Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : GoDaddy vs. MediaLayer et al

[json2001]

My business partner and myself have been looking for a fast, reliable web host for our new web site. The website is essentially a PHP/mySql application where users will input string values, numeric values and potentially resized images. Obviously we hope the site to be successful and grow and want to buy our web hosting intelligently to accommodate for the assumed growth. We dont know what the growth is going to be yet but plan to start on the cheaper end of web hosting packages and bump up until we find the appropriate service plan.

We recently had a discussion about the pros and cons of GoDaddy web hosting, MediaLayer, FusedNetwork and IronMountain. I have been reading through these forums and he has some first hand knowledge of GoDaddy hosting having a phpBB site that transfers about 1gb a day with about 20-30k page views a day.

I showed him the 4 "non-oversold" hosts I came up with (listed above). After looking at the plans and the prices quickly noted that the bandwidth seemed fairly minimal citing the fact that he uses 1gb a day for some moderately successful forums. My stance was that "oversold" hosting is evil and should be avoided at all costs per the users of WHT. Thats really where my argument stopped - I told him why overselling could be a problem but it was easy to see that his forums chew up bandwidth and would quickly exceed the bandwidth limit of the basic "non-oversold" plan..but not GoDaddy. 250Gbs Bandwidth at the basic level. His site loads pages typically in half a second or less. He also argued that even if they were oversold and he only got 20% of the promised bandwidth that it still finishes ahead.

So my argument falls flat in the face of his evidence. Why should we consider these premium hosts for our new site? What are the benefits?

[UH-Bobby]

Well, it's not just bandwidth that you could possibly get suspended for, it's also CPU and memory usage. Since your site seems like it will be heavy in that, I wouldn't mess with Godaddy.

[Illustrious]

If GoDaddy works perfectly well for him, then that's great, with the amount of customers that the big hosters have, there's bound to be a fair amount of satisfied people.

That said, for application-intensive services, it's far better to go onto an undersold platform that can handle the burst requirements that it may have. It appears that your friend has a very light forum, because even on your own, optimized dedicated server, I doubt vBulletin loads in less than half a second.

[encoderX]

Their's many contributing factors that come into play when choosing.

As others have already pointed out it's more than space and bandwidth, resource usage is a consideration.

My opinion is that if you go with an 'over-sold' provider and they have hundreds on a server (as they do) then they are going to be strict on resource usage and they tend to be 'jumpy' and suspend you.

After 7 years of being a customer to various hosting providers one thing I've learned is stay away from these hosts promising huge amounts of space and bandwidth and unlimited sql, this, that and the other ... etc - as it's a marketing gimmick that all very often comes back to smack you in the face! suspended due to excessive resource usage.

Have self discipline and choose a host with honest and realistic amounts and prices in the first place, it saves alot of possible heartache in the future.

[kjawaid]

Godaddy is best for domains not for hosting .. i will recommend not to go with oversold providers .. if you want 500MB space then go with a provider which promises you 500MB not 500GB..

I agree with Encoderz there are too many restrictions with oversold providers ..

[gunwitch]

If godaddy works good for your friend, then great, I wish him to keep it up.

But in my opinion MediLayer is MUCH better, cause for me godaddy isn't so good even for registering domains, let alone webhosting.

Moreover, MediaLayer is an Application Hosting, so it's much better for dynamic content. I've been considering them as one of options while searching for a webhosting for my eBay blog.

[dgarbus]

Comparing Godaddy to MediaLayer is like comparing apples to oranges. Godaddy is all about quantity where MediaLayer is more focused on providing good service and above-average page loads.

[Orien]

Originally Posted by PE-Dave

Comparing Godaddy to MediaLayer is like comparing apples to oranges. Godaddy is all about quantity where MediaLayer is more focused on providing good service and above-average page loads.

Well-said. They are operating in completely different markets.

[imountain]

I think this equation is quite simple to solve, just do a search for reviews on GoDaddy and then do a search on MediaLayer and FusedNetwork and see what the difference in opinion is.

Frankly put, I've read many reviews on Medialayer and Fusednetwork and from what I have seen from their users like Orien, they provide quality. That quality comes from not overselling their servers and bandwith. Anybody can promise the world, it takes responsibility to only sell what you have to give.

Every issue you may have may count against the success of your web application, is the success of your application worth a few extra dollars a month?

