Techie
5:23 PM | Monday | 15 March 2010

Anyone who does business online spends a lot on servers and data centers. It's like a real-estate company spending the majority of its budget on sales and marketing; it can't sell condos and make money without spending a lot of it first. The same is true for companies or individuals trying to earn from the Internet. Putting up a kick-ass online store or maintaining a widely read blog is pretty much pointless if you can't keep it accessible to visitors from all over the world.

Back in 2008, Amazon spent at least $86 million on servers. That sounds like a lot, until you realize that the online retailer made a net profit of $207 million – only for the 4th quarter of that year. The point is that any kind of success online – at least the kind of success you have full control over – requires good Web hosting.

Consider even a few hours of downtime. For large companies selling products online, this means thousands or even millions of lost sales, because you can't buy what you can't access. Worse, a website that goes down turns off visitors and potential customers. Witness Friendster, a social-networking pioneer who lost ground to MySpace as users stopped visiting it due to its services' numerous downtimes.

I've had my share of experience with choosing – and encountering problems with – Web-hosting providers. My first blog was hosted for free, as a favor by someone else. You get what you pay for: sudden spikes of traffic would bring the blog down, and I couldn't demand better performance from the Web host because, well, he was doing it for free. The failures weren't large-scale, but it was still irritating nonetheless. In retrospect, I should have paid for quality hosting, especially since I was serious about building a profile online.

Allow me to recommend two good Web-hosting services, based on my personal experience. In no particular order, the first is Webmarkster, a business maintained by a former officemate, Mark Reodica. He currently has four plans available, virtually similar in capability. The only differences are, of course, the prices for each tiered service (Student, Blogger, Premium, and Business) as well as the storage space and bandwidth provisions of each plan. I currently use Webmarkster to host Spectograph, a side project of mine. Prices start at P997 a year for the Student plan.

The service I'd like to recommend is Skaizer, a Web-hosting business oriented towards hosting blogs. The owner of Skaizer is none other than Kiven Codamon, who blogs for Techie at The Pinoy Gamer and is my partner at Technograph. The lowest plan of Skaizer is a bit more pricey than Webmarkster's (P250 a month), but that gets you more storage and bandwidth. In case it wasn't obvious a few sentences ago, Technograph is hosted by Skaizer.

The great thing about Webmarkster and Skaizer is that you can start small and pay more as your online business/website grows. Even better, the proprietors of both services are Filipinos; they are easy to deal with.

(Update: Kiven contacted me through YM. Apparently he has a promo going on: "Skaizer is now offering a 150peso per month hosting only available for a limited time via this article. Contact Kiven of Skaizer at kivendood@gmail.com and put in the subject "150 HOSTING" to inquire or avail of this promo. AND If you pay yearly, Skaizer will double your bandwidth and webspace.")