2 Duos or Xeons, using the appropriate memory required for those systems to deliver excellent performance. Disk speed is a complicated matter, but I will tell you that we always use server-grade hardware.

There's no way to give you a page load speed. This varies from site to site, and the browser, operating system and speed of your Internet connection.

As to being responsive, you can bet on it. We pride ourselves on giving all our customers the best service in the industry.

I agree, by the way, that it's not always easy to find accurate reviews. Every company has a disgruntled customer, and they may simply exaggerate the truth beyond reason or just make up tall tales.

However, among all the high-caliber hosts out there, HostICan tends to get the highest number of rave reports, and independent benchmarking sites always give us top honors for performance and network reliability.

I hope this helps a little as you narrow down your search.

[thelocomono]

Try Website Optimizer to test your page load speed.

[lnxcode]

That actually looks like a good tool, nice tip.

[zaifulzin]

Originally Posted by thelocomono

Try Website Optimizer to test your page load speed.

Thank you...im never know this tools before.

Zaiful Zin

[Scott]

If the site in question is the link you included in your post, I wouldn't think that site would have an issue?

[rwssoccer1]

Originally Posted by Scott

If the site in question is the link you included in your post, I wouldn't think that site would have an issue?

I agree, i deff don't see your site "over consuming" on the CPU limit.

[lnxcode]

Originally Posted by rwssoccer1

I agree, i deff don't see your site "over consuming" on the CPU limit.

That really depends on what you are trying to do. For example, you can have 1 line of code that can crash the whole server - easy enough...

The logs are always in the /reports/ folder, and users are able to view and review their logs... so they should always be able to see what is using more CPU then necessary.