[UH-Bobby]

Forgot to ask earlier, what kind of budget are you looking for? If you have a good budget for hosting, I would maybe look into a VPS or high availability shared hosting. Shared would be good too, but like the others have said, I would stay away from oversellers. Most undersellers leave enough room on the servers for people who need just a little extra cpu and memory. Even if it bursts a little, it doesn't harm any other customers. On oversellers, the flex room is really thin, so the moment you go over the fine line, you'd already be hurting other customers and they'll boot you.

[cartika-andrew]

He also argued that even if they were oversold and he only got 20% of the promised bandwidth that it still finishes ahead.

Interesting to hear this consumer perspective. It really doesnt work this way. I mean it is wonderful to hear that godaddy is working for some - but, the issues with having such massive plans is that inevitably, the server will slow down as a result of high loads and users with resource intensive sites will not only tend to have performance issues, but, will also tend to be able to utilize less resources then with providers offering more "reasonable" packages.

I showed him the 4 "non-oversold" hosts I came up with (listed above).

Not trying to take this topic sideways - and I must pre empt this with the statement that I am a bit of an imountain fan (heck they use hsphere which makes them brilliant in my mind ) - and I also noticed this in imountains sig - so, can somebody please explain how imountain qualifies as an undersold host.

to imountain - please do not take this as a personal attack on you or your business - again, Im a bit of a fan of your model and obviously I am biased towards all hsphere hosts - as I think people using hsphere really get this industry...

I am seeing 500 GB of transfer for $15 and 1500 GB for $29.99. Their disk space doesnt look to far out of whack - actually looks quite reasonable - its their transfer limits that seem out of whack a little - and regardless of infrastructure (as ours is almost identical to theirs) - and I can assure you that 500-1500 GB of transfer towards applications for that pricing wont fly in the long run - obviously not all will use those allocations - and isnt that what overselling is fundamentally based on? Not making any judgements here WRT service levels or anything of the sort - as we have seen enough positive comments on them to assume they offer a good service - but, a little confused how this qualifies as undersold.

[imountain]

Greetings Andrew

Thankyou! Cartika Hosting has for years paved the way for H-Sphere and Clustering as a means to a quality hosting environment and we are admittedly following in your fine footsteps.

As for being undersold, we truly are undersold... we are paying for about 100x more bandwith than we actually use. It seems that a by-product of a clustered environment is that our clients tend to use up more CPU resources rather than bandwith. You have probably noticed the same regarding your clients.

In another few months we have another mandatory gigabit we must take on and we haven't even fully utilized our first gigabit. It appears we were a bit too "zealous" in our required bandwith projections

[cartika-andrew]

Originally Posted by imountain

Greetings Andrew

Thankyou! Cartika Hosting has for years paved the way for H-Sphere and Clustering as a means to a quality hosting environment and we are admittedly following in your fine footsteps.

As for being undersold, we truly are undersold... we are paying for about 100x more bandwith than we actually use. It seems that a by-product of a clustered environment is that our clients tend to use up more CPU resources rather than bandwith. You have probably noticed the same regarding your clients.

In another few months we have another mandatory gigabit we must take on and we haven't even fully utilized our first gigabit. It appears we were a bit too "zealous" in our required bandwith projections

First off, thank you for not taking this personally - I was a little concerned with opening this discussion as my intention was not to offend - but, now that we have that out of the way

I always wondered about this myself - I mean we have LOADS of bandwidth that isnt used - and always wondered about just upping our bandwidth allotments (since its available ). The issue for me has always been server resources - and even though we could probably sell TB plans, can the cluster reasonably allow users to utilize all of that bandwidth towards applications (or even static sites for that matter). I really like your disk space allotments (I almost half expected to see 100-200 GB allocations when I looked and was pleasantly surprised when I didnt see that )

I guess it comes down to business model - its nice to hear the bandwidth is available on a macro level - Im just not sure it can be pushed on a micro (server) level - unless of course we are speaking static sites. Eitherway, cant hold this against you - was just curious - thanks for taking the time to answer this one...

[Illustrious]

I think imountain's model is by absorbing more sunk costs (and grow larger in scale), they can offer their packages at a lower overall price. I suppose another small source of revenue could be selling power back to the power company. Whatever they do, their bandwidth allotment is certainly high, but it doesn't seem out of control.

[json2001]

Thanks for all the feedback. We'll let you know what we decide. Right now our top 2 picks are probably MediaLayer and IronMountain. Any pros or cons for either would be very helpful. Thanks again!