Hosting providors... any recommendations

[mac-man]

My partner is currently using Actinic's own hosting for her 3 sites. However it's getting a little pricey as she's up to the 12Gb traffic limit. And £700 a years seems a little steep to say the least.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good unlimited hosting company that's Actinic friendly?

[leehack]

Hi Chris, this subject has been discussed to death on the forum, have a read through previous threads to see recommendations and discussion. Actinic also offer hosting.

[mac-man]

Hi Chris, this subject has been discussed to death on the forum, have a read through previous threads to see recommendations and discussion. Actinic also offer hosting.

Thanks.. will have a delve.

[pinbrook]

Dont look for unlimited as it doest exist - If you are using 12gb, look for something limited to 100gb, for example

[mac-man]

Dont look for unlimited as it doest exist - If you are using 12gb, look for something limited to 100gb, for example

Thanks... I know there are plenty of companies seemingly offering 'unlimited bandwidth'. Do they have similar 'fair use' policies that you find with broadband?

I realise that you get what you pay for... but I feel the Actinic hosting is getting a little pricey at £700 a year for 24Gb traffic. Or am I being unrealistic?

[pinbrook]

I dont think you are being realistic at all, I just wanted to be sure you were aware of "unlimited" deals. Most unlimited deals do have fair policy, but in my view you will get a better deal by going with someone who is more upfront with what the limit is.

As others have already said a forum search will point you in the right direction.

[leehack]

The value of hosting is a really subjective area Chris, i have a customer who pays £3500 a year, i have others who think £100 per year is expensive. Hosting is a really really key point on the success of your site, particularly when the site either suffers a problem or in very busy times such as Christmas. It's not an area to skimp on but of course you do want to feel like you are getting good value.

[mac-man]

I dont think you are being realistic at all, I just wanted to be sure you were aware of "unlimited" deals. Most unlimited deals do have fair policy, but in my view you will get a better deal by going with someone who is more upfront with what the limit is.

As others have already said a forum search will point you in the right direction.

Hi

just had a look at your own hosting options. I noted that you'd expect a typical e-commerce site to be using 1Gb per 4000 visitors.

This is why the hosting is becoming an issue. Our site in question http://www.pedigreecharm.co.uk had 13,000 visits last month yet bandwidth is about to exceed 11Gb per month!!!

By your reckoning there should be more than 40,000 visitors a month. Where the hell is all our bandwidth going?

There were 40,000 unique page views. Heaviest page with 650 views is 312Kb. We had around 129,000 total page views but assume pages get cached and so bandwidth is not an issue then.

Site has a total of 2700 pages. Most of them no more than 50Kb

If 25% of page views are the heaviest - say 10,000 views at 312Kb gives around 3Gb. If I allow 100Kb for the remaining pages that gives 30,000 views equalling another 3Gb.

Plus there's site updates and order downloads as well

Is there a way of getting a proper assessment of how much bandwidth each page is using? I'm convinced something isn't right somewhere... either we have a huge image somewhere on a really popular page.... I'm stumped TBH. We seem to be sucking up an awful lot of bandwidth.

What about people stealing our bandwidth? Is that traceable? I've set htaccess file to prevent this (unless it's been overwritten... must check).

Any suggestions most welcome....

[leehack]

Page size of 312kb is rather high, I'd imagine you need to do some image optimisation, that's the usual culprit. 100kb is the suggested size.

[mac-man]

Page size of 312kb is rather high, I'd imagine you need to do some image optimisation, that's the usual culprit. 100kb is the suggested size.

I know... looks like it pays to optimise. there's a number of images on the page that are 25 - 50Kb each. Not a problem with a low traffic site but i guess it soon mounts up.

[fergusw]

This is why the hosting is becoming an issue. Our site in question http://www.pedigreecharm.co.uk had 13,000 visits last month yet bandwidth is about to exceed 11Gb per month!!!

By your reckoning there should be more than 40,000 visitors a month. Where the hell is all our bandwidth going?

As Lee said page optimisation is usually the main factor here.
There are 2 main ways to tackle this: optimise the content on each page, and optimise the server and page construct to deliver the pages faster.

We have an article from January which has more info on this, particularly about Google Page Speed

You can definitely reduce the page load time and page size which will save you on bandwidth and improve site performance for your customers.

Is there a way of getting a proper assessment of how much bandwidth each page is using?

Your host should be able to provide you with a breakdown of bandwidth usage across FTP, HTTP and MAIL traffic to and from your domain(s) on the server.
If you think that people are stealing your images (hot linking) there are loads of articles on the web about how to stop resource leeching from your site

[mac-man]

Just realised I'd added to the htaccess file last year to prevent hotlinking (doh!)

What about bots?

Could they be sucking up bandwidth? And if so... how do I find out which ones and how do I stop them. I was reading up them yesterday where a site was having 10,000 pages a month spidered by some engine in Japan.

The reason I'm wondering this is that my wife used a guy to help with SEO a couple of years ago and I seem to remember him submitting to a lot of search engines and directories... just wondering if this could be the cause.

[malbro]

Just realised I'd added to the htaccess file last year to prevent hotlinking (doh!)

What about bots?

Could they be sucking up bandwidth? And if so... how do I find out which ones and how do I stop them. I was reading up them yesterday where a site was having 10,000 pages a month spidered by some engine in Japan.

The reason I'm wondering this is that my wife used a guy to help with SEO a couple of years ago and I seem to remember him submitting to a lot of search engines and directories... just wondering if this could be the cause.

If your host provides AwStats then you can get a breakdown of your bandwidth from there.

[mac-man]

She's with Actinic hosting at the moment. Think it has webalizer enabled. Not sure what this can show...