Web Hosting Options for Software Sites

Web Hosting Options for Software Sites

One of the things people look for the most online is software. Software ranges anywhere from games to professional billing software. This is the reason that software directory sites are among some of the most popular sites today. A site with listings of free software or paid software is easy to promote as people are always looking for free or paid software but finding the correct type of hosting to suit this type of site may be much harder. In this article we will look at the hosting requirements and options for hosting a software site.

A software site can be split into two types, one type is a site that lists all the different types of software from authors across the web and the other is a site made by a person or company that is for displaying and selling software he or she has made. These two types of sites have different hosting requirements but do share a few things in common. This article will primarily be focusing on the first type of site as that type of site has the most pressing concerns in terms of hosting. If you are trying to sell your own software, your earnings per visitor will be high enough that you will be able to upgrade hosting plans long before you hit the ceiling on your previous hosting plan. The only thing you’ll really need to worry about is finding a host that has shopping cart software and SSL encryption. However, if you are running a software directory kind of site, things that you will have to worry about are space/bandwidth, CPU/RAM usage, and technical support.

For a software site, space and bandwidth are important limiting factors for site growth. This is only true if you intend to host some or all of the software(like CNET) that you list on your site. If you plan to just link to the individual author’s download page, you can skip the space and bandwidth section and continue on to the CPU/RAM limitation section below. However, if you do plan to host the software you put up for download, you will need to do careful calculations of how much space and bandwidth you will need. To do this, you need to get an average file size of the programs you are hosting and multiply by the number of visitors you are planning to get per day. A full calculation is like this: (average file size+file size of page)*(number of visitors per day)*(number of downloads per visitor)*30 = bandwidth for the month. Usually the size of the download file makes the actual size of your HTML page negligible. So if you get around 5000 unique visitors a day and each file is on average 5mb and each visitor download on average 2 files per day, your bandwidth usage for a month will be (5mb)*5000*2*30=1,5000,000 MB or 1.5TB of bandwidth per month. As you can see, this can quickly eat up all the bandwidth on a hosting plan if you are not careful. Likewise the amount of disk space you would need can be found by taking the average size of your files and multiplying it by the number of files you plan to host. Add an additional 30% on to this amount for expansion space. Generally space will not be as much of a problem as bandwidth for a software site. If you get over 15,000 unique visitors a day, you may need to arrange for a special kind of bandwidth plan from a shared host(if you are still on shared hosting at that time).

The next big thing for a software directory is CPU/RAM constraints. All software sites run off of some kind of script, hardly any are just static HTML pages. Scripts rely on code executions and SQL queries to function. These things in return demand CPU and RAM power to run well. In a shared environment(like most people are on), you are on a server with hundreds if not thousands of other users so the amount that each individual account can use is actually very small. If you go over this limit, your host will likely temporarily suspend your account costing you many visitors and advertising revenue. To take precautions against this, you need to be sure of how much CPU/RAM each account is allowed to use. This can usually be found in a host’s Terms of Service Agreement in fine print. You should look for specific numbers in this document and if none can be found ask the host for such numbers. Don’t go with a host that just says “what we think is fair use” as this gives them ground to suspend you whenever they want. Depending on the host, CPU/RAM usage can range anywhere from 1% to 10% of the total server’s power(on a shared account) and you will want to look for a host close to the upper limit of this range. CPU/RAM over-usages are the most common reason that hosts suspend accounts so you will want to find a host that is willing to work closely with you to resolve these problems if they arise.

The last thing to look at is technical support for a software directory. This is a very important factor no matter what type of site you are hosting because sooner or later, something on your site or server will go wrong, causing the server to crash. When a situation like this happens, you will need fast and competent(and trust me there are a lot of companies with bad tech support) technical staff to get your site back up and running. Not having technical support will cost you hours if not days of downtime and lost revenue. The best way to find out how technical support is at a host is to ask around in forums such as webhostingtalk.com or freewebspace.net(for free hosts). Most likely, in these large forums, there will be people who either have used the hosting service you are thinking about or are still on that service. These people are your best sources of information regarding the host. Get many different opinions from different users to get an overall idea of how the host performs on average and what types of sites it is most suited to host. You can also go to web hosting review sites for information on hosts but be aware that many of these sites are directly sponsored by the large web hosting companies and may present a biased review of the said web hosting company. Many times site owners will write favorable reviews to sponsors even if their hosting service is terrible in hopes of getting a higher commission. In my opinion, the best place to go by far when looking for hosting opinions is a web hosting forum. Besides getting information on the host you are thinking of, many veterans of the web hosting market will offer key pieces of advice on host-hunting. You may also get offers from web hosting companies that lurk around in these forums.

