Best Hosting Notes: Part One

It so happened that, until recently, all my web projects were implemented on their own servers. And for this reason I have never had to deal with hosting. But everything comes to an end and at the end of 2008 I suddenly decided that I simply had to buy a hosting and a couple of domains.

This thought did not come suddenly, but it was sucked in for several months. I tried to consider all possible options, to estimate the best option. In addition, I tried to formulate for myself why I needed hosting after all. In the end, the choice was made, hosting paid for a year in advance, domains purchased.

With this note, I would like to open a small series (without ending) about my experience with hosting. The first note will contain abstract thoughts about hosting, about why such a choice was made and about what the chosen host gave me.
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UPD: the second part of the article is available .

Hosting Passion

The first urge to buy hosting came to me in connection with the opening of the Habra Editor , which is still based on the working server (will be transferred as soon as it reaches its hands). These urges quickly passed, because, according to popular wisdom, there is nothing more permanent than temporary. Habra Editor was launched, worked, was updated and continues to work, it is visited by up to 120 unique users per day and this is quite enough. Hosting again somehow fell out of my field of interest.

The second and more serious push in the direction of personal hosting occurred while working on the habradigest project. This was not a temporary solution, and thanks to a great friend onthefly, the project received both hosting and its domain. The project developed, but mostly in terms of content. The site remained in its primitive state. And, when it came time to make a normal website, the idea of ​​my hosting surfaced again on the surface of my field of interest. Why?

The thing is that the current hosting habradigest.ru only supports php. And I, as some present here know, a programmer on the Microsoft .NET platform (PHP fans will also be interested to read to the end). Thus, I finally matured, and around the end of November, the vague needs of hosting turned into a great desire. The case remains for the small: to find a host.

Such a different hosting

So, what I wanted to get from the hosting? Below I give my needs, which was guided by the search:

• availability of MS SQL Server 2008;
• IIS7;
• .NET Framework 3.5;
• maximum or unlimited space for files and databases;
• unlimited traffic;
• in general, as little restrictions as possible;
• foreign hoster.

I will write about the last requirement below, but for now I offer to get acquainted with the search results:

• www.discountasp.net - offers gigabytes of space, 80 gigs per month of traffic. Very muddy schemes with additional features that need to be bought separately, for example, SQL 2008 - comes as a separate feature. Ugly site. In general, the impression was bad;
• www.bizhostnet.com - offers some frivolous numbers for big money, like 20 MB for a database. Was immediately swept away;
• www.webstrikesolutions.com - gigabytes of space and 20 gigs of traffic. The site did not manage to find out details about the versions of the database and IIS, but it became clear that 20 gigs is not enough;
• serverintellect.com - wild prices;
• 3essentials.com - 2005 SQL Server, which did not suit immediately. In addition, many other comments to the prices and opportunities offered.

It would seem that everything is bad, but there is another hoster on the Internet that turned out to be just a dream come true. His name is MochaHost .

Dream hoster with a strange name

So what does MochaHost offer? I suggest everyone to go to his page with plans and make sure that here:

• unlimited space;
• unlimited traffic;
• unlimited number of databases;
• unlimited number of FTP accounts and email;
• 5000 sites;
• MSSQL Server 2008;
• IIS7;
• .NET 3.5;
• Plesk 9 (which is also not bad);
• when you buy a hosting for a year, they give a lifelong domain;
• regular discounts and coupons;
• low cost.

As they say, comments are superfluous. PHP users can also see their Linux hosting is no worse. A hoster with an unpleasant name for the Russian ear, UchaKhost gives all its competitors one little finger.

Here it must be said that in one of the discussions with friends a point of view emerged that all these UNLIMITED are ordinary marketing and nothing more. Yes it's true. No one will have 5,000 sites on virtual hosting or drive terabytes of traffic. But tell me, do many of you use at least 30% gmail? I use only 2%. And I will stay with Gmail only because I feel confident in its 7 gigabyte framework. What is 20 megabytes for the database? I want to be sure that if I start logging each request, then my database will not die in ridiculous frames and grow quietly to 20 gigabytes. I want to be sure that there are no restrictions on traffic, and I don’t even want to think about restrictions, even if they are hard to reach. Which, by the way, is not so, since in less than 3 weeks I caught up 5 gigs of traffic on an “empty” domain. I do not want to know anything about the restrictions, and the UNLIMITED policy makes me happy. Long live UNLIMITED!

Why not Russia?

Yes, I promised to tell you why I didn’t stop at Russian hosting. There are many reasons for this, but I will focus on a few. First: look at what our hosters offer, for example r01.ru. For 24,000 rubles (!) I offer less than I received abroad for 2000r. No comparison.

Second: I am absolutely not sure about the technical side and the quickness of domestic hosts. Being a resident of the country, and having some kind of experience in dealing with citizens of my country, including sysadmins and businessmen, I firmly believe that no one in high-tech business will run after progress. Therefore, when .NET 4.0 comes on our servers, I will not receive it in any reasonable time. And here it’s not at all that the hosters are bad, just asp.net hosting is poorly distributed in our country, and no one pays special attention to it (there is an opinion that we usually host asp.net projects on our servers). Well, about the price, I again say nothing.

Third: support. Excuse me, of course, but I didn’t just hear about the support of our hosting companies, but I myself face constant rudeness, telephone ping-pong, when you are sent back and forth, irresponsibility, and just disrespect when communicating with support departments of different companies . Here is a concrete example: the well-known story with “breaks”. Yes, the client is insane, let's say straight "frame". But what right did anyone have to lay out his private conversations with support for universal consideration? All smart are? Never quarreled with sellers? I don’t want the next such “smart” support worker ever to post logs of my conversations with him on a bashor. I do not rummage in the hosting, I, as an ordinary user, can stop talking nonsense, but I want to be sure that the whole Internet will not laugh at me, and the matter will concern only me and the host.

Rudeness, excessive self-esteem, pride, disrespect for people - this is all about our service sector. When all this disappears, I will first go to our hosters, but in the meantime, alas, I chose a foreign hosting (and did not give up on support! About this after).

Purchase

So, the choice is made, the payment on the Sberbank card went without any problems. By the way, I must say that there are websites with free coupons for urine bridges on the Internet. I used one and got just a 10% discount. Not bad, right? In short, for the year of hosting I paid 2000r. Plus, they gave me a "life" domain in the ".com" zone.

Read about the first steps, experience, setting up a domain and communicating with support in the next releases. Thanks for attention.