Changing My Webhost

hosting-new-97037_335x220I am in the process of moving all the websites I manage over to a new web host. Over the last few years, I have learned a lot and I wanted to share with you what I have learned. Hopefully, this will be helpful to some of you as you decide how to host your websites.

First Step

Starting out, I created my blog on blogger.com. It was free and it introduced me to the world of blogging. It worked great, but I quickly outgrew it and decided to switch to WordPress. If you are starting out and only want to blog, I would now recommend you go with the free WordPress.com. If you decide to go with a self-hosted WordPress.org account, you will need your own hosting account. That leads me to the second step.

Second Step

I setup a Bluehost account for my blog and several other websites I managed. I paid around $4.95 per month at the time for a shared hosting account, and it worked fine for over a year for me. But I started noticing my websites were loading slowly, and I encountered CPU throttling for using too many resources from Bluehost, so I realized I needed to take the next step.

Third Step

After much research, I decided to open a reseller account at Site5. I decided on going with their Cloud Reseller Hosting for $50 per month due to their high reviews and reputation for good customer support and uptime. I’ve been with Site5 for over a year and have used their customer support several times. I have been impressed with their company and would highly recommend them. I’m now up to hosting around 15 WordPress sites, and I have been reaching my resource limits for my hosting account. So I decided to take the next step. I wasn’t impressed by the VPS (Virtual Private Server) accounts that Site5 offered, so I started my research again for a new host.

Fourth Step

Last week, I created a new account with Knownhost.com. They offer a high degree of customization. I went with a Managed VPS account. VPS accounts allow you to easily upgrade or downgrade the resources for your site. So as I add more sites, or if my sites start receiving more traffic, I can add memory or disk space to my account as needed. VPS really allows you to grow and expand. I customized my account with the WHM/Cpanel and a Litespeed webserver with APC Opcode caching and I couldn’t be happier. My sites are loading much faster and I still have room to add additional sites. I have much more control of my hosting now and I’m not paying much more than I did with reseller hosting from Site5. VPS hosting can be a little overwhelming if you don’t have experience in linux or website configuration, but Knownhost does a great job of managing the complicated parts for you.

Conclusion

The four steps listed took place over seven years, so this has not been a speedy process. I don’t know what my next step is, but with VPS hosting, I should have a lot of room to grow.

What do you use to host your sites? Feel free to add any comments or suggestions.

Update: Check out this link for a great infographic about the different types of hosting.

note: All links in this post are advertiser free. No affiliate links will be permitted in the comments.

 

 

Mike

I am a former design engineer who now pastors Cornerstone Community Church in Galax, Virginia. I'm passionate about following Jesus and I love technology. I've been married to Jennifer for 28 years, and we have three adult children.

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2 Responses

  1. Trae says:

    I’m heading down a similar path, but have chosen things a bit differently. I was more frustrated with WordPress’s load (even with caching solutions) and secuirty issues that instead of attacking it on the server level, I switched to a Static Site Generator.

    So with that, I’ve been really frustrated with Bluehost for similar issues you have although I found it’s more along the lines of other customers causing problems for my hosting. I moved servers twice with them. So I’ve moved 90% of my site to a couple Enterprise EOReality VPS’s that I was able to get for really cheap. I really like the VPS, but I don’t want to completely loose shared hosting because of some of the managed items that I don’t want to handle, for instance mail with webmail (that I can backup) and possible better quality database handling. So I’m pretty sure I want to maintain a shared hosting service for this and more, and looking at Webfaction. Webfaction seems to be the best melding of shared hosting and VPS, it’s a shared hosting service that acts like a VPS.

    Knownhost seems a little high in price, although having WHM/CPanel is really nice. By optimizing what’s being pushed out to the browser, I’ve been able to keep resources really really low.

    • Mike says:

      It is a little pricey, but for managed VPS, they are very competitive. If I was just hosting my own sites it would be overkill, but since I do webdesign and hosting on the side, I wanted to make sure I went with a host that had good tech support and customer service in case I need assistance. Webfaction looks interesting. I hope it works out great. Thanks for sharing

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