Finding the Best Web Hosting Solution

September 27, 2010 - Last Modified: March 29, 2014 by Hesham Zebida 1,339

Finding the best web hosting solution for our blog was our concern during the last a few days. We are officially running FB on one of HostGator servers as a result of several down times at BlueHost.
so.. If you’ve experienced down times during the last couple of weeks, we would like you to know that we are now back to business.

Most of our blog readers knows that we publish a new blog post everyday, some times more than one update on the same day. Hosting problems kept us from updating the blog in the last two days, as I wasn’t so sure how and where exactly I will be hosting FamousBloggers.net, oh! and I also got some nice hosting discount from my friend Harsh over WPHostingDiscount.com.

I apologize for being late on publishing your guest posts last week, I was having some hard times, it sounds crazy, but I’ve moved the blog and tested it live on two different hosting services that I own, all this happen during the last three days, and still not fully satisfied with results, especially page load speed.

Do we need a VPS hosting?

I ask this question to myself while trying to find the best web hosting solution, thinking of the future and what we will need as our blog is growing, I also put in mind my other projects and sites that has been running on the same shared hosting service.

Shared hosting could be a cheap solution, this is why it’s a good start, it also still working for us, but what if we have a problem with server at anytime?

I really don’t want this to stop us from running, also the requirements of the blog is increasing everyday, more guest bloggers are depending on us by giving their best content to be published here, we really won’t disappoint anyone.

While trying to find the best web hosting solution, I can say “nothing is perfect”, even following high ratings hosting services doesn’t mean 100% guarantee. I am experiencing slow load, some database connection errors, and I don’t know what other problems or errors that our readers might get while visiting the blog (most of these problem is solved after moving to HostGator)

I am considering a VPS hosting, I am doing some tests right now and preparing the next move in case we need it.

I hope to hear some opinions and feedback, this will really help!

About Hesham Zebida

Follow @hishaman

I create websites with WordPress, and I develop Schema Plugins to help SEOs. I am a social network lover. I am also the night creature who works hard to keep this project up. Owner and founder of the Famous Blog.

{ 95 Responses }

Mubashir says:

A nice research sir, I am also planning to move my web from local host to Hostgatar
carol m says:

Once again, Hesham, you deliver reliable information. I agree that Hostgator is very good. I haven't tried any others, but I've never needed to go looking for a new host. And HG have saved my bacon several times when I didn't know how to fix a problem. I'm new to blogging, so having a reliable and helpful Host is extra important - Hostgator has always been there for me and always fixed the problem. Thanks for a great site, Hashem, Carol
Hannan Yousaf says:

I think Hostgator, Blue host and Godaddy is best but i think this kind of articles really play their role while selecting a hosting.
Melinda says:

I agree. After dealing with multiple web hosting companies, Bluehost and HostGator are the only 2 I find reliable. I have a client in process of moving to HostGator VPS so I will let you know in a few weeks what I think. It is much faster.
Jupiter Jim says:

Hesham, As usual, well-written, thoroughly researched article. My only addition is that you need to recommend Hostmonster.com because Hostmonster.com is a "sister" company or essentially the same company as Bluehost. Otherwise, my clients are going to be wondering why I use Hostmonster and am recommending that to them, if you are saying they should use BlueHost! Thanks, Jupiter Jim p.s. it looks like the commentluv links are not working for me below.
Bican Valeriu says:

I have hosting from Justhost.com. When I signed up I used a coupon with 50% OFF. Their support is great !
Kirsty says:

I agree with Aakash that if you have a small or new blog then use the cheaper plan or smaller plan and if your blog is big already and having a lot of visitors then thats the time you more to bigger plan.
Aakash says:

Yes if you just started the blog than I think you should go for the small plan and later as your blog grow you can move to the bigger plan. This way you can always save good money.
Aakash says:

Hostgator is really expanding ... and within near to 8 - 10 years they are one of the best hosting provider of the world.
Vijayraj Reddy says:

i use hostgator and i am happy, planning to move to VPS once my blog grows...
Gustav says:

I read every comment above as well as the post hoping to find a good solution to my prolonged problem of extremely slow loading Wordpress sites, and I'm still confused. I did my best to optimize my WP sites, experimenting with different plugins, etc., to no avail. None of my WP sites exceed 10 pages, and I'm now running WP Super Cache. I just changed hosts and moved 9 sites to Hostgator also, and use their shared hosting, and at times sites take 10 to 15 seconds to load which is not good. I don't know if VPS will help my loading time or not and if so, what kind of a plan do I need? I wish that I knew more about this tech side of the business, but I don't. I'd appreciate any helpful comments or suggestions. Thanks.
- Jason says:
  
