Every blogger host his blog initially at shared server due to the fact that shared server has sufficient capability to handle initial traffic and bear the server load. Web Space, Bandwidth and number of SQL database are the main ingredients of shared server. So in short, shared server hosts many domains and share its resources among all domains. You have CPU/Memory resources in limitation.
Here is a situation, What if you have rapid flood of traffic, What if your blog or site uses a lot of resources due to any reason?
I tell you, you will get sudden suspension of your account from your host, because your site or blog started consumption of resources over its allocation. This is the situation which every blogger has to face at some time and is supposed to choose wisely a hosting company.
I faced same situation, I opted for annual hosting plan from a well established hosting company. My site got suspension three times.
First time it was due to some type of attack, because at some time I was getting listed my post and very next moment, upon refreshing, there was no post in my blog. Hosting server started overloading and hosting company suspended my blog.
I installed fresh copy of WordPress, restored backup and took all possible measures to protect my site. Combination of different plugins served me very well. One plugin was showing me the usage of server resources by my blog. It was showing usage of resources separately for header, index and footer files to dig out the culprit section of site. Other plugin was monitoring the whole sites’ file to notify any type of change in it.
Well my post in not about securing the WordPress but to discuss the drawbacks of shared server.
After some time my site was suspended again due to rapid fire of traffic. My Google analytics account showed me 1500% increase in traffic but the unfortunate and without any warning suspension diverted the fortune moment from me.
And third time, company claimed that they permanently suspended my site due to extra resources usage by file index.php. They tried their level best to convince and force me to purchase a VPS. My site was remain suspended for 17 hours as I was on my full time job and can’t change the host from my office.
Upon my consistent request, they allowed only my IP to dig out the problem. When I logged in my site, all was normal; no alarm, no signal from any plugin or from stat program. I was confused. I contacted hosting company to share some stat, but they refused to do so. Their attitude forced directed me to think from some other direction, was it some type of strategy to increasing the sales? In the last, I was left with no choice but to move to another hosting company.
All my investment for annual hosting plan just wasted. The hosting company refused me to refund the rest of amount due to problem caused by my site. I argued with them, tried to convince them that such type of situation was not created by me and I took corrective measures after first suspension.
In the last, I informed them about my final decision for forwarding my case to FTC with various points like;
- No permanent suspension clause in their TOS.
- Suspension of my account without any warning mail and their extreme action of permanent suspension of my site, again without any warning mail.
- Most important, their representative told me that they allow 10 processes per cpanel account and 20-30 MB of Ram for every process. So, how could my site can eat 300 MB of Ram without leaving traces?
- Non Sharing of stats from their side.
After taking up the matter with them for many days, they refunded me the full amount, which I was not expecting from them.
I moved to another host and this time decided one thing. I will not purchase annual hosting plan for shared server at least. You are not sure what should happen next time and hosting company may suspend your account even.
Currently I am on monthly hosting plan; it is more expensive as the discount rate in shape of coupon code is very little for monthly purchase plan and it is costing me almost $9.11/Month and in aggregate about $109 for 12 months while the same plan is also offered in $66 for 12 months. But I don’t want to risk my investment.
Hosting company has a justification that your site has been suspended due to your excess usage of shared server resources and they can’t refund the money.
My decision about opting monthly hosting plan may not seem a wise one, but I am ensuring that my money will not be wasted due to suspension and monthly plan will also reduce suspension issues.
I learned a lot from my experience, actually every blogger learn each and every time. If your site is live, you can work with complete pace of mind. No problem if I am spending some extra bucks, but I am satisfied.
My investment is secured now and as is in risk only to the extent of what I have paid for one month. I am not worried about suspension issues as my current host “HostGator” is a renowned company. And I got their successful business secret. I will review at some time “HostGator”, why they are so successful and a trusted name in hosting business.
Share your experience of shared server hosting and comment the performance, support service of your hosting company.
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Excellent post Imran and thanks for sharing; something which probably only 1% of the entire blogging community does. I guess it’s all a matter of individual ‘choices’ but your approach regarding sharing is much appreciated and I salute you for that. Every time i read any of your blogs, I admire your approach even more. Thank you!
Thanks for your words as such comments are lifeblood for a blog. I try my level best to share my experience with all you people. Your comments, feedback encourage me to keep moving on. Keep reading.
Hey i liked your article. It is very informative and actually eye opening. Here we have opportunity to learn from your experience. Keep it up and share valuable information.
Chand, its good to see you here and thanks for your words. What i observe and learn, i try to share that with my readers.
I had a VPS server with DreamHost and the performance was so bad that I had to switch to a shared hosting plan with HostMonster. Traffic spikes do happen, especially if you use StumbleUpon you could see massive spikes which will cripple your blog due to resource limits and can cause outages. I was seeing 6-8 hour of outages per week on my DreamHost VPS and this was with 1GB of RAM allocated. A poor hosted VPS is not going to solve performance problems, but only mask them in some cases so just know that if your blog is prone to big spikes, you could end up paying a lot of money for a VPS and many charge you by how much RAM you need to allocate.
VPS also shares the same physical server with other machines, you just have a dedicated operating system. This means that DDOS attacks and network floods that eat up 100% bandwith of the network interface card could still affect your site if your site shares the same network card/port as other websites on the same physical server.
In shared hosting, if you can pay extra for a dedicated IP, it is always preferred and minimizes your risk and at least rules out whether your IP is the offender or under attack or not.
