Newb Question on Knownhost

[DWYB]

Hello BuilderSociety! Long time lurker, first time poster here.

I've decided to go with Knownhost hosting after reading through the Digital Strategy Crash Course. My site will be a wordpress site and my question is:

Is the basic hosting fine or would you recommend the managed wordpress hosting?

The $5.98/mo for the managed hosting is fine to me, and it looks to me that it has significantly more storage (50gb SSD) compared to the $3.47/mo basic hosting package storage (5gb cloud.)

Is there anything I need to consider as a newb before I commit to either? Thanks in advance!

 

[Ryuzaki]

You're using different terminology than Knownhost uses, which is confusing. I'm going to switch to how they label their offerings.

What you're calling "basic hosting" is Shared Web Hosting. This is the kind of hosting environment that nearly every company offers where hundreds of websites will all be packed onto one server and everyone shares those resources. It's best for low traffic sites. If any one site magically starts getting a million views a day, all of the sites on that server will become slower and potentially crash, because they're sharing resources. That's why it's called "shared" everywhere and why it's always the cheapest. It's okay most of the time but eventually you need to move on.

What you're calling "managed hosting" is their Wordpress Hosting. My opinion is that all "wordpress hosting" no matter who offers it, is a marketing ploy. Everyone's doing it because nobody wants to miss out. It's supposed to be "tuned" to Wordpress and they'll often handle updating the core, etc. They also end up over-charging big time while also limiting the bandwidth or visitors you can use per month among other throttled and metered aspects. I've never liked this option anywhere. They're still shared servers, too.

Honestly, I'd probably tell you to go with the Wordpress one here since it's a negligible price difference. Notice how they don't tell you how much RAM you'll get and all that. It's all "tuned" for you with PHP updates being done, blah blah. That might be easier for you, though learning how to do all those things is good. But you can avoid it your entire career as a webmaster if you want, these days.

And just to fill you in: a VPS is a Virtual Private Server. That's your next real step up from a shared server. You get a "slice" of an entire server, where they create a "virtual" server on that entire server, and this slice is yours. It's reserved for you. You don't share your slice of the RAM (a big thing to concern yourself with) or bandwidth, etc.

The final classic step would a Dedicate Server. You get the entire server and all the resources. If you have a site doing millions of views a day, this is worth it.

Eventually though as you grow further you need to start sharding and load balancing and all that type of stuff. Which is partially what the Cloud Hosting option is about. This is a newer type of offering which has more built in redundancies, distributed parallel storage, and technically should be faster, etc. But you get less resources than you would with a more traditional VPS set up.

I hope this helps! I think you'd be okay with the Shared (if you want to get your hands a bit more dirty to learn) or the Wordpress option (if you don't want to bother with all this and just want to work on your site).

 

[DWYB]

You're using different terminology than Knownhost uses, which is confusing. I'm going to switch to how they label their offerings.

What you're calling "basic hosting" is Shared Web Hosting. This is the kind of hosting environment that nearly every company offers where hundreds of websites will all be packed onto one server and everyone shares those resources. It's best for low traffic sites. If any one site magically starts getting a million views a day, all of the sites on that server will become slower and potentially crash, because they're sharing resources. That's why it's called "shared" everywhere and why it's always the cheapest. It's okay most of the time but eventually you need to move on.

What you're calling "managed hosting" is their Wordpress Hosting. My opinion is that all "wordpress hosting" no matter who offers it, is a marketing ploy. Everyone's doing it because nobody wants to miss out. It's supposed to be "tuned" to Wordpress and they'll often handle updating the core, etc. They also end up over-charging big time while also limiting the bandwidth or visitors you can use per month among other throttled and metered aspects. I've never liked this option anywhere. They're still shared servers, too.

Honestly, I'd probably tell you to go with the Wordpress one here since it's a negligible price difference. Notice how they don't tell you how much RAM you'll get and all that. It's all "tuned" for you with PHP updates being done, blah blah. That might be easier for you, though learning how to do all those things is good. But you can avoid it your entire career as a webmaster if you want, these days.