  @Gustav Your blog is loading fine for me. Webwait.com rates it at 1.53 seconds - for comparison, famousbloggers.net is 8.87 seconds. Perhaps it's a problem local to your Internet connection? You might want to try it on a different connection, if you haen't done so already.
ZK says:

As we grow ... our demand also grow. So this is good sign. This is similar when we work on small office with 4 to 5 staff and now we have more staff hence we need big office and other basic requirements. So if you are thinking that time arrived to expand than do it ...
Fazreen says:

Hostgator for the win. I have used hostgator for 1 year and It is a great hosting provider. By the way, any hosting providers must have their pros and cons. So the choice is yours.
Sujith says:

I am also in a migration phase to Hostgator. Within few hours of experience, I did feel their excellent customer support.
- ZK says:
  
  Yes I noticed this yesterday that your blog is not in shape ... So on which plan you moved ?
lawmacs says:

Hesham Fb is growing and you might have to think about making that move sooner than later i know the cost is a point to think about but at your stage downtime is an hindurance to success i understand it but advertisers don't sometimes its better to make the move sooner than later. good luck my friend.
- ZK says:
  
  Yes good and well build infrastructure is the basic requirements of every business. In our case this is hosting, design, contents. So I think FB reached at that level where we should move to more reliable plan with less downtime and fast.
Julius says:

So the site speed is not good with Hostgator? For me it seems to be loading fine. With a site like yours I might consider choosing VPS hosting instead of shared. Of course you can always stick to shared then upgrade when you want to. By the way it always takes some time to get the site up and running when switching web hosts.
TJ McDowell says:

I'm a big fan of GoDaddy. I think they have solutions for pretty much every level of hosting. I moved to them from another hosting company because the website went down a lot and they didn't have good support. Every time I've called in to GoDaddy, I've talked with a real knowledgeable person. Cost isn't bad either.
Mani Viswanathan says:

It purely depends on the resources FB uses on Hostgator. Check the server usage, CPU Throttles,etc. I would suggest you can go for a 256 MB RAM VPS (Currently)
- Jarret says:
  
  I would be amazed if Hesham can run on 256 MB RAM VPS. I only have 2 sites hosted on my VPS and I need a minimum of 400 MB RAM to stay afloat during spikes--unless the hosting plan can handle bursts. I'm quite sure that Famous Bloggers gets far more traffic than my two sites. I'm still amazed that he's managed on shared hosting to this point.
  - ZK says:
    
    Yes maximum times they closed the account ... Hesham you can also try sponsorship for the hosting. I am sure you will get many offers.
  - Mani Viswanathan says:
    
    Is HighhealthMedia one among the two websites you're talking about on a VPS ? If yes then I'm certainly gonna start collecting funds :P
Linda says:

I use hostmonster for all my blogs and they work pretty good although lately they have been down because of some transformer blowing up or something. Anyway, I am not very familiar with the difference between shared and VPS in terms of bandwith...Is it faster? And how many visits/day would justify switching over?
Dr. Lawrence Kindo says:

I sure can guess the burden on shared hosting for famousbloggers with the number of users growing. I recommend you switch to VPS as suggested by most seasoned guys in the business. Sure, shared hosting works for small blogs like mine for a start.
Paul says:

2 weeks ago I had to move my blog from godaddy to hostgator because my blog was too slow with godaddy. For now everything is working fine with hostgator
Kimi says:

I guess you also need a VPS since your blog is growing. From what i read from various forums, if you runs many blogs and these blogs "eats" the bandwidth too much, they will be suspended because of it. Good luck with the moving!
Andreas says:

I am using hostgator for some small client sites since a long time with success. However, I recommend employing a third party backup solution if you do not want to lose your data when something unforeseen happens to the server.
element321 says:

Thats not good. I thought Blue Host was suppose to have good hosting services...Its good that you are now on HostGator. So far, they are great. I have had to outages. But those were because of stumble traffic spikes and not having my cache plugin setup properly. They went and configured it for me and my site runs faster and had my site go down since. I have notices on FB several times since the move, I am getting slower load times. I am not sure if its my connection/hardware if its the host causing it. But hopefully this resolves your issues.
- Jarret says:
  
  I know Hesham's had problems with BlueHost, but I think that's probably more because of his high resource usage than a problem with Bluehost. I manage one site that's one bluehost shared that does 200k monthly page views with tons of plugins and it has never gone down. Bluehost shared is also faster than Dreamhost VPS which my other two sites are currently hosted by. (I would not recommend Dreamhost VPS BTW--I just haven't bothered migrating yet). Overall, Bluehost is an excellent shared hosting option for most people. I have another site that was on Hostgator shared. I had very little downtime on Hostgator, but it didn't seem to be the fastest hosting. I also noticed that FB seemed to run much faster when it was still on Bluehost.
chandan says:

