Hosting Absolute guide without ads

After about 20 years of experience on the internet and in Wed Development in general, I think we can talk about hosting. No the following guide is not like all the others you have read.

We will try to be objective and without affiliate links.

First we need to look at the different types of hosting currently on the market:

Shared: The most economical method of web hosting. A shared hosting package places your page on a server along with various other websites. Shared packages are ideal for small websites without many requirements.

VPS: A VPS provides you with a piece of the server as a subsystem. That is, it gives you a management panel in one functional system installed on a larger server. Theoretically, performance and reliability are better, but there is a chance that the system may crash due to some "bad neighbor" inside the server.

dedicated: You get access to an entire server to host your website or several other websites, or if you want a VPS. A dedicated server should be chosen in case the website or applications you want to host consume large resources and have complex fundamentals data.

Cloud: A cloud is created by too many servers that "serve" your content. That is, the files on a page are hosted on more than one server. It is a very reliable solution, as if one server has a problem, the service will be continued by someone else available. Cloud hosting provides an interesting business for web hosts and system administrators. The Amazon / Google marketplace enables many smaller hosting companies and server administrators to resell custom hosting packages built into the infrastructure of large companies.

All of the above are different categories of hosting. But there are also subcategories, and there are points to look out for.

Cloud services are billed by usage. How much power exwork CPU, how much memory, and how much bandwidth you use. Payments can be set per hour, per minute or even per second. You can use 800 CPU processing cycles on Monday and half of them on Tuesday and the price will change accordingly.

VPS services are billed at a monthly rate determined by the resources you choose, CPU size, memory, and hard drive. A VPS package can look like "2-core CPU, 4gb RAM for $ 20 / month".

record

VPS hosting was the first mid-range hosting option created. Webhosting before VPS was shared or on a dedicated server for many years. Then came virtualization technology, which allowed large servers to split into smaller "virtual private servers" (VPSs from virtual private servers).

This innovation has essentially created "semi-dedicated" packages, allowing customers to enjoy much faster hosting speeds without paying incredible amounts. These packages are enough for small businesses and serious blogs that need something better than slow and unreliable shared hosting, but they are not enough to reach a dedicated server.

When VPS was first launched, all VPSs were on one server. But the biggest disadvantage of VPS was that they had to be managed like a regular server. They were not ready for immediate use. Many times you have to install from operating system to the applications you want to use on the Web (WordPress, Magento, etc.). You had to pay attention to security and many other things like emails, site management, backups etc. etc. If you need a control panel such as cPanel or Plesk, you will need to set it up yourself. Nowadays, this is not considered a disadvantage, but today, there are many options that do not require any adjustment.

If you have the skills, (line orders) or want to hire a sysadmin VPS is a great cost saving route.

But if the real server crashes, so will all the VPSs running on it. Since then, of course, the infrastructure has changed, and now VPS is running from the "cloud". So when you pay for a VPS in the "cloud", you are sure that the system will not crash if a server crashes.
Almost all modern VPS providers run their VPS in the cloud. You may have seen the name "Cloud VPS" which basically means a VPS (with dedicated resources) is in the cloud consisting of many physical servers.
Caution: there are rare cases where "VPS" still means the older model of VPS hosted on a single physical server instead of the cloud!

What is Managed hosting?

It is a managed hosting (Managed hosting) in many forms:

Managed VPS - a VPS or VPS cloud where you do not need to configure the server.
Managed Cloud - all cloud services are considered "manageable" by nature, because you do not need to manage the server.
Premium / specialized hosting, is a special web hosting package created only for a specific platform (WordPress / WooCommerce / Drupal / Magento etc).

They are specialized packages hosting: marketed by "experts" for popular platforms such as WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, etc. Many providers today only choose WordPress as it is one of the most popular platforms.
They are expensive packages or have "premium pricing" as stated by the companies. Managed hosting is by far the most expensive. A Digital Ocean VPS server (unmanaged) for $ 10 a month can handle 1.000.000 hits a month. A Closte (managed) Cloud hosting program for $ 10 a month can handle 20.000 hits a month. The smallest package of WPengine (managed) costs $ 35 per month for 25.000 visits per month.
It's fast: Speeds are achieved not so much by the best servers but by the best settings. Of course they will not mention this on the billing pages.
Aggregate capabilities: staging sites, backups, etc. etc. Everything is included in one package. Again… for the amount you pay, it's natural.
Τεχνική support: Here we are… Typical cloud / VPS companies like Cloudways, Digital Ocean or Linode do not provide technical support. They are not customer service companies, they are hardware providers. Their services focus on server maintenance rather than helping you change passwords or find out why your "site is not working". But a premium Managed hosting, provides customer support, but you never know where you will fall.

As always, it is important to know that the quality of providers varies considerably. A $ 20 package from one company may be better than a $ 60 package from another provider. New companies are constantly appearing in the market.

[Managed] Cloud hosting ideal for:

Users who know technology but do not want to mess with sys-admin jobs.
They increase from many to a few visits depending on your budget.

