Six things you need to know about website hosting

1.  $1 Hosting and other questionable (or hidden) pricing

You've seen many low price offers that seem too good to be true, and unfortunately, most of them are too good to be true. In many cases, the "special price" only applies to the first month or a very limited period, and is significantly higher after that period.

Like the host that compares their $0.50 hosting to their competitors $4 and $6 rates. Which sounds like a great deal - until you discover that after the first month the price is actually $14.95 every four weeks. Wait, weeks? That’s right. In addition to increasing the price almost immediately, by billing you every 4 weeks rather than monthly, they squeeze in an extra billing period every year. Ouch.

At Winhost we show you the exact amount you will pay for a service before you complete the purchase.

2.  Shared application pools

At most Windows web hosts all of the sites on a server share a single application pool. That means a poorly written or implemented application on someone else's website can degrade the performance of - or even completely take down - your application. A single application pool degrades overall performance on a shared server, and every site on the server is affected.

Winhost provides individual isolated application pools for every account, which means your applications are never affected by other customer's applications that are running on the same server.

3.  SQL Server Express on a shared hosting server

While some hosts offer a free, limited version of Microsoft SQL called SQL Server Express, you should know that Microsoft has stated that SQL Server Express is not recommended for use in shared hosting environments because scaling limits and memory handling are insufficient for a shared server. SQL Express has a 1GB maximum SQL memory limitation per instance, versus the 64GB that can be available on a full version of Microsoft SQL.

As you might expect, things can go very wrong very quickly with a 1GB memory limitation on a SQL Express instance that is hosting hundreds of databases. At Winhost we use SQL Web Edition, a full version of Microsoft SQL that is not subject to SQL Express memory limitations.

4.  Databases on the same servers as websites

Bundling multiple services on a single piece of hardware is a common way for a host to reduce operating costs, but that bundling happens at the expense of performance. If server resources are taken up by database requirements, the web server suffers, and vice versa. Your website shouldn't have to compete with your database (or email and anything else on the same server) for server resources.

At Winhost we run every service on separate servers. So while your database (or someone else’s database) is running queries, it won’t have any effect your website’s performance. Splitting each service to its own server is considerably more expensive than bundling, but it's the only way to ensure the best all-around performance.

5.  At the big hosting companies you will never get initial support from an expert

Support is a primary consideration for a lot of website owners, and rightfully so. One of the biggest problem you’ll run into with big web hosting companies is that the person you initially contact for support will have a very limited ability to help you solve technical issues. They will usually provide canned replies taken from troubleshooting scripts, and generally do everything they can to keep you away from more knowledgeable (and more expensive) level 2 support. The result is a frustrating delay in getting real, useful support.

At Winhost, we do not have level 1 support. Every member of our support staff undergoes weekly (yes, weekly) training sessions, and as a result they are performing at what would be level 2 (or higher) support at most other hosts. That means that everyone you deal with has the power - and ability - to actually solve your problem. As one Winhost customer put it, "Winhost has some rock stars at their terminals."

6.  Short idle timeouts that affect your applications, and as a result, your visitors and customers

Imagine your customer leaves their shopping cart idle for only 5 minutes and their session times out. As surprising as it may be, 5 minutes is the default idle timeout setting for some of the largest hosting companies. The time out is set low to preserve server memory.

At Winhost the idle timeout is 20 minutes, so you won't lose a visitor - or a sale - due to a server setting.