Experience with Intenational hosting packages

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dbz0e

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Hi guys,

Please indicate you experience with the $3.99 pm hosting packages from some of international (US) companies.

Is it worth going for it?
 
There's a few I am looking at:

GreenGeeks $2.95
NameHero $5.99
SiteGround $5.95
A2Hosting $4.90
HostPapa $5.95
Hostinger $2.15
Ipage $1.99
Hostgator $3.95
GoDaddy $7.99

(per month, 3 years up front, then it switch back to normal price on renewal)

Its unlimited domains, unlimited space packages, mostly targeted for wordpress, but any other type of sites.
 
Last edited:
With regards to these 'unlimited' packages, have you read their AUPs? They all have 'em. Unfortunately there's no such thing as unlimited disk space, ever. Especially on a shared hosting service which costs $3 a month. It wouldn't be economical for them as a business to offer that. Go read the AUPs/Terms of Service and you'll probably find a section where they mentioning limiting your resources to that of a 'normal' small business website. If all of these providers offered unlimited disk space, we'd all be using them for data storage at that price. And even so, would you really need 'unlimited' disk space for your website anyway?
You're paying R1500 for the first 3 years - or R500 a year - to host in the States (slower speeds for us SA'ns). Thereafter R150 a month. For R500 a year you can probably get a package here in SA which meets your website's needs. And for R150 a month I'm almost certain you can.
My 2c.
 
Noted and agreed on the space, but I probably use max 3GB per website, but I am more interested in SPEED to SA (and multiple domains), if its going to take 1 min to load, then its not worth the cost savings in first 3 years, which works out to about between R30-R50 pm, and not having to increase a clients email quota everytime is peace of mind...

Anything else which may be a deciding factor (I may have missed)?
 
Any shared/unlimited package is not worth the $3.99. You get better performance by spinning up a $5 DigitalOcean droplet and setting it up yourself

Speed to SA is negligible these days. So not sure why you're worried about that. You can always use Cloudflare for free to bring it to the local exchanges on the Edge very easily.

/edit
If your site takes 1 minute to load in 2019, it's not the speed of the bandwidth, but most likely a shitty website/programming bringing it to a grinding halt. That, and using shared hosting
 
envo said:
Any shared/unlimited package is not worth the $3.99. You get better performance by spinning up a $5 DigitalOcean droplet and setting it up yourself
Click to expand...

Thanks, not a bad idea at all.. then just point the domains to there. hmmn..so DO is better choice?
 
dbz0e said:
Noted and agreed on the space, but I probably use max 3GB per website, but I am more interested in SPEED to SA (and multiple domains), if its going to take 1 min to load, then its not worth the cost savings in first 3 years, which works out to about between R30-R50 pm, and not having to increase a clients email quota everytime is peace of mind...

Anything else which may be a deciding factor (I may have missed)?
Click to expand...

Just go with a reasonably priced local host. DO or one of the other intl cloud hosts provide great services, if you have the ability and time for managing your own server. Baring in mind you'll need to buy cPanel licenses etc.
 
dbz0e said:
cPanel, isnt it opensource...but who needs cPanel/
Click to expand...
Nope, there are open source alternatives, but not cPanel. If you're doing this for clients, I would seriously consider getting a managed VPS with cPanel on instead, so that the resources you have is yours and can manage it however you'd like
 
chopsky said:
Just go with a reasonably priced local host. DO or one of the other intl cloud hosts provide great services, if you have the ability and time for managing your own server. Baring in mind you'll need to buy cPanel licenses etc.
Click to expand...
Yep, was just using them as an example, because if you compare apples to apples, no one in South Africa offers the same resources per buck than they do, and DO isn't the cheapest/best out there either, so shop around.

There's always a trade-off in cost, speed and convenience. If the OP doesn't mind putting in the work, they can get something very decent in speed at a low cost, but the "cost" would be their time in getting it/keeping it up and running

I would also not bundle my packages with email/dns, but let providers who have the resources maintain it. So for example, I use Rackspace for my DNS (and Cloudflare, cheapest and best if you want edge / fast resolution to your sites), I again use Rackspace Mail for any emails. It's around $1 per POP mail, but you get unlimited aliasing, 10gb space and amazing spam filtering (on par if not better than Gmail). You could also move the clients to Google business instead, it might push up their cost per month they pay you, but you would know that DNS and Mail will never go down.

Then the server you choose to run their websites on, doesn't have to be all too powerful to handle what's on there (no mail/dns etc.) and can be optimized enough to handle a bit of strain in case of some form of viral blog post.

Only the OP can really make those decisions, many have grown from a shared environment, with no clue as to what it really requires, but just knows they need to "get off of this right now cause it's dog slow"
 
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