Hosting rating in Russia. Large review of photo hosting sites Comparative analysis of image hosting sites

IN English language the word host has several meanings: master, main device, main computer, innkeeper. From all these meanings, we can put together the following concept: the main device that “takes over” your site. This device is called hosting. Those. you host your website somewhere on someone else's computer. But at the same time, you remain the owner of the site. Hosting provides the ability to edit and manage a website. In addition, most hosting providers provide interactive pages (forums, chats), allow the user and visitors (if provided by the site owner) to replenish the database, register and make financial transactions directly from the site. A set of programs that provide all these capabilities is also called hosting.

There are a lot of hosting services on the Internet now. And they all provide very different sets of services at very different prices. There are free hostings. Those. on these servers you will be charged for services not in money, but by placing advertisements on your site. When registering on such a free server, you should keep this in mind. In addition, free hosting has a number of other disadvantages. Due to the lack of fees, such servers have a lot of clients, i.e. they are often overloaded and, as a result, work slowly. Your website hosted on free hosting will load slowly and sometimes even freeze. This may deprive you of such welcome visitors. Free hosting often lacks some programs necessary for interactive pages to work. Therefore, for commercial websites it is better to choose paid hosting.

How to choose hosting?

The reputation of a site largely depends on the quality of the server on which it is hosted. Imagine that a simple website loads slowly and at times is completely unavailable. This is how they lose visitors. Everyone prefers to deal with sites that have no failures and go to competitors’ sites, which are better only because they managed to choose the best hosting. With an unstable server, it is impossible to create a high-quality chat; changes in stock prices will not be reflected on the site in a timely manner. Regular news, and it will appear late. This state of affairs can ruin the reputation of even a home page.

Server interruptions are inevitable. Everyone needs to take preventive measures Maintenance. Common problems are also possible. No one is immune from problems, but these are force majeure circumstances that rarely occur. But the server can organize scheduled work so that it does not interfere with clients. As a last resort, the server administration will warn that, say, from 5-00 to 5-10 daily (or monthly) - prevention. Accordingly, website owners will structure their work taking this break into account. High-quality, powerful hosting services manage to avoid such interruptions in their work, but they also cost more. But they promise to compensate for downtime. As a guarantee, it is worth keeping copies of contracts that state this compensation in order to actually receive it if something happens.

To choose the best one among the companies offering the same services, it is recommended to find out the opinions of those who have already dealt with these companies. In the case of hosting, everything is a little more complicated. Nevertheless, you should chat on the forums, find out who is a hack and who conscientiously fulfills everything promised. But there is a subtlety here. If the hosting violates the contracts, there is, of course, nothing to talk about. You shouldn't mess with someone like that. But there cannot be such a clear opinion about the operation of websites. The fact is that on a hosting that is suitable for one site, another site may not work well. And if such a problem happens, then it’s better to look for another hosting.

To avoid this, you must first decide for yourself what, in fact, is needed for the site, what you should find out about before purchasing hosting.

Here is an approximate set of good hosting services:
• Number of domains on one account
• Domain name registration
• At least 20 MB of disk space
• Sufficiently large throughput
• Free technical support
• Email addresses (E-Mail) using the POP3 protocol
• Redirecting emails
• Autoresponders for emails
• Email aliases
• FTP access
• Ability to use your own CGI scripts
• Free use of Perl, PHP
  When developing a project, you need to build on the technical capabilities of the hosting. One friend created a website in JSP, but a year later he gave up on this idea and rewrote it in PHP. Now he works calmly and does not have hemorrhoids with finding a site and moving.
• Server Side Includes (SSI) are a mechanism that allows you to reference environment variables and perform certain actions from within HTML documents without programming.
• Automatic backup
• Availability of pre-installed CMS (site engines)
• Price, form of payment
• Password protection
• Affiliate program
• 30 day money back guarantee
• Geography of the audience for which the site is designed.
  If the main audience of your site is Russian-speaking visitors, you ideally need to host your site in Russia. If you are tailoring a project for the bourgeoisie, then you are better off looking for hosting in the States or Germany. This way, sites will work faster, and you shouldn’t forget about geotargeting.
• Reputation and quality of hosting provider services.
  And, of course, if you choose hosting, then you need to choose it for something, and not just because it is cheaper than others. And here reviews on webmaster forums and blogs, plus personal impressions from communication with staff, play an important role. It’s not good when the support snaps at even the smallest request in the style of “for your 5 bucks, we’re too lazy to print even a couple of lines, you’ll outbid.”

