I'm looking for a host now, mostly for personal exploring (setting up webapps, and other perl/php/sql fun stuff) but also may use it for a small business I will be working for in Florida. Most of the people that would access that website would be living in florida.

How much of a difference, and should I be concerned, about finding a hosting company that is located somewhere near me (Florida, east coast) or would someone in California or Texas do just fine?

I wish we had something like hotscrips.com, where different scripts are rated. We need a database of webhosts with ratings, because finding the right one is HARD!

Hi,
Well it all depends if you’re thinking of colocating the server or renting the server. If your going to colocate it then it would be more feasible for it's location to be close, incase anything happens and you need to run over to the DC and fix it. If you’re going to rent a server then it really does not matter where you will lease from. However, if your plans are to lease a server and then eventually colocate, it would make a lot of sense to rent the server from a DC close to you so when it comes time to colocate you don't have to search for anyone else. Also, there are plenty of sites that rate hosts and let you search for certain specifications. Just to name a few there are:
http://hostsearch.com
http://tophost.com
http://findahost.com
http://webhosters.com
http://hostreview.com

Good luck in your conquest!

Originally posted by bakken

How much of a difference, and should I be concerned, about finding a hosting company that is located somewhere near me (Florida, east coast) or would someone in California or Texas do just fine?


There is a loose correlation between pings and distance. You and your clients may notice a slight difference in how fast pages load, how fast ftp connects, etc, if the server is closer to home. Also, your most frequent site visitors will be somewhat less likely to have connectivity problems to a nearer server, because there will probably be fewer hops between their computers and the server.

I am in DC. I host some of my sites in Newark, and get pings around 20ms. If I had a host in California, I would expect pings between 80 and 120 ms. That's a significant enough difference to make me avoid servers in California. If I were you, I would find a host no farther away than New York to the North, or Texas to the West. Happy hunting!

(One other issue you may want to consider is sales tax, if the host is in-state.)