I took shared hosting service from one of my friend and it is going cool, no any issue till now.
Kimberly Castleberry says:

Hesham, I wasn't quite clear from your post if FB is currently on a HG VPS yet or not. I have one sitting empty, paid, through about the 10th (I could double check dates) if you wanted to upload a copy of FB there and stress test on it. Just an idea if you need one! Kimberly
- Hesham says:
  
  Oh Kim, this is so kind of you! This is actually the third offer I got by my friends, you really showed me great support, so glad here :) P.S. Fb is on HG shared hosting right now, I made a decision to make more tests, I have 4 shared hosting accounts, and another 2 VPS right now, testing them at the moment, and I hope to comfort FB on the right one! Many thanks dear, you are super awesome!
  - Kimberly Castleberry says:
    
    Any time hun! Never hesitate to ask! Given your alexa and taking a wild guess at your visits per day, I personally believe you probably need to be VPS at this point. You're sort of at that "cross over" and you could hang out for a little while with good caching but you're going to need a move soon. Since you're already having some issues I'd honestly suggest go VPS now and then you wont have to fuss with it again for a long while. Kimberly
Marijan Sivric says:

Shared hosting is a great solution if You just started a blog! But You have to track how much storage and bandwith do You need! If Your blog becomes very popular, You have to move it to VPS or even a dedicated server. And if YOur blog is popular, it means You can afford VPS or a server.
- MKR says:
  
  I estimated that on my current shared plan and with the optimizations I use (W3 Total Cache + a good theme), I'm good for about 4,000 hits a day (not counting return visitors with cached files). If I can't make enough money for VPS from the blog at that point, I've got no business running a blog with that many hits. :D
Lennart Heleander says:

Hi Hesham, Testing and testing to you find the best one for you, for me is the best one who can help me very quick when I have a problem.
Khalid Hosein says:

Hesham - we were once hosted on a shared solution, and we'll never go back. We tried out a dedicated server, but that started to get expensive, right as VPS solutions using Xen and other virtualization really started getting it right. Right now, we're on Linode, and loving it. It's pretty cheap (512MB slice starts at $20/mo) and you can upgrade in place with minimal downtime. Their support, wiki and articles are also top-notch. Another very good option that a lot of folks also choose to go with is Slicehost. We've used them as well, but in the end Linode won out. The details of that comparison could take up an entire post!
- Harsh Agrawal says:
  
  I agree Khalid..Linode is really amazing and cheap with quality hosting..But again it's an unmanaged hosting and if one is not technically equipped or don't have any1 who can take care of managing hosting, better stick to managed VPS...
  - Khalid J Hosein says:
    
    Harsh - good point about the management, I did forget that. I guess since I come from a sys admin background, I much prefer the control I have with an unmanaged VPS/dedicated solution. I can do things with my Wordpress and OS that no shared/managed solution will let me do. Hesham - if you've got some time, Olly (aka the_guv) at VPSBible has some really good tutorials with videos on getting a VPS set up, and he also uses Linode.
    - Hesham says:
      
      I took a look, they have great info indeed! I will be checking Khalid! Thank you so much for your time man!
      - Harsh Agrawal says:
        
        Hesham As I stated in other comment, I will be moving to unmanaged VPS on Linode and I have a guy who is doing it for me..If everything goes right, I will hook him up with you..The thing is he is very reasonable with his price.. So you might enjoy his service.. :)
        
        Hesham says:
        
        That would be nice ;)
  - Jason says:
    
    This is what keeps me away from VPS's in principle. I do have the expertise to manage one, but not the time (unless it became absolutely necessary). I have enough to worry about without adding iptables configurations and package updates to the mix.
- Hesham says:
  
  Thank you so much for the info Khalid! much appreciated! As Harsh said, I personally don't have enough with servers, I've tried to solve the math but still no use! I anyways got a VPS.net and then discovered that I can not yet manage it! I will play around till the end of my one month with them, probably I will learn something! let's hope.
Tinh says:

Good to see with HostGator now. I am there too for nearly two years, just shared hosting account but rally happy, support by live chat and tickets are awesome. P/S: I have thought to shoot you an email about your bluehost issue as I have seen low loading time while visiting your blog and thesisawesome too. Good you are are fine now :-)
- Harsh Agrawal says:
  