Once several suitable hosting providers have been selected, you should approach them in more detail. Many people fall for the bait of the word “unlimited.” But nothing is unlimited. And those who put too much emphasis on their unlimited capabilities are likely to overestimate themselves, if not just cheating. Therefore, you should decide how much space the site takes up on your computer along with databases, mail, and log files. Now you can find out what exactly hosters mean by “disk space” and what types of files are included in the quota. Many servers include mail and log files in the quota, which makes it difficult to estimate the required disk space, because... The size of these files is constantly changing. If statistical information is required, additional space will be needed to collect and process this data. It would be nice if it was possible to download and delete log files daily. If they are to be removed monthly, they will take up too much space by the end of the month.

The site loading speed depends on bandwidth server channels. The larger it is, the better the site will work.

Growing problems should also be taken care of. After all, the site will develop. The database will increase and traffic will grow. Will the chosen hosting handle this? For your own peace of mind, it is not harmful to find out which large well-known companies use the services of this hosting. New hosting companies may be very good in all respects, but, unfortunately, they may disappear one day. Together with the entire database accumulated on the site. Such a disaster can be compared to a fire. Therefore, it is better to choose those who have been on the market for a long time.

When you start corresponding with the hosting administration, pay attention to the speed and completeness of the responses. How attentive they are to clients, do they answer questions clearly and in detail? If the answers are delayed, it means that the problems that arise will be treated with the same indifference. However, when asking questions, do not repeat those in the Frequently Asked Questions section. Perhaps all the answers you need are already there. And if you are satisfied with everything, you can register.

• Fast response
• Reliability and stability
• No “bad” neighbors
• Different IPs for different sites (for working via HTTPS this is a must!)
• High-quality 24/7 support
• Regular backups

To monitor response time, you can use services such as host-tracker.com and siteuptime.com.

You can test the site’s resistance to loads using the services loadimpact.com and loadstorm.com.

Checking the quality of hosting technical support is very simple: send them an email describing the problem at about 2-3 am. In most cases, you will receive a standard reply, and the problem itself will be resolved no earlier than 10–11 am. We can only talk about good technical support if there is a quick, specific response at any time of the day.

Dynamic page technologies.

Web pages can be static or dynamic. Static pages are created using the simplest html and CSS languages. Java scripts are used quite often. Most often these are the main pages of sites or small sites with a limited amount of information. In essence, these are not programming languages, but a way of marking up text: font, background, columns. Scripts are already small programs that are executed when you hover the mouse over a certain object (drop-down menu, for example). All these languages ​​are understood by the computer browser; they do not require any special software. But their possibilities are small.

Imagine a site search form. Let's say this is a site about restaurants, cafes, and clubs in the city. With addresses, phone numbers, menus and entertainment programs for today. One user wants to find the nearest restaurant that serves nightingale tongues today, another is looking for an inexpensive cafe with jazz music, and a third wants to order dinner at home. For the three of them, you just need to create three different static pages that they will see upon their request. How many more users will want to find something else? It’s like creating a page for everyone. If only we knew in advance who would be looking for what, otherwise you would have to go through all possible combinations based on all these parameters (address, menu, price, program). And for tomorrow, make updates, redo all these pages. The amount of work for static pages is simply impossible. Therefore, it is much more convenient to use dynamic pages that will be generated for each request. Simple tools are not suitable for this; you need special software and a special programming language.

The way such languages ​​work is simple. The web server hosts databases (in our case, a list of restaurants with menus, addresses, prices), and programs (scenarios or scripts) for processing this data based on user requests. The request from the computer is sent to the server, where the data is processed by the appropriate program. The result is a web page that is transmitted back to the user's computer. All this is done using the CGI protocol - Common Gateway Interface (which in Russian sounds like “common gateway interface”). CGI is a set of rules by which the server passes a request to a program.

To work with databases located on the server, PHP, ASP, and Perl languages ​​are used. Perl was the first language to be created to run simple programs. He needs a correctly configured and debugged interpreter on the server. The PHP language is currently developing most actively in combination with the MySQL database. PHP and MySQL technologies are supported by most hosting providers. They are compatible with almost all operating systems, are easy to install, configure, operate and have a wide range of functionality. Moreover, hosting with PHP and MySQL on UNIX/Linux operating systems is the cheapest hosting. For comparison, hosting with support for ASP and SQL technologies running the Windows operating system costs 50%-70% more. Moreover, the reliability of such technologies is somewhat less. Windows is convenient operating system For personal computer, but does not work well as a server operating system. It is for this reason that the website of Microsoft itself, a Windows developer, is hosted on a Linux operating system. Technology with ASP, SQL is a commercial technology with closed source. PHP and MySQL technologies are free to use, so they are used and developed by programmers all over the world. However, if a failure does occur on the PHP page, there will be no one to file a claim against. Therefore, many people prefer to use ASP, SQL.

