Linux Hosting Round-up: What Host is the Cheapest?

Written by: Berry van der Linden • Edited by: Lamar Stonecypher
Updated Jul 15, 2009 • Related Guides: Photo Gallery | Linux

There are a lot of hosting company's out there most of which offer Linux Hosting. Some of which are very cheap. This article offers a round-up of Linux Hosting. It gives you a general idea of who is hosting on the Linux platform.

Is Cheap Always The Best?

Keep in mind when choosing a cheap Linux Hosting company that cheap is good, but more is sometimes better.

There are cases where you should just pay more here are some:

You run a fan site and have more then 10.000 visitor a month it's time to choose something different. There are 10.000 people counting on you every month to keep the site up and running.
You want to host your company's website.
Any High traffic website like a blog or photo gallery.

In these cases, a cheap Linux Hosting solution is not the answer. Cheap Linux Hosts use server farms. Usually the cheaper the hosting company, the more websites that are hosted on a server. For any high traffic website, you want Linux Hosting where fewer websites are hosted on one server.

So What Should I Host There?

Anything that doesn't fall under the previous category: personal websites, a blog, and photo galleries.

Criteria I Looked At

I host several URL's and use a couple of hosting accounts to do so. Here is what I look at when I shop for a host.

Space At least 5GB.
Possibility to host more then 1 domain per hosting account.
At least 200GB of data transfer per month.
PHP and Mysql.
E-mail accounts.
Possibility to use sub-domains.
When registering a domain, privacy options are a must.

An Overview Of Different Hosting Companies

The overview below will give you an idea of the best of the cheap, as it lists the least expensive hosting option from each company. Below the overview I will make my suggestions. The overview is in no particular order. The OS was gathered by doing a Netcraft search.

Bluehost
Rating

click to enlarge

Price: $6.95 a Month

Space: Unlimited.

Number of domains to host: Unlimited.

Data Limit: Unlimited.

PHP: Version 5

Mysql: Version 5. 2500 databases.

Included domains: 1 Free.

Privacy: Free.

E-mail accounts: 2500

Sub-domains: Unlimited

OS: CentOS

Web Server: Apache 2.0.63

Very fast support based in America. Very cooperative when expanding or reducing packages. Never had any downtime when I hosted there. Uptime reported to be 99.99%.

1 & 1 Hosting
Rating

click to enlarge

Price: $3.99 a month.

Space: 10GB

Number of domains to host: 20.

Data Limit: 300GB

PHP: Version 4 and 5

Mysql: Version 5

Included domains: 1

Privacy: Free.

E-mail accounts: 600.

Sub-domains: 25.

OS: Debian

Web Server: Apache 2.0.54

Support is stateside as well as based in India. It is not clear to me but it looks like they reduce waiting times by using India when their own help desk is too busy. Problems are solved very fast. The reported uptime is 99.96%.

Dreamhost
Rating

click to enlarge

Price: $5.95 a month.

Space: Unlimited.

Number of domains to host: Unlimited.

Data Limit: Unlimited.

PHP: Version 5.

Mysql: Version 5. Unlimited databases.

Included domains: Unlimited.

Privacy: Free.

E-mail accounts: Unlimited.

Sub-domains: Unlimited.

OS: Debian

Web Server: Apache 1.3.37

Dreamhost has a US based support team that answers support question as fast as they come in. I haven't had a problem with them yet. A big plus to me is that Dreamhost is run by Developers.

Hostgator
Rating

click to enlarge

Price: $4.95 a month.

Space: Unlimited.

Number of domains to host: 1.

Data Limit: Unlimited.

PHP: Version 5.

Mysql: Version 5. Unlimited databases.

Included domains: None.

Privacy: Free.

E-mail accounts: Unlimited.

Sub-domains: Unlimited.

OS: Unknown

Web Server: Apache 2.2.10

Never had to use there support but they claim their support is in-house.

GoDaddy
Rating

click to enlarge

Price: $4.99 a month.

Space: 10GB

Number of domains to host: Unlimited.

Data Limit: 300GB

PHP: Version 5.

Mysql: Version 5. 10 databases at 200MB's each.

Included domains: None.

Privacy: $6.99 a year.

E-mail accounts: 100.

Sub-domains: 25.

OS: Unknown

Web Server: 2.2.4

Support is slow with waiting times exceeding 15 minutes sometimes. Support is based in the US.

Which Would I Recommend?

I host domains with both GoDaddy and 1 & 1 Hosting. If any of my hosting packages would be up for renewal right now, I would change hosting to . . . drum roll . . . Dreamhost! A very close second would be Bluehost. Both have excellent support and a great up time rating.