Now that we have looked at the requirements for hosting a software directory, we will look at some of the options you have for hosting such a site.

1. Free Hosting – Unless you are hosting a small directory for you and your friends, a free host is not the way to go for a software directory. If you are thinking of hosting the files that people will download, free hosts do not have the space and bandwidth for such files and many free hosts will limit the size and type of file you can put up for download. The amount of CPU/RAM power that you are allowed to use on free host is also tiny as free hosting servers are often extremely overcrowded with thousands of clients per server. Site outages, SQL mistakes, and server lockups are problems that regularly occur and the time-frame for fixing such problems is usually “whenever the host feels like it”. On most free hosts, technical support is almost non-existent and consists of the owner and one of two of his friends. Support tickets(if there is such a feature) take days or even weeks to answer and most of the time will not solve the issue you are facing. If you must go with a free host then I suggest either Zoomcities.com or Stockrocket.net as both these hosts are standouts in the free hosting industry for their uptime and customer support. They will give you enough space and bandwidth to run a very small software directory.
2. Shared hosting – Shared hosting is a decent start for software directories. On shared hosts, you are looking to balance CPU/RAM usage with space and bandwidth requirements. The 2nd of these is only a problem if you plan to host the software files yourself. A good host to look at for decent(not great) technical support, CPU/RAM usage, and space/bandwidth is hostgator.com . Even though it seems like they are overselling to the extreme(which they are), they do manage to provide a decent technical support system and are more lenient that most oversellers on CPU/Bandwidth usage. If your willing to pay more for less resources but receive top-notch technical support, you should look to mediatemple.com or downtownhost.com for true quality in shared hosting. If you are hosting your own software files, going with one of these hosts may raise your bandwidth usage bill by quite a lot.
3. Dual Shared hosting – This basically means you buy two shared accounts, one on a quality host like downtownhost.com to host your site files and another on a place such as servage.com to host your software files and downloads. This is actually a pretty good plan as long as you make sure the host you are storing large files on allows hotlinking and using their service as storage. Many hosts disallow this as it is an easy way to users to take advantage of their hosting plans. This is probably the cheapest way to run a software download site where you are hosting the files yourself.
4. VPS(Virtual Private Server) – For sites that have outgrown the CPU/RAM constraints of a shared account, a VPS is a good place to move. In a VPS, each account is sectioned off by itself and has a guaranteed amount of CPU/RAM it can use. The actions of one user will not effect other users on the same machine. Therefore, you will not get suspended for CPU/RAM overages. If your site constantly goes above you guaranteed RAM, your site will slow down and you will eventually have to upgrade. One thing to note about a VPS account is that the bandwidth included is not any greater than a regular shared account. If you are hosting a software site that gets this many visitors, you will probably have to work out some kind of special arrangement with your provider for bulk purchases of extra bandwidth every month, otherwise you will be paying an insane amount for bandwidth overage charges every month. You also have root access in a VPS system to install whatever software or API you need for your site. You should probably go with a managed VPS account with a control panel like cPanel included for server management purposes.
5. Dedicated Server – For sites that outgrow a high-end VPS, a dedicated server is the next and perhaps final step. In this environment, all of the server resources belong to you. You will get a higher constant performance from a dedicated but you will not have the “Burst RAM” rate that a VPS usually has. To upgrade from a high-level VPS, you’ll want to get a dual-core server with at least 1GB RAM to see any real benefits. If you feel that your dedicated box is still not able to serve the needs of your site, you can always upgrade the hardware. Likewise if you are lacking bandwidth, you can always purchase extra GB’s of bandwidth or dedicated bandwidth lines on the cheap.

Now that we have looked at both the hosting requirements and options for hosting a software site, you should have a good idea of what you actually need. Be careful in picking your host as the difference between choosing the right or wrong one can be the difference between success and failure.