ASP, or Active Server Pages, is a scripting language. It allows you to generate HTML from various databases interactively at the request of users. It is compatible with page objects such as Active X or Java components. ASP can be combined with regular web pages to create powerful applications that can be developed and modified. The ASP page is created on the server before it is sent to the user's computer. Hosting services that support ASP are worthy of all respect. But you should find out which version the hosting supports: ASP or ASP.NET. In addition, the server must support database applications such as Access and SQL. ASP.NET is a new technology. Microsoft is working on it. The developers believe that this will soon be the most widely used language.

Where can server-side scripting languages ​​come in handy? These are guest books, forums, chats, all kinds of registration forms. It is very convenient to use them for online stores with the ability to pay for purchases directly from the site.

Free hosting

When deciding on which hosting to host a new website, there is always a temptation to use the services of a free server. Well, really, why pay more if you can not pay at all? Such thoughts are especially common among novice businessmen and authors of non-profit projects. And free hosting can indeed provide many useful services. Let’s figure out what’s good, what’s bad, and where the mousetrap is in which free hosting lies.

A very serious drawback is the large load on free servers, and, as a result, slow speed. You will immediately have to come to terms with this as an inevitable evil. You can only try to choose the least slow hosting. This can be done by going to the main hosting page. If it loads not just slowly, but very slowly, don’t go there anymore. Look for something else.

First, you need to carefully read the rules of the server with which you decide to establish a strong relationship. Each hosting has its own rules. And you need to either adapt your website to these requirements, or look for another place.

First, look at the sites' prohibited topics. Not all companies agree to host, for example, porn sites or freebies. Next, the size of the disk space provided is important. Well, as a rule, there are no problems here. The smallest space on hosting for a website is 5MB. But now they usually don’t give anything less than 200MB anywhere. There is definitely enough space for a home page or business card website on any hosting. But still, look how much space the site takes up. Just in case. What if you have a photo album with large photographs or MP3s?

The next limitation imposed by free hosting is the size of the files. Any ordinary page will certainly fit, but archives, pictures and music may not fit. It may even happen that the hosting does not want to deal with certain types of files at all. Most often, files with the extension *.mp3, *.mpeg, *.zip, *.rar, *.arj fall into the category of unwanted files. Or they may not be available for your visitors to download from your site.

An important question is how you can upload a site to the server. Modern providers usually provide access via FTP (this is a protocol that allows you to upload a large amount of information). Simple and convenient. It is much worse if a form in the browser is offered for downloading, which must be filled out for each individual file. Try to find a hosting with FTP access. The ability to administer the site is also very important. A good hosting will certainly have a site control panel, with which it is easy to make any changes.

Free hosting usually provides free mailboxes, forums, guest books. Very useful thing. Especially if it is possible to change the design of the forum and book, make them the same type as the site (choose a background, font, logo). For people who themselves cannot cope with programming such complex scripts (programs that generate pages), this is an irreplaceable thing. But the entire database with the addresses of those who visited your forum or book will not be available to you. It will remain on the server.

Hosting, even free, needs to live on something. And he lives off the advertising that he places on his clients’ websites. This is unpleasant, but if you provide space for the banner on the site, it can turn out quite nice. Only here there are underwater stones. Firstly, each hosting has chosen its own place for its banners. And the banners themselves are different on different hosting sites. This could be a large banner measuring 468x60 located at the bottom of the page, or 100x100 in the upper right corner, or even a pop-up one. This means that before designing the page, you need to figure out where you will be hosted and reserve space for advertising that you don’t need. And the second problem is if the hosting allows advertising on some “slippery” topic. Then such bad advertising may appear on your website, for which you will be excluded from some promotion program with stricter rules. And the third disadvantage: some hosting sites impose restrictions on the presence of other people’s banners on the pages. They may, for example, prohibit the placement of someone else’s banner next to theirs or even require that it be removed from the page.

Before registering with a hosting, you need to see what scripting languages ​​the hosting supports. Everyone has seen clickable buttons, drop-down menus, etc. These are simple scripts, they are executed by the browser when loading the code of an html page without any participation from the server. But there are server scripts. To perform them, you need software or a database installed on the server. In this case, the browser receives an already generated, ready-made page. This could be a site search, database processing, for example, an online store, chat or forum. If the site uses server-side languages, see if the hosting supports them. If not, look for another place.

