Presentation to WordCamp UK

WordCamp Presentation
How to cut through web hosting BS!
For more assistance, contact Peer1 – +44 (0) 800 840 7499

WordCamp UK
Introduction to Hosting
Options Shared, Dedicated, Managed Hosting!
Horses for Courses, who needs what?
Terms Hosting Companies use.
Peer 1 and ServerBeach

What is hosting?

Hosting options
Shared
Virtual
Dedicated
Managed
Fully Managed
Cloud

Shared Hosting
Advantages
Cheap
Easy to setup
Flexible term contracts
Disadvantages
Unreliable
Limited functionality
Be careful of SLAs
Suitable for
Start ups
Small static sites
Simple Blogs
Not suitable for
Large sites
ecommerce
Media heavy content

Virtual Private Servers
Advantages
More Control
Greater Options
Flexible term contracts
Disadvantages
Possibly unreliable
Technical Setups
Not suitable for
Large sites
Media heavy content
Ecommerce
Security compliance
Suitable for
Medium sized websites
Blogs
Technical People who know what they are doing.

Terms Hosting companies use
“Unlimited “
What to look out for:

Everyone is limited by something i.e. bandwidth, port speed, memory etc
Look out for “fair use policies”
“Unlimited” often means under-performing as contention rates are going to be high

What you should ask:

How much do you charge when I reach my bandwidth allowance?
What is your utilisation as a hosting company and how do you deal with outages should they occur?
Do you have unlimited support staff to deal with my queries?!

T & C’s of Unlimited Hosting!
The offer is:
UnlimitedGB's of Space
Unlimited GB's of Transfer
Unlimited Domain Hosting
Unlimited E-Mail Accounts
UnlimitedMySQL Databases
The reality is:

“100% Uptime”

100% uptime is a great marketing term
To achieve 100% uptime, the hosting solution can not have a single point of failure
On top of this, you need to consider geographical redundancy (in case a data centre blows up)
True 100% uptime costs £thousands

Find out if there is a single point of failure in the solution
Ask what happens if the data centre blows up!
How can you offer 100% uptime for £5 per month? Surely you’re losing money?!
If you are losing money, how long are you going to be in business for?!

T & C’s of 100% Uptime

“24x7x365 Support”

Ensure that the support is dealt with by at least level 2 techs (you do not want 1st line support people when you are dealing with issues at 3am!)
Ensure the support teams native tongue is the same as yours to avoid communication issues
Many companies over-utilise their support staff to the point they are unhappy

How many rings will I have to wait before my call is answered?
Where is your support team located and do they have access to my account?
What happens if the hardware breaks?
Will your support team help me even if the software is un-supported?

“SLA’s”
SLA – Service Level Agreements

Who are they protecting? You or them?
If downtime occurs, what are they legally obliged to do and do they credit you for outages?
Who’s responsibility is to report an outage? Theirs or yours?
If they can get away with it, will they?
Do they publish their SLA’s on their website or do you have to request it?
If you have to request it, what are they trying to hide?
Does the SLA break down security policies and how they manage their data centres?

Top ten tips for hosting
Look at hosting companies financial stability
Check the SLA
Make sure SLA is reported to you regularly
Is the provider a technology or service business?
Have they won any awards?
Do they offer a range of Linux and Windows?
Do you have to pay for support if you don’t want it?
Check contract flexibility
Who are you actually hosting with
Don’t pay for what you don’t need

A bit about Peer1...

If you have any questions, please call:
+44 (0) 800 840 7499