Which is the most affordable hosting service?

[Grands]

Hi guys.
On your opinion and on your experience witch is the most safe hosting service on the market?

Thanks
Grands.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Safest? So the one with the best security record?

 

[Grands]

Safest? So the one with the best security record?

Yes, and not also.
I know a hosting service that had a problem, I was a friend with a guy that worked there, and basically their workplace wasn't build properly, so the servers caught fire.
All the web content on that servers were lost forever, they didn't have a backup.

 

[Mark44]

On your opinion and on your experience witch is the most safe hosting service on the market?

This is different from what you asked in your thread title: "Which is the most affordable hosting service?"
No doubt the hosting service your friend worked for was very affordable, but to quote an ad for a coffee company that appeared here in the US many years ago, "You get what you pay for." In other words, sometimes there's a reason why one product is a lot cheaper than another product.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

All the web content on that servers were lost forever, they didn't have a backup.

Always have a backup mo matter the host.

 

[Grands]

Always have a backup mo matter the host.

mo?

 

[Grands]

This is different from what you asked in your thread title: "Which is the most affordable hosting service?"
No doubt the hosting service your friend worked for was very affordable, but to quote an ad for a coffee company that appeared here in the US many years ago, "You get what you pay for." In other words, sometimes there's a reason why one product is a lot cheaper than another product.

This is true, but not always.
In general expensive product are 90% of times best then cheaper one, but there are cases in which you pay a lot for something that is not the best product.

 

[jtbell]

mo?

No.

 

[Tom.G]

https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2424725,00.asp
https://www.cnet.com/web-hosting/
https://www.thebalance.com/types-of-web-hosting-services-2532072

Above were found with: https://www.google.com/search?&q=hosting+services+comparison
Ignore the ads and any that seem related to the hosting businesses, industry trade groups for instance.

Also be aware that some of the smaller hosting services have a very long latency to serve a page request. I've seen 40 second and longer delays, so 'Try before you buy.'

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Cosmodi]

I use bluehost for misc local projects. Seems to be safe enough and not very expensive.

 

[harborsparrow]

There are, in my opinion, at least three key options regarding security:

1) My old-school opinion is, a hosting service that uses dedicated hardware kept in physically secure server farms. It is not a low cost option though.

2) More affordable is a hosting service that uses virtual shared hosts on dedicated hardware. This is probably about as secure as option one, but it won't be as configurable and you'll have to go through special software managed by the hosting company to do some kinds of system administration. So, not quite as safe.

3) Least secure, and least reliable, are servers implemented "in the cloud" such as virtual machines form Microsoft or Amazon. I consider them less secure because of the large blanket of configuration and security software necessary to manage them. And that these services have more trouble is a matter of record, which is why when you use them, they always warn you to build a backup infrastructure NOT in the cloud in case of a major breakdown. The cloud turns out, in most cases, also to be the most expensive option, which is hardly surprising. Because what you really gain from the cloud is instant re-configurability, and ease of upgrades/migration--things like that.

Of course, the performance record of an individual company matters. The biggest problem I encountered over the years was companies going out of business of being bought up and radically changing their pricing or support policies. So I look for historical stability, support, security, fiber pipelines, pricing and a number of other features. And, I don't use the cloud, period.

I am not including any specific company recommendation because you did not specify which platform or operating system you need. There are some companies good for Microsoft hosting, others for Linux, and still others for special needs.

 

[pbuk]

3) Least secure, and least reliable, are servers implemented "in the cloud" such as virtual machines form Microsoft or Amazon.

Please provide a reliable source for this statement.

And that these services have more trouble is a matter of record.

Please provide a reliable source for this statement.

which is why when you use them, they always warn you to build a backup infrastructure NOT in the cloud in case of a major breakdown

Do they? Can you show us where either Microsoft or AWS say this?

 

[anorlunda]

There are, in my opinion, at least three key options regarding security:

You also need to define security. What threat(s) are you trying to avoid?

