Why the difference in web host prices?

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TinyTim

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#28080 18-Nov-2008 09:35

I am searching for a web host for a website that currently is about half a gig of storage (mainly photos) and requires mySQL and PHP. It's not a huge site traffic-wise.

I've done a survey of about a dozen random webhosts and I'm staggered about the huge variation in prices: the cheapest so far that meets my needs is $15 per month and the most expensive is over $200 - a difference of more than ten times!

Can anyone explain the difference? There are probably a few obvious differences - presumably you get what you pay for in terms of reliability and service, many of the cheapies are hosted overseas, and it appears many hosts simply haven't reduced their prices in line with the market. But is there anything else I've missed?

In particular, Webfarm - part of the ICONZ group - offers E1 (500MB) for $30/month. Go to ICONZ and their nearest corresponding plan is Web Host 6 (240MB) for $150/month. What could possibly explain this difference?

zocster

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#178522 18-Nov-2008 10:01

for local host it all depends on the connections coming in to the DC and how they plan on charging their investment of the box itself and the said connection. That ICONZ/webfarm one looks promising, for my personal blog, I use godaddy's US$6.99 shared hosting the speed is to be desired but it is ok hardly ever down, ...

at the end of the day it is up the website you wish to host, what's the purpose of it etc.

kobiak

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#178526 18-Nov-2008 10:15

I've used bluehost in the past. very price savy. US hosting. I've never had problem with them. they also have good DDOS protection when traffic was issue, but now they have unlimited traffic I belive, but no warez to be hosted for sure ;)

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TinyTim

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#178527 18-Nov-2008 10:17

zocster: for local host it all depends on the connections coming in to the DC and how they plan on charging their investment of the box itself and the said connection. That ICONZ/webfarm one looks promising, for my personal blog, I use godaddy's US$6.99 shared hosting the speed is to be desired but it is ok hardly ever down, ...

Godaddy certainly looks like value for money! However I'm looking for a local host because almost all the traffic for the site is local.

amanzi

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#178538 18-Nov-2008 11:30

Those Webfarm hosting packages are pretty good for NZ standards, I haven't seen any other locally hosted servers with better plans. Most of the really cheap plans will be just reseller accounts for US based hosting accounts.

ajobbins

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#178540 18-Nov-2008 11:37

I use 3IX.com - $1/US a month gets you 10GB of space and 20GB of traffic.

$3/us a month gets you 30GB of space, unlimited traffic and you can host up to 3 seperate sites on the account.

Right now I get an average ping to the server of 273ms, so not to bad. It is hosted in the US.

amanzi

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#178543 18-Nov-2008 11:54

The one downside with those Webfarm accounts is that they appear to be single domain only, so you can't use it for several different websites. (although subdomains are OK.)

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TinyTim

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#178545 18-Nov-2008 11:59

amanzi: Those Webfarm hosting packages are pretty good for NZ standards, I haven't seen any other locally hosted servers with better plans. Most of the really cheap plans will be just reseller accounts for US based hosting accounts.

They weren't the cheapest - http://webhostingnz.com/ is half the price and they claim they're NZ hosted.

rphenix

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#179132 20-Nov-2008 19:50

I never understand hosting in NZ to be quite honest it hardly matters thesedays and cost versus performance ratio it just doesnt match up.

A NZ host might matter if you want to say host a CounterStrike server or something but for email/web nobody is going to notice a few milliseconds delay especially if the pipe delivers it quickly.

If you want good uptime, find a well connected US company, I personally like to make sure servers are hosted in a good datacenter I've always liked Hurrican Electric's datacenter so I choose hosting providers who put their systems in there.

ZollyMonsta

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#179149 20-Nov-2008 22:13

I tried a couple of NZ hosts and had no end of trouble with reliability. In the end it seemed cheaper to go with Godaddy.com and the price was real good. Up to 10 databases, FTP, Email addresses and more bandwidth that I could ever use. I'm on the basic Linux hosting plan and I think it worked out to about $90 NZ a year. Their support is pretty good too.

