Hosting and server questions
 

I searched the forums and couldn't find it, so my first question to ya'll wise ones out there is this:

Can anyone tell me what server size/hosting plan I would need based on the amount of daily visitors I get?

Like for example, my tube site is currently being hosted through Certified Hosting, and I am currently using the "Nerd" plan. All of my videos are uploaded from affiliate feeds, so I dont have users uploading tons of vids and eating up bandwidth. For the time being it is suiting my needs as it's only a month old and I am only getting roughly 500 uniques a day. But I plan on implementing some trading and traffic buying and also I have an SEO strategy I plan on using that will should hopefully bring me more organic traffic.

So at what uniques/day am I gonna need to hop on to a shared dedicated server, and ultimately when do you need to get your own server going.

I don't want to start upping my traffic juice if my hosting plan can't handle it.

I appreciate your responses guys and gals.

Hello.

Just imho here. You should upgrade your server as the traffic needs require it rather than the reverse. I believe that many hosts will notify you as your server becomes stressed allowing you to upgrade before it is a major issue. In fact my host, M3server has upgraded RAM and disk for me before I asked for it. A proactive host is a nice friend to have in this business.

You should be concentrating on traffic and hoping that you can get enough to force your current server to it's knees. If you are doing it right you will be making enough on the additional traffic to pay for any upgrading that's necessary.

Again, that is just my opinion and is probably worth about as much as you just paid for it ;p

.

My advice is to start with Digital Ocean...
they provide blazing fast VPS with SSD drives and you can upgrade with a button click without need to move all things to new server....

Starting VPS with 512mb RAM, 20GB SSD disk space and 1 TB bandwidth costs just $5 and you can upgrade with a button click.

I use $80 package and it fucking rocks!!!

Saretta: Thanks for the insight :).. I intend on upgrading as needed, and using profits to do so. I was just unsure if what I have going now would be suitable.. I'm afraid to go and buy a bunch of traffic and begin trades and all of a sudden lose a huge chunk of that investment because my server is overloaded and visitors are getting turned away. In the future I'm looking forward to giving my server a good Molly womp because I have too much traffic, shit doing so now would make me pretty giddy.. I just think that at this early in the game it could maybe hurt me. Though I am quite the noob so I could probably be wrong :p.. I'm gonna get in touch with the guys at certified hosting to see what I can handle exactly.

Homersimpson: Thanks for the tip.. I plan on checking them out, though I am pretty happy with my current hosting.. Always lookin for a better deal though :)..

Daily visitors is not a good metric upon which to base server resources, it is way too subjective. Certified offers Webalizer and AWStats, both of which will tell you the exact amount of bandwidth your users are consuming along with the average bandwidth per user, etc.

Certified says they offer "unlimited" storage and transfer, but most hosting companies cap this at some practical level - like maximum transfer rate or maximum Gigabytes in a billing period. You should contact them to find out this number, then compare that to what your statistics are telling you to get a good idea for how close you are currently operating (or trending) relative to their limits.

Just as an aside, and I am not whoring their services, but Rackspace offers a completely dedicated server option on their Cloud Server platform that would run you about the same rate as what you are currently paying. You are charged based on bandwidth used, so you don't have to worry about hitting any caps. The only catch is that you need to be fairly computer (linux) savvy to take full advantage of it.

You dah Bomb.. Thank you so much, this really helped. I'm gonna peep Rackspace to see what they have to offer. I figured that was the case with the "unlimited" package. You don't get nothing for free anymore.
Again, thank you for the post, it was really helpful.

Rackspace is very overpriced, you can get 10 servers with exactly the same hardware configuration for the price of just one Rackspace server.
And the cloud is just an overpriced VPS.

@ bangeduppeaches

Please contact me regarding your account with us. We are happy to review your current usage levels and make some recommendations to you.

We can offer you a great deal on either the shared dedicated or full dedicated, depending on your needs.

Regarding, the "unlimited" space and bandwidth, they are truly unlimited, we do not set limits. However, what you need to be aware of are your CPU and RAM usage levels. Those are not unlimited. You can view your current CPU and RAM usage levels in your cPanel to see where you are currently at to give you an idea.

