So we had a fun night fielding contacts from customers because of server issues.
After a while things slowed down because the admins got the problem stabilized. There were plenty of people I talked to that were complaining that We should have redundancy. The response I wanted to give them was simple: For the amount of money you’re paying for service, you can’t expect this.
Yeah I’ve mentioned this before, but this time I got curious and went around to several hosting companies and asked if they offer redundancy on shared servers.
The results were an astounding HELL NO! (yeah I’m paraphrasing).
A list of providers I asked were (in alphabetical order):
Bluehost
MidPhase
UK2.net
GoDaddy
HostGator
WestHost
So as you can see a large cross-section of the hosting industry does not offer redundancy for shared hosting.
Why no redundancy?
Well it’s all a matter of economics! You want redundant servers and connections? Guess what? YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM! It’s that simple!
Having complete sets of backup hardware ready for a fail-over is not an easy thing, not only must you have separate hardware you also have to have other hardware and software to manage the fail-over process.
So it wouldn’t just require a doubling of the price of hosting it would more likely cost around triple (gee is that why a VPS/Cloud setup costs about 3x as much as a shared hosting account?).
SO STOP EXPECTING!
I really hope this has shed some light on why, when you buy cheap hosting you get no redundancy (although I must say, to someone who can take a step outside their situation and look at things in a rational matter, this should be obvious!).
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