First let me say that this is not being posted to give anyone excuses for spamming this post with talk about their host.  I dont want this to turn into a "lets market my host cause they are the best" thread.   As a matter of fact right out of the bag i will say if any host is mentioned by name i will ask team to remove that posting asap because i will consider that to be spamming..

With that said, the reason for this post is to talk about the hosting business itself, because in order for anyone to truley find a good host to host their Oxwall site,  is to understand the business first. 

Some of this was actually part of an email between myself and someone (their info removed)  asking about finding a host and the hosting business and i thought this would also be a good topic for discussion.

So lets begin.....  you are welcome to share your thoughts as well.

First i would stay away from cloud hosting at this point.  I have also been marketed to join the cloud movement for my company as well.  But cloud hosting is relatively new to the marketplace and in my opinion has a ways to go before i feel comfortable security wise with it.  Plus the fact that every time something new comes out, everyone seems to jump on the wagon and promote it when in fact they may or may not really understand it or "more importantly" the downsides of it. 

Right now we have all these cloud resellers trying to pack on cloud clients and for the most part their only incentive is money.  I just think cloud hosting needs time to truly develop and im not willing to trust it right now, and that goes for both my site as well as offering it to clients.

Regarding hosting, i have been around long enough both as a client myself and a programmer and as a  company that i know much of what others do regarding games they play to make money, which to be fair is not all their fault, some are forced to due to the current state of the economy. 

Hosting companies fail every day, and for one reason or another they just can no longer compete or they see other options for them along the way, but there are always companies that absorb their clients when they do fail.  That could mean those companies were resellers themselves and just passed the clients back to the host provider or it could mean that some companies go after those type of companies to get clients, i dont know.   There is good and bad with every company out there, no company is perfect.

If you are looking around for a host it is important to understand the business as much as you can before you jump at the what might sound good.  I dont know about your site or your company so i wont pretend to offer a solution but i will say that when looking for a host company you need to follow some simple guidelines.

First of all unless you plan to be huge inside your first year of business, an by huge i mean thousands of members, then getting a VPS or Dedicated server is not necessary and that is money that could be better used in other ways to benefit your company and/or your members.  You can always jump on a VPS or Dedicated later.

Admittedly Oxwall is a resource hungry script, NOT outrageous but it does need resources more than some other scripts because it does many things at the same time, which is also why its popular.  Just with a normal production site and a few members posting images and videos you will find that your backups will get to be in the GB numbers very quickly.  

So you need a plan that affords you that disk space.  Also many hosting companies are now advertising unlimited this and unlimited that but then turning around and charging you for IO (input output) which in my opinion is just a game they play to offset the unlimited offer.  Please understand that unlimited has been given a meaning it was never intended to mean. 

Unlimited in the beginning just meant basically "use the space you need and we wont charge you for extra space if you need it".   It was designed as a more flexible plan and a "loss leader" type of plan, give people a little extra and allow a plan to absorb that extra and you get more clients. 

But now in today's greedy society which goes both ways (client and company) something has pushed the meaning of "unlimited" to mean (for them) that "hey i can use the whole disk if i want to"  and now i can store all my personal files and all my pics and all my other "non domain related" items on the server because i have an "unlimited plan".   Which is one reason companies have been almost forced to come up with unique and inventive ways (games) to make a buck.  Many companies have also had to adapt their (Terms Of Service) TOS to include clauses which cover cases that someone is storing "non domain" related files on the server.

Hosting is becoming more and more a business that only the select few can choose to do anymore.  What is so funny is that people think if you have a hosting company you make tons of money and its all profit... That is such a laugh!!   That is only true for the top tier companies, those with 10's of thousands of clients.  Because they are able to spread their profits out over many clients.  The only way to make money is through client volume.  Eventually what will happen is that the larger companies will absorb the failed companies and then someone or some corporation one day with 100 hosting companies under their name will own the whole business and have a monopoly on the market.   And honestly i am not so sure that is not the case as we speak..

For the smaller companies or resellers, the profit margins are very very slim, with only a dollar or maybe a couple of bucks ( if that ) made on registrations and even with the up selling of offering privacy and backup service, those margins are becoming less and less very quickly.  This is because for many years some services to hosting companies were provided free of charge from the registrar to give the company some sense of making a profit, but now registrars are beginning to charge for those "once free" services and they are tightening the noose on the hosting companies margins.

For the average reseller or small company by the time you pay your annual operating expenses for equipment, staff (if you have any), fraud checking fees, software fees, dedicated IP fees/SSL cert fees, and a cart full of other fees, what is left over pretty much puts you in the poverty class.   Those who make money in this business for the small companies are those service companies which offer the services required to have this business. Such as fraud protection, selling ded IP/SSL certificates, equipment supplies, registrars.  

What are you to do if your registrar up's your rates (or reduces your profit margin), nothing but take it in the shorts or pass that on to your client, because you must have that service and if you go to another service they will do the same eventually.  So what are you going to do change registrars 5x a year, no...  

Just be careful when choosing a company, ask a lot of questions, what is free, what is not.. What will you charge me for, and what does unlimited mean to you...  Unlimited never means unlimited, if you take up a whole server you will hear from the host very quickly.  And get things in writing.

You need a flexible plan that will let you grow into another plan if needed.  Meaning if you go with their top plan and that is all they have then where do you go if you outgrow that.  Ask them if they will tailor a plan just for you and your needs. 

Finding the right host is never possible in one email, one conversation or by reading one document, it takes time and due diligence.

So i hope this has helped, i look forward to hearing others views on this. 

Dave.. :)