When I built my first website back in 2003 I was pretty much in over my head. Even though it was a very basic site, I still found myself struggling with most every aspect of building and maintaining it.
One of the things I struggled with the most was choosing a good web hosting company. I tried a number of hosting companies and plans over the next couple of years, and finally found one that gave me the support I needed as I expanded the site and began to build more traffic to it. That company was Hostgator, and I can honestly say they are great!
As I learned more and built more websites and kept adding content to them, the traffic my sites were receiving on a daily basis began to grow exponentially. It soon became apparent that I desperately needed to move my sites onto a dedicated server. I chose the most economical plan that Hostgator offered, and was quite pleased with the results.
I kept that Hostgator server for several years, but then I read an article about VPS hosting plans and noticed that a company called Site 5 was highly regarded among their customers. After researching a few more of the highest rated VPS providers, I decided to give Site 5 a try. That was 3 years ago, and it has turned out to be the best move I have ever made.
Site 5 specializes in leasing Virtual Private Servers (aka VPS). In a nutshell, a VPS gives you many of the advantages of a dedicated server while still allowing you to enjoy the lower costs made possible by sharing a server with a small handful of other customers.
A VPS works its magic by giving each customer a guaranteed share of the server’s resources (CPU time, RAM, storage space and bandwidth).
Each customers “share” of the server’s resources operate independently from the resources that are allocated to the server’s other accounts. That means if one or more sites hosted on another account are bogged down or crash, your sites aren’t affected in the least. They just keep humming right along.
I had considered switching from a dedicated server to a VPS plan in the past, but none of the VPS plans that I found used CPANEL. That was a deal-breaker for me. I love CPANEL and I don’t want to switch to any other Control Panel software.
Much to my surprise, I discovered that Site 5 offers CPANEL as an option when you sign up for one of their VPS plans. In my opinion, this is a great strategy on their part, giving them a definite leg up on the competition.
The VPS plan that I settled on gives me almost the same level of resources as my old Hostgator dedicated server plan, but at a savings of over $50 per month – even after adding on daily remote backups (something that few other hosts even offer). That’s a savings of over $600 a year!
After I signed up for my VPS, Site 5’s engineers moved all of my websites and blogs from the old server to my new VPS server without me having to lift a finger. All I had to do was log into my Godaddy account and change the nameservers for each site’s domain name to point to my new server.
After using my Site 5 VPS for over 3 years, I can’t discern any noticeable difference between my VPS server’s performance and the dedicated server I rented from Hostgator. In a word, Site 5’s VPS servers are FAST!
I’m also quite impressed with Site 5’s customer service and technical support. In the rare instances when I needed them, I found their CS reps and engineers quite knowledgeable and helpful. Any issues have always been handled quickly and professionally. Even better, downtime has been virtually non-existent.
Bottom line: I have been very pleased with every aspect of my Site 5 experience. The servers are awesome, and the people managing and supporting them are simply top notch.
If you’re looking for a web hosting plan that offers near dedicated server performance at a much lower price, I strongly recommend that you click here and give a Site 5 VPS a try.
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.