And just to fill you in: a VPS is a Virtual Private Server. That's your next real step up from a shared server. You get a "slice" of an entire server, where they create a "virtual" server on that entire server, and this slice is yours. It's reserved for you. You don't share your slice of the RAM (a big thing to concern yourself with) or bandwidth, etc.

The final classic step would a Dedicate Server. You get the entire server and all the resources. If you have a site doing millions of views a day, this is worth it.

Eventually though as you grow further you need to start sharding and load balancing and all that type of stuff. Which is partially what the Cloud Hosting option is about. This is a newer type of offering which has more built in redundancies, distributed parallel storage, and technically should be faster, etc. But you get less resources than you would with a more traditional VPS set up.

I hope this helps! I think you'd be okay with the Shared (if you want to get your hands a bit more dirty to learn) or the Wordpress option (if you don't want to bother with all this and just want to work on your site).

Thank you for the detailed reply! I'm a big fan of your threads. I'm familiar with these differing terms although I have no actual hands-on experience using any of them. As a first-timer in a venture like this, I think it's best I start with the simplest, least likely for me to f-up option with the wordpress shared server hosting. Obviously it's my goal to get to the point where I'll need a dedicated VPS for speed and traffic increases.

Your response does leave me a little bit weary on choosing Knownhost, though. It was mentioned in the DSCC that BuilderSociety was hosted through them. Is their not revealing RAM worrisome? In the non-wordpress "basic" shared hosting plan, they list "512 MB Memory Limit." The wordpress option just lists "Unlimited Premium Bandwidth." As a beginner without any traffic (with the goal of getting to 50k sessions/mo asap) but a concern for site speed, I'm wondering if there are better options?

 

[Ryuzaki]

It was mentioned in the DSCC that BuilderSociety was hosted through them. Is their not revealing RAM worrisome?

Builder Society is still hosted with Knownhost.

I just mean that they don't reveal a lot of info on the "Wordpress Hosting" packages. Nobody does. Knownhost tells you how much RAM and everything they provide you on the other plans, just not the Wordpress Hosting one. That's what I meant about it being entirely about marketing. "Don't worry about all that stuff. Don't get confused by it. Just pay us more and we'll handle it." And it's true. I don't mean to imply they're ripping you off. It's definitely the hands-free option for the person who doesn't want to deal with it.

It just costs more and then once they have you roped in and you start running up against some of the limitations, you won't know how to deal with it. So your only choice is to upgrade and pay them even more (for what you could get for less with other options if you know how deal with something simple like cPanel or DirectAdmin).

Knownhost is great. I have 3 VPS's with them right now. Their support is world class. I whole heartedly encourage you to give them a shot. I've used literally dozens of hosting companies over the years. Knownhost put an end to all that seeking.

 

[DWYB]

Builder Society is still hosted with Knownhost.

I just mean that they don't reveal a lot of info on the "Wordpress Hosting" packages. Nobody does. Knownhost tells you how much RAM and everything they provide you on the other plans, just not the Wordpress Hosting one. That's what I meant about it being entirely about marketing. "Don't worry about all that stuff. Don't get confused by it. Just pay us more and we'll handle it." And it's true. I don't mean to imply they're ripping you off. It's definitely the hands-free option for the person who doesn't want to deal with it.

It just costs more and then once they have you roped in and you start running up against some of the limitations, you won't know how to deal with it. So your only choice is to upgrade and pay them even more (for what you could get for less with other options if you know how deal with something simple like cPanel or DirectAdmin).

Knownhost is great. I have 3 VPS's with them right now. Their support is world class. I whole heartedly encourage you to give them a shot. I've used literally dozens of hosting companies over the years. Knownhost put an end to all that seeking.

I'm willing to pay the newbie premium. Glad to know Knownhost is still a good choice. Thanks again!