I use shared hosting and have done for 3 years.
True although shared in the parlance of most webhosting discussions, e.g. shared versus dedicated partitions versus fully dedicated.
If all you need is a page to put up for a low trafficked site (e.g. someone's resume, no interactive elements except for mail list adding, contact form) that might work. I find that shared hosting rarely works well on any website that has community elements - chances are that you or some other client will install something that will suck resources, including growing sites that hog the resources and don't belong on a shared server. Unless your host is very good with ensuring that there are a limited number of customers sharing a server and monitor often (very rare), you'll be calling your host often about the slowdowns (see "GoDaddy" if you like regular calling patterns.) Key issue - you have no control over how the resources are allocated. Imagine 300 semi-active forums sharing one server.
Probably more an issue of cost than anything else. I'd say you really want to know what you're doing or have someone nearby who does if you're owning and colocating.
Again, I disagree.
In three years, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I've had problems due to other domains running scripts which sucked up all the server resources.
There is indeed. All hosts are not created equally. Saying all shared hosting is <whatever> is like saying all cars or televisions or tacos are <whatever>. You can't lump them all together.
Brogan - glad that your host seems to do a very good job of monitoring resources. I've had a pretty good experience at FatCow when I used them as well. If your site or sites are mostly hobby or non-essential and some potential downtime isn't going to cause you a huge heartache, a shared host presents a good compromise. The key really is in being honest with yourself -- you're going to have to pay something reasonable for the hosting. mjp makes a good point - significant problems occur when people get sucked into many of the too good to be true offers from yet another "hosting business" to find out the service sucks. This issue is only exacerbated when these companies advertise in "respected" places like WebHostingTalk where people are expecting "quality" and when a handful of "brand name" companies set a whole new standard of low in providing shared hosting.
Personal experience from those who you feel are experienced and trustworthy. I also know the owners and people who run some of these companies. If you're on the hosting forums you also have heard of some of the major catastrophes as well and remember the names.
well the planet doesnt exist anymore since they decided to move all customers to softlayer as the owners decide to cease the planet, they actually fired alot of good employee at the planet. So softlayer team is taking over the planet customers includign colocation customers
Thanks for that, I've not kept up.
I don't have any personal experience with Hostgator.So,I can't comment about their VPS plan.
Current:
Hostgator was acquired by Endurance (along with a few other sizable hosts since I first posted that list). Don't expect their service to improve.