  That Bluehost issue was world wide and I believe many users shifted at the same time from Bluehost..It was almost 90% outage for a week and I know many bloggers friend who were facing this issue... !
  - Tinh says:
    
    You are right @ Harsh, Thu Nguyen from bloggingfor and many others had same issue. But, BlueHost will never support when you have DDos attack, they will kick you out like mine but HostGator had supported to prevent DDOS last week, my site down 3 times from DDos
    - Harsh Agrawal says:
      
      I'm not so sure about Bluehost customer support but I have faith on Hostgator customer support.. The good thing is they tries to help you by walking an extra mile and help you with everything..Even if your blog is hacked..They will run a proper audit to find and resolve the issue.. They have a proper support team for hacked blog.. Woo!! Love Hostgator :)
- Hesham says:
  
  I think the deal here is on what server you are, I think bluehost has two locations, I was on the one with lots of problems! I see other sites working well while mine is down! and of course we can not choose where to host! Anyways, FB still loading slower than I expected, don't you think so?
  - Tinh says:
    
    Why don't you give CDN a try to boost your loading time. It seems not much faster but you can give SharkSpace a try with 50% off lifetime and they give your options where to host, of course within US but different states, it makes different too. Coupon is: 50OFFLIFE
  - Harsh Agrawal says:
    
    Hesham I have noticed loading issue here on your blog...and if I'm not wrong..reason for slow loading is your php calls are a lot.. Try database caching plugin ... R u using Super cache or W3 total cache? Just to let you know even I started facing lots of issue with my hosting, but I'm sure issue is with cache plugin of my WordPress, I will be moving to linode from Knownhost...!! Lets see how it goes.. :)
    - Hesham says:
      
      You are right! Actually FB traffic doubled since you checked it last time! The new design is making a lot of database calls, I have extra 3 calls to bring authors and latest posts data! I see that home page load is slower than posts! Although, I am enabling database caching, it seems not doing great job! (total smache haha) It was faster on Bluehost, but what to do?! they put me on the wrong server :) also now on HG this server is at same town like 15 minutes from me, but still load slow lol! Update me, if there is something new!
      - Harsh Agrawal says:
        
        For the time being I would suggest try to remove few features which make excessive call... Else no matter what which ever server you will be using ..You will be facing issue... The first step when you see WordPress slow or not loading issue is check your own codes and try to optimize it and if everything is perfect from your end, time to shout out loud at hosting guys ;)
        
        Hesham says:
        
        I've done this at early stage when I first placed my codes, I got problems, so I removed the extra codes and got same problems, then I figured out that bluehost was (and maybe still) having an issue! There # on twitter is so hot! blog down.. blog up again!
Aaron says:

I'll put a plug in here for both HostNine and GeekStorage for shared hosting. For dedicated hosting, WebNX and Ubiquity are both great and fast.
abhishek says:

Being a web developer myself. I have tried all kind of hosting be it GODaddy, Hostnine, Hostgator , blue Host and many more. But eventually I settled down for hostgator for all my clients needs. I always advise them to Hostgator only. They are the best in business and I believe they command 10% of hosting business which is commendable to say the least. As for switching to hosting packages. I believe that one should select the hosting plans according to the requirements. Once you believe that shared hosting is causing your traffic to get stuck, then u can switch over to VPS or even a dedicated server.
Rachel Baker says:

I would recommend moving to a VPS. You can host your other domains with separate CPanel accounts (for reselling or friends), and you are not at the mercy of the other accounts on a shared server.
- Hesham says:
  
  You are right Rachel, thank you for the advice, I will try my luck with is soon!
Felix says:

Hostgator is the best webhosting company for me. They got many helpful staff to help you in case your blog got some troubles. I often contacted them through live support when there's something wrong and even help me seriously. @ Hesham, You are right nothing and no one is perfect but because of that, we learn and fixed what was the problem. Thanks for sharing this information. We understand your current situation. So far, I haven't encounter any problems regarding the page loading or whatsoever. - Felix
- Hesham says:
  
  Thank you for your feedback Felix, good to know HG helped you with your blog issues while some other services says it's not their problem!
Dan Lew says:

A blog your size and other sites you have should definitely be on a dedicated server. Problem is with a shared server your sharing with thousands of other sites, you don't know if some of those sites are banned on google or are porn related or anything so according to SEO your ip is generally less authority straight off the mark! Good Luck!
- Hesham says:
  
  Dan, you are right.. I decided to take this in steps, I wish I could move to dedicated directly and never bother moving sites over and over! I will update you! P.S. Thank you so much for your great support and kind offer to help! you are awesome man!
Dennis Edell says:

