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General Discussion

Best Hosting Site Service and plan

I wish to know which can be a recommended hosting site and also what plan do you recommend. I want to host a website for my institution for online computer training. Just like Treehouse.

7 Answers

Are you hosting the videos, or just embedding them from YouTube, Vimeo, etc?

I would always recommend VPS hosting if you're doing any amount of backend work (wth a VPS you have root control over the environment, instead of access only to the webroot and compiler). Different companies do different deals throughout the year (now is a great time to find a good deal as it's Christmas in the US so many American vendors will be running sales the next few weeks).

Who you go with depends on what you're looking for. If you want VPS and have a bit of backend knowledge already (e..g how to navigate a Linux distro, configure a webserver, etc) I would recommend Vultr. Awesome uptime and support, quick and easy configuration, clean admin panel UI. DigitalOcean is also pretty great. If your institution has a bit of a budget and you're AWS-savvy, would go with the AWS or Azure route. (Generally, based on your question, I would say you're probably not ready for AWS/Azure yet.)

If VPS hosting is a bit much for you (either technically or monetarily), GoDaddy is a pretty good solution for basic web hosting. They're a dependable, international brand with high uptime, decent customer service, and a fair (albeit tedious) admin experience. I've used probably all of the mainstream hosters and would never go back to them. Would specifically recommend staying away from HostGator (or any other companies associated with that brand), Namecheap (good for buying domains, not for hosting or anything else), 1&1, Dreamhost or Arvixe. As I recall, inMotion wasn't the worst but still wouldn't recommend.

Thanks @ Adefee

I had visit Vultr and DigitalOcean but I dont see any information related to vps hosting, onlike go daddy where it is clearly stated out VPS Hosting (Virtual Private Server). Secondly dont Vultr or DigitalOcean over service outside vps hosting?

moreover, the site i plan on hosting is much like treehouse and i plan on hosting the videos, although am still learning backend programming,

On VPS HOSTING CAN I HOST MORE THAN ONE WEBSITE?

when i visit vult what I see is Cloud Compute, Bare Metal, Block Storage and Dedicated Cloud which am i suppose to choose

On Vultr, their Cloud Compute is what you're looking for.

Yes, you can do more than one site - you just need to know how to configure virtualhosts (e.g. on nginx, ubuntu, etc) and DNS settings.

And yes, Vultr and DO both offer more than just VPS hosting. they offer a variety of solutions that may or may not be useful to you in this or other projects.

Thanks alot sir I wish to pick this one = 60GB SSD $20 2CPU 4096MB Memory, 3000GB Bandwith will this do for a start?

I dont see a place for searching my domain name like Godaddy does... Cant I host My domain Name?

Purchase your domain elsewhere and then point it to Vultr (if you're arent familiar with DNS, you'll want to do some research and take some crash courses on it - there are plenty of guides and info on the web).

As far as the VPS plan itself, you need to consider a variety of things: 1) How much traffic are you expecting to get when you start? 1 person a day? 5 an hour? 1000 a second? 2) What is your traffic doing? Viewing video, uploading video, both? 3) How many videos? How large is each video? Are you storing multiple versions of each? Translations? N) What else do you need to be able to do on your site? Admin? Payments?

These aren't questions you necessarily need to answer here - but the answers to those questions will define what kind of plan you purchase. For a basic site serving < 100 people, the plan you mentioned is more than enough memory and processing power; however, if you're adding a LOT of video, you're going to run out of storage space pretty quickly. A 10 minute video @1080p can be between300MB and 1.5GB, depending on compression and other factors. So, depending on how many people you have using your site (and how much video content each consumes), you may end up being short on space and bandwidth very quickly. FYI bandwidth tends to be the most expensive thing to upgrade as it's what typically costs the datacenters the most (which they push down to you).

You should do some quick math one what you think your storage and bandwidth usage is going to be daily, weekly, and over the first couple of months. Do the math for both the minimum number of users you expect, the likely/expected number of users, and the "oops we're more popular than we thought" best-case amount of traffic you might get. Then find a plan that covers most of your bases and gives you a little bit of breathing room in case your code isn't as efficient as you think it will be ;)

Hope that makes sense,.

You are not only making sense but impacting knowledge.... I really wish for someone like you as a mentor, taking time to break things down to the smallest details, thanks a lot, I really appreciate your time.

You're very welcome, happy to help. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask - you can also reach me directly at me@andrewdefee.com (Twitter via @adefee). Always happy to help, good luck!