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I'm developing a common-interest social networking community which is soon ready for release. I need some advice on what type of a hosting plan will best fit both my emerging website development company and my new (hopefully high-traffic) online community.

I have narrowed it down to opening either Virtual Private Server hosting or a Reseller Account. I know roughly the advantages of each, VPS obviously for performance and Reseller for cost savings.

Specifically the two plans I'm comparing are JustHost's "Bronze" Reseller $20/month or DreamHost's VPS (http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-vps.html) $24/month.

Is there anything I should be considering that might help to make this decision easier?

pws5068
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  • We can't really recommend anything unless we know what sort of traffic you are expecting. – Sam Cogan Feb 23 '10 at 14:59
  • That's difficult to predict with a new community, I'm interested in scalability. For the first year I can't say I expect more than a few thousand page-loads. Supposedly, my primary competitor has 220,000 pageviews a day .. but I have a feeling that's highly inflated. – pws5068 Feb 23 '10 at 16:10

3 Answers3

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For starting out, especially if you aren't expecting much traffic, you don't really need anything crazy. I would suggest going with a VPS from slicehost.com or from mosso.com. They are effectively the same company, Rackspace owns both of them, but prices are a little cheaper from mosso.com. With a system like that, you are able to dynamically resize your VPS, as well as add or remove them as needed.

I have used both services and was able to successfully run websites that were getting 20,000+ dynamic page views a day on two 256 meg servers, one for the site host and another for the database host.

user27787
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  • I LOL when I still see people suggesting rackspace hell! It's the worst place to go, you will pass the rest of your life wasting time managing and patching your VPS (called CLOUD expirience by their marketing dept.), while other people let this to be done by one of the thousands mangaed hosting providers (for few bucks) and look after their apps/sites instead of wasting time titillating the server. – Marco Demaio Aug 09 '11 at 12:49
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There is some discussion on Slashdot on a similar issue - http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/02/22/0215236/Things-To-Look-For-In-a-Web-Hosting-Company. An interesting read, you might find it useful.

Grant Palin
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For starting out, I would suggest going with a RESELLER (not VPS). The reason is that reseller works perfectly and does not require you the knowledge required by VPS.

I mean moving toward webhosting service that give more and more control over the server will also force you to have more and more knowledge about the server.

This might not be what you really need, you would waste your time learning how to manage a server with root access (which is not your business) instead of using your time to develop and look after your 'common-interest social networking community' (which is your business) and letting web hosting service provider to do the job they are paid for that means managing the server for you.

Forgot to tell you, I use qualityhostonline.com, extremly happy with them, they always know what they are doing, they are serious and responsive, and they have a huge know-how about server management.

Marco Demaio
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  • Thank you, I ended up going with a basic reseller package from hostgator.com based on reputation. – pws5068 Mar 10 '10 at 20:31
  • Glad I helped, the link of hosting was only my personal opinion, but the remaining part of the answer does not depend on hosting. :) – Marco Demaio Mar 18 '10 at 17:06