I am available anytime if you would like to chat about upgrading in the future :)

Have a great weekend!

Get cloud. It scales based on your needs. You pay only for resource you use. When traffic goes high, resrouces go high. When traffic goes low, resources go low. Fun, eh? Hit me up for cheap cloud starting from $15 per month! If you buy today or tomorrow (till 24:00 25th of May GMT+2) i can even get you 10% discount. :D

How much of the resources are you maxing out? Depending on the needs of the site and what your planing I would look at either premium Shared hosting or get a VPS/Cloud system if you require more resources.

That is no longer true. Rackspace's managed hosting is absurdly overpriced, but you can't compare their Cloud Server services to a crappy VPS and it competes directly with Amazon's AWS at the enterprise level. For people trying to get the most bang for their buck, AWS and Rackspace both offer the most cost-effective solutions, so long as you have some administrative experience.

You do realize that most of the VPS's out there are just reselling scaled-down AWS and Rackspace services, right?

When i said the servers are overpriced i meant their Dedicated ones, Yes its managed but still $1089/month for 1x Quad-Core 12GB RAM is insane...
I could get 5 unmanaged servers with Dual Xeon E5-2620 or 10-12 servers with Dual Xeon L5420. (that's about x20 the power for the same price)

Now reliability is important and all that, but if you scale things up especially with dedicated servers, there is no justification to have our monthly bills inflated that high.

As for the Cloud, even the most basic unmanaged cloud 512mb\1vcpu\20 Mbps is $16.06/mo.
The same Xen VPS would cost 5$
OpenVZ would have 2GB RAM+, 2-4 VCPU, for that price.

If we go higher it gets absurd, like the unmanaged 8GB RAM rackspace cloud ($350.40/mo), Why get that and not a dual E5-2620, 32GB RAM dedi server for 200$ lol ?

Thanks a lot everyone for all your replies, they helped a lot. I am currently reviewing my resource usage, and planning my next step.. I really do appreciate all your responses.

Imho it will take long time before you will need to upgrade anything considering you're not burning much bandwidth. If everything is working smooth at peak hours then it's all ok I think.
Many things depends though on software you're using, bad coded software can eat resources like wild hog. I think best thing is to get something small with dedicated resources like cpu/ram/system, (VPS maybe) it's more secure solution and then you can also check everything like for example your load averages and see yourself how much power you use and how much you have left. In order to pick something reliable do a search and some reading, compare a few companies, if there is a promo code option try to search or request one too, you would be amazed how much they can save you.

Not to hijack the thread but host gator has crapped out recently and I am rather disappointed with their services. Im on an overburdened server and can't do anything about it. So I am looking for a better solution. What are people using (not selling) as a shared hosting solution?

shared sucks

For Vps check lowendbox.com, they got some sick offers.
Most of them are exclusive with lifetime discount.
But make sure you real the TOS before you order, some don't allow adult.

You can get regular Web Hosting plan, or Reseller account at Micfo.com. You can then upgrade to VPS or Dedicated server, and they will help you move it. They have one of the best prices in the business, and you can get a discount with "DAN30OFF" coupon code.

will rackspace host adult?

Why would you want to go to rackspace.

Stick to the folks that are supporting the biz.

I'm in the same boat I been using a hostgator business shared account for years, but my main site is getting very slow and intermittent out of memory errors. I've just leased some server space on linode and configuring a debian server, I've got a lot of experience with UNIX/Linux at my old job but this is my first time managing my own server. All the managed VPS's out there are too pricey, and I'm getting this one for just $20 a month.

I would be happy to answer any questions you may have about hosting. We have been hosting since 1996 and would like to earn your business as well.

i am using hostgator currently , but i am in the process of getting a cloud server forn diploy.net.

I am thrill with them so far, very responsive to support call and very accommodating.

Thank for the mention. mrgqw

You can contact me for a SSD cloud server or SSD shared hosting. I am sure we can get you a sharp deal.