Calgary Web Hosting

Calgary Web Hosting or Calgary Website Hosting

I find a lot of people don't really understand what web hosting is. Well here it is in a nutshell, if you looking at a web page on the Internet, then that page is being HOSTED by a server on the WEB.

Now contrary to one misconception, you do not have to host your web pages with the ISP ( Internet Service Provider) you are hooked up with. So even though you are getting Internet connectivity from Telus or Shaw you can still have another company do the web page hosting.

There are some real advantages to using a "third party" hosting company. You can get the type of packages and technology you want and often for a better price with equal or better service. Getting started with Wordpress, getting experienced with Dot Net or just want the flexibility to change your ISP without affecting your hosting, then you should consider a third party hosting company.

Who should I choose to host my web site in calgary?

The hosting company you choose should meet or exceed several criteria.

- Are they a local Canadian hosting company?

- Do they offer a fair price? (note lowest price is not always the best deal)

- Do they have the expertise to support my applications? This can range from wordpress through to specialized ASP.NET applications.

- Are they secure?

- Do they offer business class packages such as virtual private servers, Exchange hosting etc

- Chinook Webs (now part of Atrema Technologies) offers a complete line of hosting packages. See www.chinookwebs.com

Web Hosting Tricks & Traps

The hosting industry is currently full of many traps for the uneducated consumer. I suspect this has evolved due to the hyper competitiveness of this industry and the tendancy to view it more as a commodity.

The biggest tricks and traps to this are in the way things get worded. Unlimited bandwidth or unmetered bandwidth. Sounds great but what does it really mean? 24 hour support is another one that sounds really fabulous on the surface but once you examine it there is a wide range in what service is really being offered. In this article I will try to explain some of these terms and how they are used in this industry.

Unmetered bandwith:
All this means is that the company providing the bandwidth is not calculating how many bytes are being transferred back and forth but there are still limits to what you can transfer. For instance if you are connected through a 10 megabits per second port (10mb) then the theoretical limit is that many bytes per second and once the ceiling is reached no more bytes can travel through that connection, they get dropped. Even if the company has a burst setup then there will be an upper limit to that. Perhaps they are on a 100mb feed, so the limit there would be 100 mb. By the way, a 10 mb feed does not actually provide 10 mb as there is overhead that reduces the actual throughput. Typically a 10 mb feed would provide closer to 7mb of actual usuable throughput.

24 X 7 Support:
This can mean almost anything. Larger companies will actually have staff on hand in the wee hours but you can be sure that in most cases these are not level 3 technicians and any serious issue will have to wait for daytime staff. Smaller hosts will range from emergency numbers that page someone through to the simple fact that you can send an email and the email will be received by the mail server but will anyone actually look at it.

Where is your Data ?
For a web hosting / email company that maintains their servers in Calgary, your best bet is our sponsor Chinook Webs. A local company with a strong local presence. All of the servers are located within the City of Calgary.

Get a VPS
VPS stands for virtual private server. Chinook Webs does vps and they do it using modern virtualization software. VPS solutions are available in both Linux and the latest Windows platforms.