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Need hosting suggestions - following vortex beginner tutorial... (29)

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Hello,
I am following @vortex tutorial for beginners, but still would appreciate suggestions for affordable and effective hosting for beginners. Thanks.

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I myself have a dedicated server from LiquidWeb, but I have other sites - a big authority site among them - so it would probably be overkill for a lot of affiliates that just wants something to host landers.

BTW Are you just looking for something to host landers? Or also a self-hosted tracker?

We DO have a subforum on hosting, although the threads are somewhat outdated:

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...s-amp-Security

For self-hosted trackers I would suggest asking your tracker's support. For example here are Binom's recommendations:

https://docs.binom.org/faq.php#6



Amy

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I'm a huge fan of VPS like Digital Ocean or Vultr, but that's not the most beginner friendly.

Though with combination with ServerPilot or using something like CloudWays it should be pretty easy to setup for everyone.

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I moved a large part of my LPs to digital ocean too, have something on Vultr as well and then a dedicated server with one other hosting company.

Considering the prices and uptime of digitalocean or vultr, I guess I will stick to them for a while

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@vortex I will check the links you suggested. I was looking for something to host landers. The current offer that I am working on does not allow my own landers anyways, so I am using their direct link.


@erikgyepes @matuloo It looks like Digital Ocean and Vultr would be right for me too I am closing my eyes and jumping in there!

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Hi @matuloo
Do you use any CDN for your LPs on digitalocean VPS?

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I can´t talk for Matuloo but I would always use a CDN.

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I don't use CDN in most cases, since I'm targeting GEOs with solid internet infrastructure and my own tests in these GEOs didn't really show any increase in ROI when running through a CDN.

I should also add that all the traffic I run now is clicked, mostly banners, and such traffic is less sensitive to loading speeds than POPs for example.

If I was to run POPs in India for example, I'd definitely utilize a CDN.

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Thanks for your replies @matuloo & @twinaxe

Anyway it's better to run some test by myself and see how it works for my campaigns.

Could you please recommend any CDN provider to test with DigitalOcean VPS?

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Easiest and cheapest one would be Cloudflare. I personally prefer Cloudfront because a lot of our stuff is already at AWS.

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And here's how to set up Cloudfront (please scroll down to section "3)SET UP CDN on AMAZON CLOUDFRONT"):

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...osting-and-CDN

And here's how to set up Cloudflare:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post372291



Amy

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Thanks, Amy. Will check this out as soon as I can. It's been a bit hectic for me recently.

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I don't find anything faster than this... and it's shared hosting! https://wpx.net/
I am on digital ocean now and will try out cloudways ( + vultr) in a few days.
Thoughts on wpx please!

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I won't spend that much time testing hostings. It is not going to give you a significant boost to justify the time spent. Digital Ocean is fine. Just stick with it. You can put CloudFlare in front if needed. WPX focus is WordPress websites optimization, so you pay for that. If you have read a bit the forum, you know that WordPress, even optimized, hardly come close to static websites.

When you run volume in one geo, static websites get cached on CDN, so the time to load is actually not anymore based on the server, but on your CDN

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Not wasting much time on testing anything but need clarity on how things work. And not changing anything I am currently on. Just want to experiment new websites on cloudways (+ vultr) and possibly on wpx.

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^What @jeremie said.

No matter which server you're using to HOST or STORE your actual landing pages, you'll still be using a CDN to SERVE them!

Your webhost will have a physical server location so if you're running traffic from a country that is far from your server location, your pages will load slow.

A CDN network has many server locations around the world, where your files will be cached in all these locations, so that when a visitor tries to load your lander, the CDN will serve it from the server location closest to your visitor - to achieve fast loading speeds.

Therefore, it doesn't matter how fast your original webhost is - it's role is just to store the original lander files so the CDN would have a place to retrieve the lander files from.



