Finding the right hosting provider is not rocket science... I think.
[This is part of the Blogging Foundations Starter Kit Series.]
One of the best things that you can do when looking for a new hosting provider for your blog is simply do your research. But most people have no idea where to necessarily start in terms of that research!
What I’ve realized is that most people choose their hosting providers based on a recommendation from someone they trust rather than identifying their needs first and then finding the right provider that matches those needs. This is a general observation with the exception of pricing (because every ultimately leverages pricing differences as a significant basis of their choice, right?).
This isn’t a bad thing necessarily and I believe that generally your friends and those that you trust are going to be good sources of information and referrals but it pays (literally) to do a few tests and use a few resources to help you get closer to the right decision.
Here are a couple of sites that might help:
1. Who Is Hosting This?
Who Is Hosting This is a very simple source that can provide the necessary information that you want about the websites and blogs that you admire the most.
I mean, what better a hosting provider than the one that’s hosting your favorite blog(s)? Use this very simple tool to find out that information!
2. You Get Signal
You Get Signal is one of those websites that you’ll instantly bookmark – it has a huge list of services that you can use for free including reverse IP checks, WHOIS lookups, trace routes, and more. It can give you a lot of information about a particular hosting provider, especially about a blog that you respect and trust.
3. Geo Tool
Geo Tool is a simple service that lets you see where any business or site has their hosting. You can see the details of the actual location, IP address, Internet Service Provider (ISP), and more. You want to know where the servers are and if you’re aware of where most of your traffic comes it’s advantageous to have a host that’s located near those visitors.
4. Domain Tools
Domain Tools is one of the more well-known and respected tools out there.
5. Blame Stella
Blame Stella is a new-ish service that you can use to see the response time and quality of a hosting provider for a specific blog and/or site. It’s got a clean interface and is easy to navigate. Pretty slick!
Love to know what you use! And, of course, here’s the hosting service that I use!
Finally, looking for some more tools to use? Check out these two posts:
- 10 Sites to Test Your Blog’s Performance (Page Speed, Caching, Server)
- 13 More Tools for Testing the Performance of Your Blog
[This is part of the Blogging Foundations Starter Kit Series. Image via xraydelta1.]
I just recently signed up with Dreamhost. I had been using freehostia.com, but got tired of the limitations. I just checked my site on some of the ones that you listed above. Seems like it is running pretty well. I’d love to hear what you think, if you have time.
I love how fast my site loads now. It’s not perfect, but i’m working on it.
awesome! keep it going!
I use bluehost because of a recommendation a few years ago. Not sure how it compares. I don’t do much in the way of coding (out of fear), so I probably don’t have a good handle on how it compares.
I use bluehost as well, but don’t really mess with it either because I don’t want to mess anything up.
experiment!
might want to try to experiment a bit…!
Great information and information John. As a web developer this is a question I get asked a lot. What makes a good web host. And how do you know their good. I’ll be using some of these resources and sending clients who want to find their own service to this article.
sweet! thanks mike!
I am so digging on blame stella!
it took a while for it to refresh my results, but i like it!
Excellent post. You’ve given me something I’ve never seen before (and I’ve been around a lot).
I’m using Host Discovery. Have been for years. $7.50 a month and they’ve pulled my irons out of the fire several times with their excellent customer service. They even edited by .htmaccess file when I ran into problems modifying some Expression Engine code and kludged it up.
There are cheaper services out there, but the difference in price isn’t worth it for me.
that is a glowing review. thanks bill for jumping into the convo!
Great post, awesome resources that I will be adding to my toolkit.
I have been with Dreamhost since 2006 for a lot of reasons, but high traffic sites I host on VPS servers, BluemileCloud, and Slicehost which looks now likek it will be Rackspace, as well as dev sites on EC2. I agree, test, experiment, there are a lot of great choices out there.
Thanks for the tools, like I said, I will be using these when evaluating hosts for clients.
cheers.
research is one of my greatest tools!
Hey John, the link which you provided for the Geo Tool is either invalid or expired. The new working address for GeoTool is http://geoip.flagfox.net/
Cheers!