And the most main drawback- serious people and companies have a biased attitude towards sites located on free hosting. A self-respecting company will never be tempted by freebies. Many services on the Internet refuse to work with freeloaders. Coupled with slow loading and periodic interruptions in communication with the server, all this does not inspire confidence in sites with free hosting. Therefore, if you want to do serious work on the Internet, move to a paid server as soon as possible.

Today I have prepared for you a comparative review of three well-known hosting providers, thanks to which you can decide for yourself which one is the best option for you.

I felt the need to find a new hosting relatively recently, when “ Timeweb" me in Once again let me down, and rewarded me with my new problems for new sites.

Victims of the review

And so, today I will try to compare three well-known hosting sites as objectively as possible:

As you can see, I will not be considering some wretched hosting companies, but well-known projects that host their clients’ websites on modern equipment.

I had the opportunity to work with each of these hosting sites, some more and some less, but I’ve definitely already made my choice. It's time for you to do it too.

What services does a good hosting offer?

First, let's figure out what services a really good hosting should offer!

1. Availability and speed

Without a doubt, the main factor of good hosting is its constant availability and speed.

Slow or weak hosting will have a very negative impact on the success and promotion of the site. I am generally silent about interruptions in the availability of the site, they are simply unacceptable. By the way, you can track the availability of your sites using the convenient service Loaddy.com.

2. SSD and speed

Modern realities are such that a really good hosting should host sites at high speed SSD drives, thanks to which the speed of the site after the transfer reaches an increase of 2-10 times in comparison with hosting using simple disks.

3. Data safety and backups

A really good hosting is one that ensures the safety of its client’s data by making daily automatic backups on additional servers.

4. All characteristics

And finally, a good hosting cannot be defective, which means it must support such characteristics as: PHP 5+, MySQL, Zend Optimizer, IonCube loader, SSL and others.

Characteristics of famous hosting sites

All of the hosts we reviewed have roughly the same functionality offerings, with a few important exceptions.

1. MCP

• Only MCP uses SSD drives in Germany, so they boldly claim that their hosting and VPS servers are very fast. And they say this rightfully. Tested from my own experience.
• Also, MCP has all the capabilities that its rivals in this review also have. In addition, this hosting offers everyone’s favorite ISPmanager panel and weekly anti-virus scanning, which opponents do not offer.
• In addition, MCP is the only one on the list that provides the ability to host servers in different countries(Russia, Germany, USA, France, Netherlands), which is quite a convenient advantage.

2. Beget

• Beget is also holding up well, and although it does not offer anti-virus options and ISPmanager, its offer nevertheless has higher processor load limits - 65 cp with a maximum of 50 cp for its rivals.
• In addition, Beget offers its own file manager, which is somewhat different in its functionality and speed, but is not always pleased with its stability, especially if there are any problems with the Internet.

3. Timeweb

• In this list, Timeweb clearly loses, which cannot boast of any unique features that its opponents in the review did not have; therefore, MCP becomes the leader in terms of functions.

Comparison of hosting plans

Let's first look at the tariff plans for simple website hosting.

Outsider?

Of course, the outsider in this list is again Timeweb hosting, which at the minimum rate asks for $4, while its competitors only charge $3. It's worth noting that it offers 2 GB of free space for websites, while its rivals offer only 1 GB.

Unlimited MySQL

Beget stands out among its competitors only because of its unlimited number of MySQL databases and low cost of its tariff plan. Now think about why you need no limit on MySQL if the minimum tariff plan allows you to host only 2 sites?

In the lead

And yet, the minimum tariff plan is intended for beginner webmasters, and therefore MCP is still more adapted for beginners, offering optimal conditions at such a low cost of the tariff plan.

Maximum tariff

In terms of maximum hosting tariff, Beget and MCP are relatively equal, the first offers 10 GB of free space and unlimited MySQL, and the second offers 30 sites and 8 GB, which is a lower ratio than its rival.

Clear outsider

The maximum Timeweb hosting plan is not inferior to MCP in terms of the number of sites, and in terms of free space it is twice as much, although its cost is also twice as much. Timeweb is an outsider again.

Comparison of VDS tariffs

Now let's look at the tariff plans for VDS, which I think will pleasantly surprise you.

1. Only two opponents?

Did you notice Beget on this list? This is because this hosting company does not provide VDS services - only hosting and servers!

