Ecommerce Web Design Blog

Is free hosting too good to be true? How do you know if you're getting good value for money with your web hosting?

What are the disadvantages of free hosting providers?

There are many companies who will accuse paid web hosting services as being overpriced and exorbitant. They claim that free hosting is a much better solution. For some people, free hosting has its advantages but before jumping into a free hosting solution, it is worthwhile considering the disadvantages of free hosting as well. Then you can make an informed decision.

• Banners! - free hosts have to make money like everyone else, so generally rely on advertising to do so. This means you may have to have banner advertisements displayed prominently in your site which can affect your site design.
• Little support - free hosts rarely provide easy-to-access support. Some will provide forums where you can post questions and may or may not get an answer. Customers who switch to us from free hosting providers often explain that where they were provided with support they were made to feel like they were very low priority customers
• Server overload - to keep their costs down, many free hosting providers cram as many websites into their servers as possible. This can affect their performance or lead to downtime if the server gets overloaded and needs to be rebooted
• Features and benefits - free hosts often provide shared services and settings. You don't have the flexibility to request site setting changes and may or may not be able to install the applications you want. Advanced features such as domain names, sophisticated email services and database driven websites may not be offered

What about paid providers? Is cheaper better?

If you shop around when searching for a hosting provider in Australia, you will generally find low, medium and high priced providers. How do you decide between them?

• Does it follow that the high cost ones are overpriced and the cheaper ones are better value for money? No
• The most expensive sites may not be good value for money because the service may not match the price you pay.
• The cheap sites may not be good value for money either because your space, traffic or performance may be restricted. The old adage is often true: you get what you pay for.

To try and get the best value for money for you when buying hosting think about the following:

• If you're looking at a cheap provider, ask them how many other sites they are hosting on their servers. The more crammed their servers are, the worse the performance your site may be.
• Do a search for their company on Australian web hosting forums like 'whirlpool'. A company that frequently runs into negative comments on there may be someone you have to look at more closely before buying
• Find out how much bandwidth and data transfer you get for your money. How does it compare to competitors who charge the same price?
• What features do you get? Does the host have spam protection? Do they run the right scripting language for your site? If it's PHP, what version do they use?
• What is the balance between setup fees and monthly cost? If there is a setup cost balance this out against the monthly fees. Osc Works does not charge any setup cost for web hosting.
• What level of uptime do you get?
• What level of support do you get?

What is a shared IP address and how is it different from a dedicated IP address? What do you need for your website?

Every domain name on the web has an IP address assigned to it like 75.125.237.98. The IP addresses are like a telephone number for a web server that is hosting your website. So do you need a shared or a dedicated IP address for your website? The answer is it depends on what you want to do with your site.

In many cases, customers choose a shared IP address. A shared IP address occurs where there are multiple domain names that all point to the same server address. An individual web server may have tens or hundreds of web sites all sharing the same IP address depending on the size of those sites and the kinds of traffic they use. When a browser goes to look for a website e.g. www.yourdomain.com.au the domain name lookup servers tell the browser that www.yourdomain.com.au points to the server IP address of the hosting provider. It then goes to that server and asks for the website name at that address. It does not affect performance of the site.

The key benefit of a shared IP addresses is that it usually keeps costs down for customers. As there is no separate IP address for the hosting company to manage, this saving is often passed on to customers in terms of their package prices.

If your site is going to hold a shopping cart or run a complex web-application like a gaming server, you will find you need a dedicated IP address. A dedicated IP address means that your site does not share an IP with other customers even if they are physically housed on the same server. You would be able to type your dedicated IP address into a web browser and see your site. For example, www.oscworks.com.au has its own IP address of 174.133.139.23 so if you type this into your browser you will see our website. A dedicated IP address is a mandatory minimum requirement for getting an SSL Certificate to collect credit card details within your site.