Recommendation for a wordpress hosting company.

[orpheus1120]

I've been recently appointed to setup our political organization's news website (I'm located in Malaysia). As the site will cover both local and national news of our organization, I've done some homework and purchase a desired wordpress news theme. Right now I'm deciding on a hosting company, and that's where I need some insights from you guys.

I'm a wordpress noob. Never had any experience in wordpress. However I'm computer and internet savvy, and I'm a fairly fast learner so I think the transitional phase of maintaining this news site will be pretty short and painless. Since I'm a noob, I headed over to wordpress.org and check out their list of suggested web hosting. BlueHost is the first among the listed, and specially highlighted and framed. I chatted with one of the live CSOs, and was told there's a cap on the number of files upload, and storage, which is contrary to what they claim on their website of "Unlimited Hosting Space, Unlimited Files Transfer". As usual they cover these caveats in their TOS. I also read some reviews of BlueHost and some users pointed out that BlueHost is only good for small websites, and new wordpress users, but not necessary an ideal hosting company for someone intending to grow his website. Is that true?

What I would want in a hosting company is one where there's no cap on bandwidth and files upload and one that will be there for me as my site grows. Currently if I host with BlueHost, imagine what their single-plan package would mean if I have to delete files (mainly articles/photos etc) when the upload limit is reached. That would be disastrous for a news site like ours.

Your thoughts and suggestions are most welcomed.

 

[carlosbutler]

No site in the whole world will offer a truly unlimited service, otherwise companies like YouTube and Facebook would use their servers and save thousands on servers...

So ignore the 'you get as much as you like' because thats not true. My company I simply ask potential customers how much they think they are going to need, how many users they think they are going to get and give a rough estimate.

You will most likely not need to much hard drive space, probably 10GB at max for a site that will last one or two years. If you do fill the space up, companies including my self offer upgrades on both band width and hard drive space. A lot of companies (again like mine ) also offer 10 or 14 day trials to make sure you are getting what you expected.

Location doesnt really matter too much since they are simply downloading the web page and images, not mammoth files like on a file sharing site.

I would also recommend you go for a hosting company that offers either cPanel or Plesk (I prefer cPanel) that also has included auto install scripts that install things like forums, blogs, wordpress etc.

Hope that has helped.

 

[brisbaneguy29]

Do not be sucked in by "unlimited" accounts. As you have seen with 1 host already, it is just a marketing gimmick, and is not real, and all others are the same. I would suggest that you will not need as much as you think, well not initially anyway. I run my entire hosting business including file downloads at it only amounts to 500mb.

Find a host that lets you start small and upgrade your account as you need to expand.

IF your site gets to the point of needing more space, just upgrade the account. Your site may also get to the point of needing a dedicated server, if your bandwidth and space requirements get large enough, but that may be 10 years down the track.

 

[Consultant]

You get what you paid for. There is no way you can host a medium or large site on <$10 a month. (Unless you don't serve any pictures, and everything is html).

For a small site blue host is fine. My site, www.obamapacman.com is on it. Limiting factor is CPU availability and concurrent database connectivity. Few thousand hits per day works fine. Don't really know how much traffic BH can handle with wordpress yet. I do have caching enabled though so that'll allow more hits.

Just how many hits the server and handle depends on traffic per day and the performance optimizations you made on your site.

What's your target traffic?

1,000 per day?
10,000 per day?
100,000 per day?
1,000,000 per day?

 

[orpheus1120]

Thank you for your replies guys. Truely appreciate them all. I understand there's no free lunch in this world and the "unlimited" claims are just some marketing tricks to sucker in users.

Honestly I have not ran or maintain any website before so I really won't have a clue how many hits I am expecting. Cost of hosting should not be a problem as that will be taken care of by my organization, reasonably priced that is. What I don't like about BlueHost is the fact it only offers one single plan for all and there is really no way to upgrade my account size-wise. The only other course of action is to migrate the entire site to another host which means backing up all my datas and transitional downtime in-between the switch.

Consultant, do you know of any reputable hosts that support wordpress like BlueHost, yet offer ease of bandwidth upgrade for a site? It will need to offer all if not better features that BlueHost is currently offering.

 

[Consultant]

Don't they have an existing web site? It would have logs on traffic level. Otherwise you have to do some math.

Also, you usually want a host that's closer to your audience for less latency, although I know some people in other countries use US hosts because it's cheaper.

WP list are the ones for small sites.

Types of hosts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_hosting_service

Most, if not all decent host would be "wordpress" capable. Wordpress is PHP + database

Different factors of shared host:
- Memory
- CPU
- Storage
- Database performance (on large server database sits on its own server)

What you can do: Performance optimization
- Cache (turn your code into html)
- Memory cache (cache html into memory for serving, need proper server access and knowledge)
- Code optimization (need programmer)

 

[miles01110]

Look at NearlyFreeSpeech, at least to start out. Pay for what you use. I've been running my site for under $3/month for about 500 daily visits.

 

[lindsayanng]

well, I hve been using my host for about 3 years now. Our website is at 9GB (compressed) which is HUGE and it runs 3 databases, php5, wordpress, oscommerce, and a bunch of other scripts i installed.