I've had a reseller account with Hostgator for years; never an issue. :)
- Caleb says:
  
  Hey Dennis, tell us about any success you may have had using the resellers program as some of us are curious about that option?
  - Dennis Edell says:
    
    Caleb, Success in what manner? I've never used it to sell hosing, at least not yet. I plan too eventually. After researching a bit, with the help of my first mentor (yea it's been a few years), I found the space and separate domain options much more attractive then simple "addons", which of course I also have.
- Harsh Agrawal says:
  
  Dennis is reseller hosting much better or being an affiliate for hostgator is more profitable??
  - Dennis Edell says:
    
    Harsh, As I mentioned to Caleb above, I’ve never used it to sell hosing, at least not yet. I plan too eventually. For the time being, it's all me and my sites. However, I'll say I could see it going either way. Reselling could be considerably more profitable if you have a number of accounts, as it is recurring money. Affiliating could be quite profitable if you are, 1 - good at it, and/or 2 - not able to get many to sign up for hosting. I'd personally recommend affiliating over reselling hosting to anyone that didn't want to commit 100% to reselling...it's a business in itself and a very competitive one.
MKR says:

I've been using the shared hosting subsidiary of a larger virtual and dedicated server company. It saves money early on, and they'll help move me over if I need a better server. Seems like that would be the optimum setup for someone who's just getting started and doesn't want to shell out for a virtual or dedicated server.
Pritam Nagrale says:

I am using Godaddy shared hosting which I think is a better solutions for me. The advantage of Godaddy is that its 99.9% up-time. Hostgator is also one of the good option.
Pritam says:

I have heard a lot about VPS hosting and its really good for big blogs like yours. For a starter to a medium level blogger, shared hosting is a good deal as it does not cost much and they don't have much burden on them. Pritam Nagrale
- Hesham says:
  
  True! thanks Pritam, I really appreciate your opinion!
Dana says:

I am a big fan of Hostgator but still say that the hostgator is also not perfect -- especially if you use the shared hosting.
Ryan Biddulph says:

Hi Hesham, Hostgator is great. I've had few problems with Hostmonster myself and recommend it. As you note, no hosting service is perfect though. Enjoy your day. Ryan
- Harsh Agrawal says:
  
  Ryan just for information purpose: Bluehost and Hostmonster are same company with different way of branding.. :)
  - Tinh says:
    
    They are twins :-)
Caleb says:

VPS is a good idea especially for a blog like this one. Others have mentioned simply getting a resellers account which to me is like an upgraded affiliate partnership, but you have more space to deal with. One overlooked option when choosing a web hoster is making sure it includes the ability of having add-on domains under that same account. It's like having tons of sites all hosted under one account for one small fee! btw, I'm with hostgator too ;)
- Hesham says:
  
  Thank you Caleb for the advice! I am working on it! I actually have more than 15 sites, and of course managing them from one place makes it more easy job!
Harsh Agrawal says:

Thanks for giving credit and hostgator are great...Specially with the server optimization they have done for Wordpress is great.. Though I never had luck with their VPS, but heard its also good.. just in case if Hostgator doesn't fits your need, move to Linode server (unmanaged one) or for managed VPS ( Vps.net) or ( knownhost).
- Hesham says:
  
  I am going to give HG VPS a try tomorrow if I have time and I will let you know! As you said.. managed hosting is cool for someone like me! I feel lost in a big city while trying VSP.net ;)
  - Harsh Agrawal says:
    
    Just to let you know Hostgator offer free migration, so you won't be facing much issue with migration + set up..The best thing is these guys understand WordPress, so you going to have gala time.. Though do come up with your feedback about Hostgator VPS after 2 week time..Will be good to hear real review... Regarding VPS.net, again it's easy to set up if you go with managed VPS + CPanel.. Using cPanel migrater in WHM, you can move your blog to VPS.net within minute.. Save this tip for later..but I hope it will be good if everything goes well with Hostgator VPS.. Best of luck with hosting chaos ;)
    - ZK says:
      
      Harsh ... seems to me that you are expert in three things at the moment - # Thesis # Hosting # Over all Business. Saw that you bought swift. Drive carefully my friend.
Samuel says:

If you can afford it, i think you must go for a VPS. You can grow depending on your experience and needs.
- Hesham says:
  
  Thank you Samuel, I think I can afford VPS, so I am going to give it a try!
  - Jacky Liang says:
    
    You can afford VPS, but if you want try out Rackspace Cloud. It's service is fanatical, and I host there. Never had any downtimes, nor it's slow and also I'm going to serve Cloud Hosting Services soon. It isn't a Joke.

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