Amy

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Great. But does sharing hosting complicate things? When I first joined here I was rightly advised to avoid them. But if the bandwidth of a shared hosting package like wpx is unlimited, can the negative effects of shared hosting be eliminated?
The speed of wpx (shared hosting) just amazes me.

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The speed can be good in your geo if you are close to their server. Have you made some testings in other geo?

It is unlimited until you start to exceed the "limit" they have set internally for their shared hosting. Then they will start to throttle your service.
This said if you have a CDN in front, why not try it. Make sure to serve only static sites that can be cached completely by the CDN, and set the cache agressively (no cookie, no query strings, and TTL to be high enough (like 1 month for example)), not to have too many hits to your origin server. (you can monitor the % of requests cached at the CDN level).

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Thanks for the tips. I am far away from wpx in India. Yet I know it performs with that speed in Europe and USA too as I have friends there.

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As long as it has enough bandwidth for your CDN to pull files from it, I honestly don't see any harm.

Again - you will NOT be using the shared hosting to serve web pages. It will only act as storage space. So speed or bandwidth won't really matter.



Amy

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I guess it's like parking my car in a shared garage instead of my own. This won't affect the car performance. Yet we feel concerned when we have a bad neighbor or sharing the car space maybe with a criminal, and prefer our own space. Right?
I will still stay away though from anyone who suggests namecheap, godaddy or even blue host. It's all between digital ocean, cloudways(plus vultr), and wpx hosting. NOT putting all the eggs in one basket.

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Yes, you could put it this way. Sharing a parking lot can be fine as long as both of you don't need to use it at the same time... same with these cheap shared hosting companies... all works fine unless someone puts a high load on the server, then all of the others sharing it, will get affected. They are basically overselling the CPU power and BW, in order to keep their prices low. Part time or hobby bloggers don't need to care much, but with performance marketing, it's a no-go. You cannot risk downtime or throttled performance at night (for example) when you're still running traffic.

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Dumb question and pretty obvious - but again what you think of wpx versus digital ocean, vultr, cloudways, etc. ? Is it worth the risk even if it seems the fastest on earth now? Here's their plans https://wpx.net/cart/wordpress-hosting/
Is their highest plan with "unlimited" bandwidth worth the risks you highlighted?

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You are overthinking it. As previously mentioned, if you have a CDN in front, it will take most of the hits.

Pick one and start creating campaigns. Not running campaigns and testing enough offers is where your risk is.

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Right!
Thank you.

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I didn't really run a deep comparison of various hosting companies, to be honest. I started by using dedicated servers, since I had a few prepaid from my SEO days... then I moved to using cheaper VPS setups, as I needed several of them to maximize the loading speeds in various regions of the world. And then I ended up using pretty cheap cloud hosting from digitalocean and I didn't notice any issues with the performance so I decided to stick with it.

But jeremie is right, do not overthink this, the main bottleneck will be elsewhere, not with hosting. As long as you use something "fast enough" of course. I was obsessed with loading speeds at some point, but then I learned there are more important factors to making a campaign work, not chasing every millisecond

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Agree! We do learn with time...
And I am the same person who ran direct linking campaigns on push ads for $500 crypto offers not long time back in March/ April this year. Blew nearly $300 (with that and a couple of other direct linking offers) because my "gut" feeling said that out of the at least 30,000 clicks one of them must be willing to change their lives because of the dream house and mansion in my push ads. No tracking set up. And I reasoned it's like "love" that defies logic and "love always wins"
Crazy stuff.
Now I am obsessed with speed! In comparison, not that sorry state of affairs.

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We all made our share of mistakes too, you can bet your arm on it BUT, you're now on STM, one of the best things here is (IMO) that many of those mistakes are documented in the threads and you can learn from them. Used that to your advantage and don't repeat them On top of that, we are always here to share our views which can help you to avoid more mistakes in the future!

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Ah, it's all history. I have matured, I guess and made quick progress.
Into too many things now, but well organized and entering 2021 with a bang!

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