How to choose the right hosting plan

If you are having problems choosing the right hosting package, here is a little bit of information that will hopefully help you out.

While it’s great that there’s so many options, this can also contribute to greater confusion. You’re starting a website, either for yourself or a client, and you need to get hosting for that site – but there’s so many different options. Here we’ll break down what those options are, and how they may relate to your situation.

Shared Hosting

Websavers’ Helium, Carbon and Titanium Plans

Shared hosting is your typical web hosting environment; you share space on a server with a number of other clients, with each person having an allotment of space and resources that you can use. Shared hosting is perfect for most websites, and it provides an excellent value. You get a significant amount of storage space (up to 50GB with our Titanium plan!) and, with the right configuration, can handle thousands of visitors a month without any problems. But is it right for you?

For End-Users / People hosting their own sites:

Unless your website requires large amounts of resources or handles many thousands of visitors a month, you’re probably perfectly fine with a shared hosting account! If you’re not sure if your website would do well in Shared Hosting, why not contact us and let us help you? We’d be happy to help you make the right decision!

For Web Developers / Designers:

Shared environments are great for your own sites, or for your clients sites, but be wary of the idea of hosting your clients sites within your own shared hosting account. Some hosts don’t allow it at all, and may suspend your account for a violation of their terms of service. We do allow it, but let me explain why it could be a bad idea.

If you host clients within your own shared hosting account: 

• Your client will have to go through you for everything. You can’t give them their own login, and any little change will have to go through you.
• Your client may feel stuck without any way to change hosts. They’ve got no access to their files except through you, and this can become problematic if your relationship with them sours.
• If a client’s website gets hacked, it’s possible for the hack / infection to spread through your entire shared hosting account – infecting every other site you’re hosting in there.

If you help your clients sign up for their own shared hosting account:

• You’ll receive recurring affiliate commission through our revenue sharing program.
• Your clients will have their own Client Centre and Plesk logins, and can perform all the tasks they may need to such as email password changes.
• Your clients will be able to contact us directly for any technical support they may need with their hosting plan.
• Your clients will feel secure knowing that they have the portability and flexibility of their own hosting account.

Reseller Hosting

With Reseller Hosting you get some of the the benefits of your clients having their own shared hosting accounts, with added rewards of being able to make additional income by reselling the hosting to them for a monthly or annual fee. This can be a great addition to a Web Designer / Developer’s business plan, and a great way to turn one-time income into an ongoing income stream.

For End-Users / People hosting their own sites:

This isn’t for you, I’m afraid. But head down to Virtual Private Servers below for more information that may be relevant for you!

For Web Developers / Designers / Agencies:

This is all about risk and reward for you. The upside of Reseller hosting is that you can, as the name would imply, sell the hosting to your clients. You set the prices, you set the service plan limits, you keep the money you make from it. This is a great way to turn your one-time web design or development projects into an ongoing revenue stream, and is a fantastic compliment to any sort of maintenance package you offer!

Key features:

• Additional revenue stream
• Clients get their own Plesk logins and can manage many hosting things themselves as a result.
• Subscriptions are separated / sandboxed, avoiding the issue mentioned above in “Shared Hosting” about hacked sites spreading.
• Clients still contact you for any technical support and you, in turn, can reach out to us for support.

Virtual Private Servers

A Virtual Private Server is a great way to set yourself up for maximum control over every aspect of your hosting environment. You can configure branding and white-labelling in every way, you can configure the server specifically for your desired use, and – if you’re offering hosting to clients – you can even set up automation systems just like we do for setting up accounts. Not comfortable with managing a server yourself? We offer many convenient management options to help you focus on what you do best, leaving the server to us.

For End-Users / People hosting their own sites:

If your site is very busy or resource-intensive, this may be the option for you! Instead of sharing an environment with other users, you’ll have your own ‘slice’ of a larger server which is dedicated just for your use. That means you’ll have your own CPU, RAM, and other resources that nobody else can make use of. You’ll also have the scalability to add more resources on-demand and without any reboots.

Key features:

• Your own dedicated environment, allowing your site (and your business) room to grow beyond what typical hosting can support
• Control over every aspect of the hosting environment and the ability to set up access and services that would not be allowed on a shared hosting account.

For Web Developers / Designers / Agencies:

This is a great way to let your business really grow. If you’ve maxed out what Reseller hosting can provide, or you just want to take that next step and have a truly white-labelled environment that your customers see as being an extension of your business, this is the way to go.

Key features:

• Provide your customers with a hosting experience that is entirely branded to your company.
• (If using a panel like Plesk): The ability to create service plans, DNS templates, backup, and web-app configurations that suit exactly the needs of you and your customers.
• Nearly unlimited scalability; need more resources? We can accommodate you!

How do you know if your site’s traffic requires a VPS? The answer is actually simpler than you might expect: most sites with under 100k daily page views are fine on shared hosting. But: if your site requires dynamic processing on all pages you probably need a VPS. For example if you’ve got a tracking plugin that logs every single visitor to every page of your site in your database, or if you have a shopping cart ‘mini view’ in your header that loads dynamic contents of the cart on every page view. In these cases and with something like only 20k daily page views, you may require a VPS.

Dedicated Server

While a VPS does meet even the highest requirements of almost every client we have, there are some who still may need more. For these cases, a dedicated server may be an option! While we don’t typically offer dedicated servers, we certainly can make them available as our customers may require. If you’re not sure if a VPS solution will meet your needs, contact us and we’ll help you find the best solution for your hosting requirements.