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insane

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#181263 30-Nov-2008 22:42

The massive price difference comes from the fact that many of the cheap NZ hosts are on-sold services which are on-sold by a larger company with rackspace from a Data centre.

Only this week I had somone come into to work on their physical server only to find that to gain access to their machine they had to contact the person hosted with, who then had to contact the person who owned the rack space who then had to come in to 'let them in' to the rack so to speak. Needless to say it was a very costly long wait for the guys who just quickly wanted to colsole in and make a few fixes.

Obviously as the hosting company grows larger their overheads per server decrease which means that they can provider cheaper services and pack/share the load across their servers whether they be shared hosting or VPS based better.

Not all VPS's are equal too, you have to look at what the underlying hypervisor is and what kind of access you're given and any CPU cycle share you get. ZEN based VPSs will always be cheaper than those using VMware ESX.

Most of important then on top of warring about the physical hardware is then the bandwidth you're paying for. If you're getting a resold service of a resold service your bandwidth speeds may not be managed as well as if they were comming directly from the data centre directly. Food for thought.

I've got a small VPS from Maxnet, can do some tests/benchmarks etc if someone cares...

Zeon

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#181923 4-Dec-2008 07:46

If the majority of your traffic is local then definately go for local hosting. If you choose a good hoster (ie webfarm) then you should be safe in terms of reliability etc.

With the poor international performance of many ISPs, the slow speed is a real turn off and for users like myself I would likely give up waiting for your site to load when I could go to a locallly hosted site that is very snappy.

The main problem in NZ is that all the hosting control panels can't discern between national (basically no cost) and international (very high cost) thus the cost of bandwidth is quite high. I think as time progresses NZ hosting will start becoming more and more competitive with plans from US hosts.

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insane

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#182180 5-Dec-2008 00:14

Zeon:

...The main problem in NZ is that all the hosting control panels can't discern between national (basically no cost) and international (very high cost) thus the cost of bandwidth is quite high.

I think you're thinking of dsl connections where ISP dont differentiate between national and international. When you collocate (guess it depends again on who you go through and wether its direct from teh data centre or not) you pay for national traffic and international seporatly either on an ammount in GB basis or by speed. Sure international is far far more expensive but you're just got to be willing to pay for it. With hosting you only get what you need to run your hosting requirements and let the CIR on your traffic take care of the rest.

see, I have no shortage with international speed from my collocated box :)

Zeon

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#182229 5-Dec-2008 10:13

I manage a few colocated boxes around the country some of which run web hosting services, and international traffic is my number 1 issue by far. They all have free national traffic and international traffic that costs on average $5< per GB. The issue is some sites use 90% national which is fine however what about the sites that use half and half national and international?

My control panel (plesk 8.6) gives a traffic breakdown per site which can't tell national or international so the only way to protect from huge costs of those sites with heaps of international traffic is have restrictive plans in terms of bandwidth. I could buy dedicated international circuits, however their cost is huge and international performance would be then compromised.

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teszeract

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#182351 5-Dec-2008 17:18

Just one piece of advice:

Choose a host that has a user's forum.

Personally, (after *much* research) I selected Site5.

teszeract

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#182353 5-Dec-2008 17:22

Zeon: If the majority of your traffic is local then definately go for local hosting. If you choose a good hoster (ie webfarm) then you should be safe in terms of reliability etc.

With the poor international performance of many ISPs, the slow speed is a real turn off and for users like myself I would likely give up waiting for your site to load when I could go to a locallly hosted site that is very snappy.

The main problem in NZ is that all the hosting control panels can't discern between national (basically no cost) and international (very high cost) thus the cost of bandwidth is quite high. I think as time progresses NZ hosting will start becoming more and more competitive with plans from US hosts.

Not necessarily true that international is slower than local.
I've used openhost (local) and my ftp/http speed with site5 (international) is easily twice the local. Of course uploading is slow whoever you deal with - max 100kb for me with my ancient exchange.

I've also used hostingdirect and wouldn't touch them with a barge pole again.