The first thing anyone wishing to run a website of any sort needs is a web host, it would be nice if finding the right host was easy but it isn’t. You have shared accounts, premium shared accounts, VPS’s or dedicated servers. And within those groups you have many companies to choose from. What makes it more difficult is that not all hosts are created equal. The shared hosting market seems to be the most saturated and within it you will find the very good and the very bad. Over the years I have tried many different shared hosts and I personally don’t like any of them, my biggest gripe is performance. Now before I go into that let me say that you do get what you pay for, you should not expect the same level of performance on a $10 a month plan compared to a $200 a month dedicated server, it just ain’t gonna happen.
In order to find a solution to the poor performance of shared hosting I started to look at VPS (Virtual Private Servers) and dedicated servers. I tried several VPS hosts and so far the best overall for me has been MediaTemple and their DV accounts.
I currently have accounts with MediaTemple, Slicehost, Brightbox and SoftLayer, all have their pro’s and cons and I have each for slightly different reasons. Over this series I will post more info on each of the above and also expand on what is involved in hosting your account on a VPS or dedicated server.
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