Reviews, Uptime Statistics

by OnliveINfotech

There are many companies that provide managed hosting services.

Comentum also provides managed hosting services. For the clients who need full confidence that their website stays online even when there is a major event such as earthquake, fire, fiber cut, major power outage or other large events, we recommend colocating in different locations. We also recommend using different providers.

For the purpose of hosting your enterprise site in multiple locations, I have put together a managed hosting comparison chart of the top hosting providers (see below chart).

Quick Summary Notes:

• Rackspace - Managed server is their specialty so they have a good system in place - downside, they provide volume so there will be less hands-on, also, they are not generous with their server hardware; however they are generous with their bandwidth because they have large bandwidth resources.
• INetU - managed server is their specialty, they have a good system in place - they are more hands-on - they are less volume and more personalized approach - their server hardware is decent but they are not generous with their bandwidth.
• LiquidWeb - Managed server is about 50%-60% of their business - from technical data I gathered from their website, they have put together a good system for managed server and backup - they are offering a very generous server hardware and bandwidth for the price - downside is they provide a volume rather than hands-on and they provide shared hosting which in my opinion may take resources away from their managed hosting.
• The Planet - Managed server is about 60% -70% of their business - from the technical data I gathered from their website, they have put together a good system for managed server solutions and backup - they are offering generous server hardware and bandwidth for the price - downside is they provide volume rather than hands-on and they provide shared hosting, which in my opinion may take resources away from their managed hosting - they also had a major explosion in their Dallas Facility - I'm sure they learned their lesson from that and fixed their electrical problem.
• NeoSpire - managed server is their specialty, they have a good system in place - they are more hands-on - they are less volume and have a more personalized approach - they offer quality server hardware but they are not generous with their bandwidth.

Resource and Guide to Web Hosting

By OnliveINfotech

What is website hosting?

This service is a monthly service for hosting and serving your website on the Internet.

There are different levels of Website Hosting, and you may choose a level that best suites your needs.

Each level is explained below:

Low Cost Shared Hosting

With this service your Website and Email accounts are hosted on a server that is shared with thousands and thousands of other users.

This service is suited for static hobby Websites on a very tight budget. In order for hosting companies to provide the lowest possible hosting services and be able to compete with others, most of them use false advertising in order to get the highest number of customers.

Unfortunately, the false advertising is being ignored by the FTC and government agencies since web hosting services are considered to be business related and not consumer related, even though there are many consumers that are being influenced by the false advertising every day.

Below are some of the bad practices and false advertising that some of the hosting companies are carrying out:

• Low cost hosting companies put hundreds and thousands of websites and emails on the same server and advertise an amount of disk space and bandwidth for each customer, that is not possible or available.
• Low cost hosting companies advertise features that are not needed or are not a factor necessary to consider for a successful website.
• Low cost hosting companies will not tell you the important features that they are not providing, which should be an important consideration for a successful website.
• CPU usage is an important consideration in hosting a website. When a website has to share CPU usage with thousands of other websites and email accounts, once your website is successful and draws traffic, it will not be able to run on that type of CPU overloaded environment.
• Latest upgrades, security patches and server software and extensions are another important factor in serving a website. Most low cost hosting companies do not provide the latest server software, extensiosn and security patches, leaving your site vunarable to security risks.
• Low cost hosting companies provide multiple services on the same server, such as website hosting and email hosting. This puts a burden on the server's CPU capability and will also add many additional vulnerabilities to the server.
• Having thousands of websites and emails running on the same server creates a hard-to-manage environment and adds a substantial likeliness for the server to be attacked or exploited and used for spam and fraud.
• When there are thousands of users using the same server, it is more likely that there are more novice users uploading unsecured scripts, or they inadvertently cause a vulnerability for the shared hosting server.
• There is no back up or if there is, if something goes wrong with the server, it can take about 10 days to restore thousands and thousands of websites and emails that are running on the same server.

High-end Shared Hosting

With this service your website and email accounts are hosted on a server that is shared with only a small number of users (up to 100 Websites). This service is suited for websites that require better performance and stay within a certain budget.

The thing to consider is that sometimes many shared hosting companies advertise this service so people who are willing to pay extra can sign up thinking they are getting a lot more. This may not be the case. There are probably going to be additional (in most cases, non-existance) storage space and bandwidth, but if this service is provided on the same low-cost hosting environment, you will be sharing the CPU with thousands of others which makes the notion of paying for the extra storage, pointless. And the same above disadvantages will apply to you.

Low Cost Managed Hosting:

With this service your Website or Email accounts will run on a server without being shared with other users. With this service, you would not have the same issues that is usually emerge in shared hosting environment. However, low cost managed hosting companies will focus on numbers so usually, the customer service will be very poor and there would be less hands-on, less monitoring and there are many important missing features such as daily and weekly backups.

High-end Managed Hosting:

With this service your Website or Email accounts will run on a server without being shared with other users. With this service, you would not have the same issues that is usually emerge in shared hosting environment.

The companies who provide high-end managed service will have 24/7 customer service, hands-on server hardware and software support, monitoring, backup and much more. Those companies also have the framework in place for a major spike in your visitors or a situation when you need to instantly add servers or load balance traffic between several servers.

Some of the low cost shared hosting companies may offer you gizzilions of fake hard disk space and bandwidth, one very important thing that they won't tell you is that once your site grows to use that much gizzilions of hard disk space and bandwidth, it won't be able to stay on the shared hosting services because of CPU performance issues, security issues and other important factors that a busy site will need that is not possible on a shared hosting environment.

Below chart should give you a good underestanding of the difference between hosting services.

Although these results are from 12 years of experinece in the industry, this is a generalizations. Not always a low cost hosting will have a very bad performance. But be very realistic when choosing a hosting company. If a hosting compnay is charging $5.00 per month for hosting, that company has to put a lot of users on the same server in order to pay for the cost of maintaining the server, power and bandwidth usage and customer service calls.

Information on Domain Names, DNS, and Web Hosting

by Onlive Infotech

I'm sure you have heard about website hosting, DNS, and email servers; but you may not know the difference between different hosting companies or the difference between shared hosting and managed hosting. You also may not know the steps needed to make your website live for the public.

The following articles have step-by-step instructions and useful information about domain names, web hosting and email services:

All About Domain Name Registeration
Important Information about registering your domain.

All About Domain Name System and DNS Servers
Technical and knowledgebase information about what is DNS? What is a host name?

All About Website Hosting - Shared Hosting vs Managed Hosting
- Important Information about hosting your website
- Which hosting company can handle your site's growth and traffic
- Shared Hosting vs Managed Hosting

All About Email Services
- All About Email Services
- Best Email Service Provider