[Cloud] VPS hosting ideal for:

Users who know technology, and have sys-admin knowledge. For high traffic pages. With cheap hosting packages. can host many websites and many platforms.

Managed VPS hosting ideal for:

New users who have money with pages of moderate traffic

Managed hosting ideal for:

Beginners who have money and their websites have no requirements (low traffic).
Only one platform is used.

Unmanaged VPS hosting better speeds & cost effective, but need sys-admin

(IGuRu.gr can help you set up a VPS or a server in general. If you are interested, contact us at info [at] iguru [dot] gr.)

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• Amazon Lightsail expensive and not so fast. It sucks UI but can be useful if you are using other AWS services.
• DigitalOcean Very good prices, fast speeds and uptime.
• Prgmr.com Because you are not idiots according to their motto. Very good prices, speed and uptime. Requires skills
• Linode Very good and reliable company. It does not have DDOS-filtering like Vultr or others. Linode, and DigitalOcean I consider to be in the top 2.
• RamNod A smaller company. Cheap prices with DDOS-filtered IP protection.
• Scaleways is not one of the best VPS providers (slow speeds, drives, CPUs, etc.), but it offers packages from $ 2.50 a month in micro-plan.
• Webdock.io semi-managed. I have not tried them but I have heard good words.
• Vultr like Scaleways (slow speeds, drives, CPUs, etc.) but also has bare metal servers. Vultr however is better than shared hosting. The DDOS protection they offer is not so reliable.
• LunaNode VPS in Canada, very good service if you are not interested in the location.
• UpCloud company from Finland with servers around the world. Very good speeds and prices. There are many I know who have moved from Linode and DigitalOcean to them. I have not tried them.

managed hosting

• Flywheel promises to be better than WPengine but opinions differ. From $ 14 a month and up)
• Kinsta From $ 30 and up for Google Cloud hosting. Friendly, immediate service, many extras (backups, staging, CDN etc) but very expensive.
• Pantheon Incredible speeds and service. From $ 35 a month and up)
• WordPress.com very limited find bro
• WPengine The very good marketing of the company has made it famous but I do not think it is worth that much. There are plugin limitations. Novice users will find the service to their liking, but for those who know it is not worth it. For example a Linode VPN server with a caching layer that costs $ 5 a month can overcome the $ 99 WPE package.
• Closte Very good performance but it is a somewhat expensive company.
• RaidBoxes.io in Germany and Switzerland. They use NGINX. Fast servers and very good support.

Very Premium Managed WordPress Hosting:

• Pagely incredible speeds but also incredible prices from $ 300 a month and up.
• ServeBolt Exact prices but also very good service. From $ 100 and up.
• Pantheon another ultra-premium service. from $ 150 a month and up)
• WordPress VIP well ok, from $ 1.000 and up

Away from us

Do not believe in promises. The following companies may have some happy customers but these are the exceptions that confirm the rule.

• 1and1 away and loved ones
• ASmallOrange was initially a good company and then gained many customers in the same infrastructure.
• A2 (VPS) expensive and weak. Compared to other services it sucks. Their 8 "vCPUs" reach 4 CPUs from a standard VPS hardware provider (DigitalOcean, Linode, etc.).
• BlueHost has improved customer service but the servers are crap
• DreamHost makes great promises and high expectations. medium hosting speeds, bad control panel and downtimes, good support service
• FastComet sounds different, from complaints about slow service, to downtimes.
• Godaddy has improved over the years, but it generally sucks. Does not apply to pages with requirements. Even the company's managed hosting sucks
• Green Geeks ECO-friendly and clean energy, but the hosting is so and so. Not bad but not good.
• Hostgator NO. most recently acquired by EIG, as well as BlueHost.
• Hostinger friendly site, but the first time I visited it I saw a Cloudflare 502 error.
• Hostnet.nl sucks speed and customer service.
• InMotion slow with crap VPS.
• InterServer opinions differ
• LiquidWeb sucks performance, but polite customer support. Bought by WiredTree along with many other companies. All packages became more expensive except maybe bare metal servers. It's something like GoDaddy for server hosting.
• LunarPages away
• Media Temple was a good company until it was bought by EIG.
• NameCheap better than Bluehost but slow
• OVH (VPS) poor service, reboot problems, slow drives, and many complaints
• Pressable is supposed to be a "premium service" but I found it slow
• Pressjitsu - I really wanted to like these guys (they know their stuff) but their stack was underwhelming for me. Better than shared hosting but a step behind the usual "managed" tier like WPengine / Kinsta.
• Rackspace good company until it took the down ride
• SiteGround sounds like good service but: some you will pay now and others much more expensive after a year. Their small packages do not make for demanding sites, their VPSs are overloaded, and their entetprice services are good but very expensive.
• VPS.net sucks with lots of downtimes. It is the "shared hosting" of VPS providers.
• WPMU themselves with WPMU DEV. Slow service
• WPX Hosting Alternative to other expensive companies. Most people seem to be happy but those who are not, have a lot to say. Not at all good for sites with requirements.

Hosting: It was the first part of a different look at the hosting packages currently on the market. Wait for part 2.