• Loss of service/unreliability?
• External attacks?
• The provider leaking your data?
• Government subpoenas of your data?
• Overcharges in billing?
• Operational bugs.
• Vulnerability to natural disasters.
• blah...blah

 

[harborsparrow]

User pbuk requested a "reliable source" for the following opinion of mine:

Least secure, and least reliable, are servers implemented "in the cloud" such as virtual machines form Microsoft or Amazon.

First let me say, pbuk, that you could be more tactful by not implying that *I* am not a reliable source. But ignoring that, I'll tell you why I say that the cloud is less reliable than dedicated or virtual hardware hosts. I have administered one or more web services every year since the WWW existed, which is going on 30 years now, and most dedicated server hosts will experience NOT EVEN ONE HOUR, MUCH LESS A DAY, of outage in a given year. Just as most home computers will also not experience an outage over one year. Let us see what happened to the one of the three major could services in 2021 though:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...-web-services-experiences-another-big-outage/

Now, we are speaking in generalities here. Sometimes a day or two of outage is not the end of the world, just more of a nuisance. But if you're implementing something that lives depend on, or large income would be lost, even a few minutes of outage is really bad. The cloud has proven less reliable than dedicated hardware hosting IN MY EXPERIENCE, which is considerable. Just Google around for outages in 2021 on any of the three big cloud services (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) and you will see what I mean.

 

[harborsparrow]

@pbuk wants to know where cloud services warn users to have a backup plan in case the cloud is unreliable. Well, doh:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/a-failure-management.html

Reading this page of warnings just makes my head hurt. OF COURSE sysadmins are always kept awake at night worrying about what-all can go wrong. One needs to back up everything. But if you think about it, it is impossible to "back up everything" for a cloud server, because it is not even within my power to do so. Having watched and studied cloud services grow over the past ten years, I have not been at all impressed.

I have also noticed that young sysadmins are afflicted with a near-madness akin to "being in love" in their desire to embrace cloud services, and I came to the conclusion that they are attracted mainly to the promise of instant configurability, being able to re-provision a service without any wait time or without dealing with a human being. Costwise and trust-wise and reliability-wise, I just can't see it.

 

[pbuk]

Just Google around for outages in 2021 on any of the three big cloud services (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) and you will see what I mean.

At anyone time there are more Ford cars in the breakdown workshop than Lamborghinis: that does not mean that Fords are less reliable than Lamborghinis.

@pbuk wants to know where cloud services warn users to have a backup plan in case the cloud is unreliable.

No, you said

they always warn you to build a backup infrastructure NOT in the cloud in case of a major breakdown.

so (using your words) I "want to know where cloud services warn users to have a backup plan NOT in the cloud in case the cloud is unreliable".

Where does it say that on the page you linked?

 

[harborsparrow]

Things like this pretty much mean, to me, that if the cloud service fails, you've got to have a fall-back:

• Fail over to healthy resources: Ensure that if a resource failure occurs, that healthy resources can continue to serve requests. For location failures (such as Availability Zone or AWS Region) ensure you have systems in place to failover to healthy resources in unimpaired locations.
• Automate healing on all layers: Upon detection of a failure, use automated capabilities to perform actions to remediate.

 

[pbuk]

Things like this pretty much mean, to me, that if the cloud service fails, you've got to have a fall-back:

• Fail over to healthy resources: Ensure that if a resource failure occurs, that healthy resources can continue to serve requests. For location failures (such as Availability Zone or AWS Region) ensure you have systems in place to failover to healthy resources in unimpaired locations.
• Automate healing on all layers: Upon detection of a failure, use automated capabilities to perform actions to remediate.

They don't mean that to me at all - that appears to be talking about failover to another AWS resource, possibly in another Availability Zone or AWS Region.

And as far as backup is concerned it says "Amazon S3 can be used as a backup destination for multiple data sources".

 

[Tom.G]

Well, let's go to extremes here.

Say you own a farm with your significant other and maybe a dozen or so employees. The nearest hospital/doctor is 30 miles (48km) away.

Your street vehicle needs replacing.

Do you buy a vehicle which the manufacturer warns you to Always Have A Spare vehicle handy, or do you buy a vehicle that has a reputation for reliability?

The choice is yours.