.-= Dragon Blogger´s last blog ..Export Feedburner Email Subscribers to CSV File =-.
DraggonBlogger, i really appreciate you advice of dedicated IP. I got your point , by adopting that precautionary measure, one can easily find out the problematic area.
And i am amazed that DreamHost has so much bad VPS. Renowned company of that level should not deploy cheap hardware. Sound Technical staff also help in a stable server.
So we should avoid DreamHost in future.
I am pretty much sure that it was a tactic of increasing their sale, that rotten hosting company. I don’t think that a blog would eat up that much of resources even if it has been getting a lot of traffic. Many newbie bloggers face the same kind of problem from hosting providers so the first thing while creating a blog is that we must take notice of our hosting. We should buy hosting from only the most reputed hosts. And I think when we are signing up for hosting for the first time from any company we should first signup for only 3 to 6 months or probably 1 month to check out how their hosting is. It is good to know that you were able to recover your blog after such behaviour by your previous host. Hostgator is quite good and I dont think so you will have any problem there. Best of luck
.-= Shiva Chettri´s last blog ..8 Great Microsoft Word Replacements =-.
Yes Shiva, at one point i was suspicious of their statement which was converted into confirmation later. They were forcing me for VPS. A VPS. They tried their best to make e fool and purchase their ever time expensive VPS system. But after consultation with a blogger, i opted for HostGator. though i missed their heavy coupon discount but now i am satisfied. I am taking regular backup of my blog. If you have any suggestion for automated backup of images (upload folder) and plugins folder, please share the plugin or method with us.
One great post!
It seem that you are suffering of the same I was suffering with my blogs and plugins!!!
I don’t know but I will move to VPS on the first chance! I don’t think I will change my opinion about Shared hosting like GoDaddy, I am not lucky with them at all and this is why I have moved to BlueHost, and BlueHost has only sharing hosting service, so I am moving to VPS with another company!
.-= Hesham´s last blog ..What is The Best Blogs for Bloggers at 2010 =-.
Hesham, this is true that bad coded plugins also cause such problems. It seems that every hosting company has some problems. Currently i am using HostGator and satisfied with them. Hesham when you switch to VPS, please share your experience and company because sooner or later we also have to.
Hosting on shared server is a fail. Best to buy your own hosting. Shared server makes your site slow
.-= Kharim´s last blog ..Blog Engage – A Must For All Bloggers =-.
True, Very True. I am also of opinion that shared server is a short term investment and anytime , without any intimation, your site may go… Down. But at initial stage of blogs, VPS or dedicated server are very costly.
My blog is on shared hosting but I consider to move to VPS. I have monitored site uptime and response times with Pingdom and sometimes the response is indeed slow from certain locations.
I wonder whether the a cheap VPS plan (for example: 10GB space, 250gb bandwidth, 384 RAM, 0.56 GHZ CPU) will perform better than a shared hosting, or should I go with a better plan with higher CPU and RAM ?
.-= Omer Greenwald´s last blog ..Optimizing Images for a Faster Website =-.
Omer, what i have learned is, running a blog is not an easy task. Do you know VPS has further bifurcation in to two categories. Managed and unmanaged. Managed VPS costs more. Your quoted plan has CPU bottleneck, in my opinion. Other wise its great plan for a VPS. If possible, try that VPS for limited time first and then decide for permanent adoption of your suggested plan. Or consult the bloggers in your community.
Thanks for the answer, I’ll keep this advice in mind
.-= Omer Greenwald´s last blog ..Optimizing Images for a Faster Website =-.
hi,Imran,In my opinion bluehost is best for shared hosting plans.Where i host for one year now,no downtime,now forcing out!!!!
Aaslin, i would be more beneficial if you share some basic information of your traffic and number of plugins you are currently using. Page views and number of visits will help us to now the quality of Blue Host servers. Number of plugins will give us idea how much resources your index.php file is using. Hope you will share the stats.
Good to know you switched to HostGator. Lets hope you’ll have a soothing experience and waiting for the day when you’ll review hostgator hosting.
Is it not too much expensive with monthly plan compared to half yearly or yearly? Where will remain the difference if you pay lot more than to loose half of the duration you’v paid?
I should not forget to thank you for whatever upgrade and optimizing you’ve done to my blog. I’m surprised to see my new posts indexed and listed on first or second page just within 15 minutes. I’m totally surprised to see the effect of SEO. You are great at SEO!
.-= Suresh Khanal´s last blog ..Where can I find a list of commentLuv blogs? =-.
Thanks Suresh for your Comments. You came after a long time. Well i will soon review HostGator, but let me try it for some time and put the server in high traffic test. I don’t want to spread any wrong or misleading information.
Most of the time it really does come down to “You get what you pay for.” I’m currently on shared hosting, and it’s been pretty good. I have outages every once in awhile, but for the amount of traffic I currently receive, it works and it’s also very affordable. I realize the day will come, probably soon, that I will have to get a VPS, but I still have more research to do. Thanks for the article, it’s reminded me to continue my search! Haha
.-= Ryan Cowles´s last blog ..Metacom Newsletter and Invoice / Resume Redesign =-.
I agree with your statement Ryan. But even for a market standard price, some web hosts are not meeting their promise. VPS is next step and you better to have some research before time comes and it becomes unavoidable to switch to VPS. My current shared hosting company is doing a great job and i am happy with their services. In same price that i was paying to my previous web host, i have now pace of mind.
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