The Back-story
For the past 3 years I’ve been using a shared hosting plan with Hostgator. It was the $14.95 p/m Unlimited/Business Plan and back then my needs were small. I only had a few Wordpress sites. During my tenure with Hostgator, I never had a problem with their service or support. In-fact, I still highly recommend them for any Webmaster just getting their feet wet.
But, with all my Thesis Tutorials, Skins, and my apparent God-Like status with Featured Content Gallery (whom I’m not affiliated with) my site gets hella-good traffic.
With Hostgator, I had 50-or-so Wordpress websites, 9 Radio Station websites (running Joomla), PLUS a dozen of my own sites – including a YouTube clone (attempting to do video conversion).
The radio station websites themselves were super CPU/Bandwidth intensive with thousands upon thousands of visitors a day between them all. What happens when WXYZ-FM runs a web-only contest? Bottlenecks galore. Ugh.
Dynamic? Score!
Add nodes easily with VPS.NET
What is a Cloud? By definition, “Cloud computing is a way of computing, via the Internet, that broadly shares computer resources instead of using software or storage on a local computer.”
In plain English: Instead of your data living on a single server in a single data-center, that data is instead shared across an entire network of servers which are located around the globe.
That’s not even the best part!
You see, when traffic spikes while being on a shared host – you get penalized two ways: #1 They charge you for overages #2 You are locked into a one server that sits in one rack in one data-center (all while sharing your space/bandwidth with 2,000 other sites).
When those spikes hit now, I can literally log into my dashboard and add nodes. This is perfect for when I post a new tutorial, or if one of the Radio Stations run a web-specific contest. I literally add/subtract nodes at will for $1 a day.
The Move
WHM Control Panel
In December 2009 Nick Nelson contacted me about a PSD Conversion for some Thesis sites. Nick mentioned that Chris Pearson hosts pearsonfied.com with his company, VPS.NET.
Nick recommended a 6-node Cloud, (2.4Ghz, 1.5GB RAM, 60GB HD, 1.5TB Bandwidth) running WHM/cPanel with daily backups. Nick also helped me upgrade from Apache to Litespeed.
We tried to do a cPanel-to-cPanel transfer from Hostgator to VPS, but unfortunately, Hostgator blocked our attempts. I wanted to move the sites most guilty of bottlenecks first, so we moved all the Radio Stations sites, and then my pet projects. Bottlenecks? Gone! Video Conversion? Psssh…this setup doesn’t even blink – and the best part: I’m moving 2-3 of the remaining sites a week off my Shared plan and onto my spiffy new Cloud with some breathing room. Without the bottlenecks and slowdowns, I can take my time and to do it carefully. You know, every time I move one; I can’t help but grin, because I know my clients will notice the difference in speed too.
Going the extra mile: CDN, Backups, Developer Support
Activate CDN
Until recently, a CDN was RIDICULOUSLY expensive and mainly used by mega-sites like Yahoo, Facebook, & YouTube. Like Cloud hosting, a CDN will serve up your scripts and images, but with killer caching – and around the world.
For many of us, trying to justify the cost of using Akamai or Amazon, is out of the question. My hosting needs haven’t yet called for a Content Delivery Network, But it’s nice to know all I have to do is point-and-click and I will have one at my disposal.
VPS.NET also does daily, weekly, and monthly backups from the Top Level. Meaning, they backup your entire server (WHM/cPanel/Sites as a whole). Not just on a site-by-site basis. (which you can still do, of course)
They also actively work with developers of scripts and plug-ins. For example, the Wordpress Plug-in: W3 Total Cache, was written to utilize APC (Alternative PHP Caching) – which VPS.NET supports and my site uses. They’re also a one-click installer for JMB Software.
Cloud vs. Shared
The Proof is in the Pudding
Test site: gregrickaby.com
Host: VPS.NET – 6 Node
CMS: Wordpress/Thesis
Caching: Off
Total Size: 319.1KB
Total Load Time: 3.7 seconds
Proof: Pingdom speed test
Test Site: amandacom.com
Host: HostGator – Business Shared
CMS: Wordpress/Thesis
Caching: Off
Total Size: 300.7KB
Total Load Time: 14.3 seconds
Proof: Pingdom speed test
As you can see, gregrickaby.com had 6.19% more data to serve – and it was served 286.486% faster!
VPS.NET also has simple month-to-month pricing, which I prefer to Amazon’s EC2 or Rackspace’s hourly pricing model. I would rather know exactly what I’m going to owe each month.
To conclude; if you’re looking for a reliable, scalable, and affordable Cloud hosting company – I recommend you contact Nick Nelson (Twitter | Email) with VPS.NET.
GET OUT OF THE RACK AND INTO THE CLOUD!
P.S. If you’re purchasing at least 6 nodes, drop Nick Nelson an email and he’ll be happy to set you up with the same configuration I’m using!
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
While CDN are completely understandable for large sites, the cost of Cloud versus a quality host is questionable at best. While I haven’t personally used Hostgator the reality is your dedicated hosting provider should be able to scale to your needs… The catch is simple, “Dedicated” host versus “Shared” host, that is the biggest difference! Many people don’t realize that most $19.95 monthly for A,B,C hosting is shared or virtual dedicated (which is shared) with hundreds of other sites, thus the server/network gets slow during spikes. The reality is that even a cloud host can get slowed down if they don’t have a well connected or proper network. Something you need to ask a Cloud host is how many server and where are they located? Ten servers around the world isn’t on par with Amazon who has a couple of thousand servers, located all over the world. The fear that I see is hosting companies offering “cloud hosting” based on the fact that they have one server in New York and one in LA. and then charge a hourly, processing or data fee which is going to MUCH more then simply having a Dedicated server connected to a backbone, which will scale to most sites.
If your server is being slow and it’s not a network issue (have you properly tested for that?), then you need to look at your app running and figure out what is causing all of the processing power to be used. Quality programming makes a HUGE difference, period. If it’s not a processor issue, it might simply be a network setting, check check check. Remember, unless you are serving 50-100,000 UNIQUE users per day, your server can handle it! Serving Video/Audio then do it properly and stream it with a replicating (repeater) server to take the load off your main server. Akamai has third parties that piggy back on their network who only serve Video/Audio at a VERY affordable cost.
As for the test above, sorry but you can’t compare A with B, are they the exact same programs line for line? What about type of traffic; site A is text and site B Audio? How many sites are hosted on your server at Hostgator, how many on your VPN cloud servers? To many variables to provide a graphic as if it was scientific, sorry but this is going to get those hosting company offering cloud simply to get more money.
Just my input,
Charles
Love it Charles! You’re comment is a great reminder to always do your research no matter what type of hosting you are looking for. Make sure the provider and their services jive with your needs.
The A to B test above is two Wordpress sites running the Thesis theme with very similar customized code. I did try and find two very comparable sites to compare on the different hosts.
As I said, I’m a fan of Hostgator too! No problems with them at all.