THAT is all running on an "unlimited" started host for $7/mo. Now, you can end up getting REALLY screwed with hosts, SO BE WARE. I got sucked into some crap with web.com and globat where they decided that they were going to automatically upgrade my account without my consent and took about a total of $500 from me. SO BE CAREFUL and dont just go for CHEAP

The host I use is one that I suggest to ALL of my clients (i do web design/ graphic design) and the main reason is because they are VERY newbie friendlty. They have 24hr/7day PHONE support.. THat is VERY important. Try and find a company with GOOD phone support.

Also since you Malaysia, dont just go with anyone. Find a host that is local to you. I wrote a long article on how to choose a good web host if you are interested:

http://www.webdesignforidiots.net/2009/03/choosing-a-web-host/

 

[Consultant]

Look at NearlyFreeSpeech, at least to start out. Pay for what you use. I've been running my site for under $3/month for about 500 daily visits.

Doesn't look like a good choice for anything besides a small web site. Why else would they do this? What happens if you get linked by a popular site, say a million visit in 1 day? That would cost $6000, if that shared server can handle it (I doubt it).

How much does the average site really cost?
We have recently changed our pricing, and so we cannot currently offer good statistics for this. They will return in a few months. Until then, we recommend using our Pricing Estimator tool to get an idea of what your hosting costs might be.

It's not that hard to provide the medium and average price. I am sure they have that information.

Edit: looks like they won't serve more than the limit you set, so a site would become inaccessible when there is high volume of traffic unless you pay for it. Looks fine for a small site, but won't work for a larger site.

 

[Burnsey]

Thank you for your replies guys. Truely appreciate them all. I understand there's no free lunch in this world and the "unlimited" claims are just some marketing tricks to sucker in users.

Honestly I have not ran or maintain any website before so I really won't have a clue how many hits I am expecting. Cost of hosting should not be a problem as that will be taken care of by my organization, reasonably priced that is. What I don't like about BlueHost is the fact it only offers one single plan for all and there is really no way to upgrade my account size-wise. The only other course of action is to migrate the entire site to another host which means backing up all my datas and transitional downtime in-between the switch.

Consultant, do you know of any reputable hosts that support wordpress like BlueHost, yet offer ease of bandwidth upgrade for a site? It will need to offer all if not better features that BlueHost is currently offering.

The absolute best way to buy hosting is to figure out roughly how much disk space and bandwidth you need, then buy a plan to meet those needs from a non-oversold host who guarantees you the resources they advertise. This way you don't have to worry about being suspended because the "unlimited" host randomly decided you were using too much resources.

virtually every host out there will support wordpress, and many come with one-click installers such as Fantastico to help you install it. Most if not all large and "reputable" hosts are unlimited hosts with no upgrade option.

For many good smaller hosts check out webhostingtalk.com. These hosts can't rely on their size and marketing budget, or gimmicks like "unlimited" to attract customers, and instead have to do it through good quality service and support. Good luck on your search.

 

[orpheus1120]

Fantastic advices! Latency is something I have never considered and looking at all factors, I think I will consider a local hosting now.

Thank you for everything and I will post back once everything is said and done.

 

[miles01110]

Doesn't look like a good choice for anything besides a small web site. Why else would they do this? What happens if you get linked by a popular site, say a million visit in 1 day? That would cost $6000, if that shared server can handle it (I doubt it).

As stated in my original reply, you'd use this service "at least to start out." Most fixed-rate plans have a low pricing tier around $5 or so, with NFS you aren't wasting money. They have a variable rate as bandwidth increases, but yeah- for a million hits a day it's probably not going to be economical. But that doesn't happen overnight either, so I wouldn't worry about that.

 

[star-fish]

I've been with Dreamhost.com for nearly 10 years now.

They offer a series of plans, so you could start off on a smaller one and then upgrade if you need to.

They donate regularly to charity every month, send out funny newsletters and have a range of one-click installs, including WordPress. They also offer a range of freebies every so often - this month they gave out $75 free credit for Google Adwords with no strings attached. If you refer people they give you $95 per person, or you can choose to take a percentage of that off to give friends/partners a better hosting deal (I can do this for you if you want - just let me know if you want my referral link/offer code for a big discount).

Although I'm experienced with WordPress, I have used DH's one click install in a rush and it's great - it installs themes and a few plugins as well (delete if you don't like them), and walks you through everything.

And their technical support is brilliant. They're based in the USA, and I'm in England. I emailed them at 8am GMT a week or so ago, and even though it was at least 5 hours earlier where they are, I had a response within minutes and regular replies so my problem got fixed within about half an hour.

In the time I've been with them, they've extended their hosting plans and reduced costs, rather than the other way round. I had one problem where my forum was using up too much bandwidth for their liking, but they just moved it to a bigger and better server (this was a rare occurence) and I had no problems after that.

 

[Consultant]

Someone I know suggested this VPS service, as point of reference (linux is selected, you don't need windows based hosting)
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.vpsHosting

<on DH>

Usually when you use the "1 click" installer they install the blog into

site.com/blog

instead of top level, which is problematic for SEO.

As stated in my original reply, you'd use this service "at least to start out." Most fixed-rate plans have a low pricing tier around $5 or so, with NFS you aren't wasting money. They have a variable rate as bandwidth increases, but yeah- for a million hits a day it's probably not going to be economical. But that doesn't happen overnight either, so I wouldn't worry about that.

Yeah. Looks like it's fine for small sites. The OP seems to be working for a large organization that need to serve a good amount of pages though.