2. Powerful and pointless VDS

This time Timeweb is definitely in the lead, offering probably the most powerful and pointless VDS! The maximum tariff can accommodate 16 cores of 2700 mhz, 32 GB random access memory and 100 GB of free hard drive space. True, you won’t get a single megabyte of backup storage, and you’ll also have to pay separately for the panel and dedicated IP.

As for me, for projects that need such a vds, you need to buy your own server. By the way, such a VDS pleasure costs just like a pumped-up server - $925.

3. Give way

At the minimum tariff, Timeweb is clearly inferior to MCP in the higher cost of VDS, as well as the lack of a dedicated IP, backup storage and ISPmanager panel.

4. We get a leader

In fact, whatever one may say, MCP is still the best option for purchasing VDS, although you can order much more advanced and expensive hardware from Timeweb.

Pros and cons of hosting from my readers

To everything written above, I would also like to add information taken from my readers’ comments to this review.

Timeweb

pros:

• Bonus period (10 days)

Minuses:

• Relatively high prices - there are analogues with the same or better service and equipment that cost less.
• The support service is slow - I didn’t experience any major delays; of course, the wait lasted up to several hours, but this is not significant for the minor problems that I had. There are hosting companies from which you need to wait 12 hours or more for a response. Note: Slow service seems to only apply to customers on low-cost plans.
• Slow operation of sites compared to analogues that have SSD drives
• From time to time there are hosting glitches, some problems, either with equipment or with software. In my case this happens very rarely.

Beget

pros:

• The bonus period (30 days) is the longest bonus period of any hosting I have ever encountered.
• Possibility to pay the subscription fee in installments, depositing any amount
• Long period of existence of the hosting company
• Relatively low prices for hosting and servers
• An interesting file editor - it has its own characteristics and disadvantages, but in my opinion it has more advantages.
• Increased load limit on hosting (65 cp)

Minuses:

• Not a complete set of offers (no VDS)
• Very frequent technical work during which sites are unavailable or have performance problems. A dubious minus, since all work is aimed only at improving the performance of sites.

MCP

pros:

• Full set of offers (hosting, vds, servers)
• Bonus period (7 days)
• High-speed equipment - sites work faster than on hostings that do not have SSD drives
• Relatively low prices, considering high-speed equipment

Minuses:

• There is no option to pay the subscription fee in installments - an invoice is issued, which you need to pay using one of the proposed payment methods.

Let's summarize. Which hosting and vds to choose?

Let's summarize the characteristics and tariff plans of the presented hosting providers.

Outsider

The outsider, whatever one may say, is Timeweb, which is inferior to its opponents in terms of characteristics, prices, and offers for hosting and VDS. The only exception is the maximum tariff for VDS, which is many times superior to its opponents in terms of characteristics, but at the same time in terms of prices.

Leading

The leader, of course, is the MCP company, which surpasses its opponents in terms of hosting characteristics, although Beget’s maximum hosting load is 15 cp higher.

In terms of hosting tariff plans, both projects are approximately equal, although the maximum tariff from MCP in the “site/free space” ratio is inferior to the tariff from Beget, at the same time, for other tariffs it is optimal and more profitable.

VDS Timeweb vs VDS MCP

In the VDS duel, only Timeweb and MCP remained, since Beget does not provide VDS services. And the leader among them, of course, is MCP, although you can order more powerful and expensive equipment from Timeweb.

And so, if you recognized MCP as the optimal solution for yourself, then our opinion coincides with you.

Why is MCP better?

Perhaps because the characteristics of the hosting and vds they offer are not inferior, or even superior, to their competitors, but this does not in any way affect their prices.

MCP certainly has Better conditions for this kind of services, but that’s not all their merits!

• Two years ago I was looking for hosting for my startup that would suit me with characteristics, price, and quality, and it’s a pity that I didn’t find MCP then, since they offer a vital service for this kind of resources - free hosting for startups for the whole year!
• In addition, the MCP company sponsors related projects, such as loaddy.com, which is how I learned about this hosting.

Loaddy.com is a load testing and site availability monitoring service, thanks to which you can track downtime of the site or server as a whole, as well as determine their peak load values.

Promotion from MCP

To write an honest review, a representative of MCP contacted me and offered cooperation. Why not? Another advantage of this hosting company is that they are ready to accommodate and encourage promotions and competitions. And now they have agreed to reward all new users with a bonus of 150 rubles. Reworking the pages of blog sections or improving internal linking on the site