new venture.the dedicated vs shared question again.

dedicated or shared hosting for my new venture

[thinkbig]

I have a new website im starting that has a social network feel, it is PHP and mysql and i have been looking at r@ckspace managed dedicated which start at around 380$ x month and shared which is 50$ - 100$ x month.

I will begin by telling you i am by far no techy and i dont have a tech/server admin team. Its just me at this point. My site will allow users to upload video and pictures and browse profiles in a certain music niche. I want pages to load quickly obviously as well as the pics and videos. I plan to use adsense for the first year and expect large traffic and signups early on. My problem is whether i should start with the dedicated to avoid upsizing and transfer issues if and when i grow out of the shared space. I am scared that managing the dedicated will be costly, time consuming and out of my range of knowledge and no real budget for onsite or remote server admin/tech. I have used shared before and am a bit more familiar with it.

As stated above this is a new venture with no traffic and no income yet, this makes me lean toward the shared and as revenue from adsense is earned we could migrate to dedicated? I dont think our programmers will need root access or the full benefits of dedicated yet but i could be wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. The only real specs I know from the programmers are below. Thanks

PHP as a server side language and Mysql as a backend.

Linux hosting [image magic / gd library support]

Language: PHP5

Database : Mysql (version >4.1)

[jtara]

First of all, the prices you quoted for both dedicated and shared seem high. But you did say "managed". Make sure you understand how much "management" you are or aren't getting.

You can get dedicated for the high-end of the price you quoted for shared.

Why not go VPS, and make sure that your host can move you to larger VPS plans or to dedicated seamlessly?

That would allow you to see if you can manage a dedicated server while at least not expending so much on hosting initially.

If you are right in your projections, you will probably need to go dedicated eventually anyway. So, why not start building the knowledge and skills needed now?

no real budget for onsite or remote server admin/tech.

Then you need to re-think your business plan, don't you?

That said, it's common to overestimate server needs. Probably more common than to underestimate.

You need to quantify, beyond "large traffic and signups". That's meaningless.

[thinkbig]

I think i am going to start off with verio virtual private plan and upsize with them.
[verio.com...]

It fits the budget and i have had a human answer each time i call and assist me which means alot to me.

My thinking going into this was i have no traffic and no server experience yet so i will grow with this VPS in both areas.

[vincevincevince]

I'd ask the programmers what they recommend, and who they recommend. In general it's good to get shared hosting until your website is a success. When you need to move then you'll be making the money to cover hosting and management.

[thinkbig]

they suggested rackspace dedicated from the start but that 380$ is out of the questions for us at this point. There are a couple of sites that are similiar in some ways to what we are doing and they are down alot, often video upgrades and other things. A big part of our site will be viewing users videos and dont want to be down like the others.

[rocknbil]

thinkbig per your question in the Ecommerce forum [webmasterworld.com] the point becomes moot if you go dedicated - you will be able to put **all** your domains on a single box without having to worry about increased fees.

There are other dedi services out there, Rackspace is expensive because of their high level of maintenance. Shop around, currently we're paying about $1300 per year for our dedi lease.

[thinkbig]

well the new project needs a linux box and the ecomm's are in a windows environment, they both cant reside in the same ded server right?

[thecoalman]

Well being I'm going down the same road myself at this point I'll throw my .02 in. The prices for plans you listed seem to be quite high to me. I'm sure those companies are outstanding, they must be to be able to charge that much but if you do some research on any company you're looking at you'll quickly find whether it's worth it, I'd pay particulars attention to forums where hosts are discussed. I don't trust review sites. One thing that impressed me about the company I have chosen is they have a forum and it doesn't appear that they remove negative posts and the responses from the employees seemed quite intelligent, i.e. it's not some guy sitting in front of a knowledge base who knows less than you offering canned answers. Anyhow those are the things I would look for, cheaper is not always better but there are exceptions and hopefully I've chosen correctly. ;)

Having said that I would look for a managed VPS that comes with a control panel, the company I'm going with by their definition of managed they provide a hardened installation of your choice of *nix and a selection of control panel with apache, php , mysql, mail etc. All the things you would expect from a shared plan. Having talked with the sales department they have assured me it's not that much different that what you would have in a shared environment to start. The managed plan also provides a metered amount of installation of other software per month. You get to take it from there.

Total cost to start is $30 a month which appears will be suitable for me as I'll only be running one smaller site from it.

I dont think our programmers will need root access or the full benefits of dedicated yet but i could be wrong.

I'd have to say VPS is not for you if you don't need root access but there is nothing more frustrating than finding this really cool script or application only to find you can't use it. ffmpeg immediately comes to mind for your situation.

Well off to fire up that credit card...

[rocknbil]

well the new project needs a linux box and the ecomm's are in a windows environment, they both cant reside in the same ded server right?

If I were in this position I would pick one . . . and convert. :-)

Another benefit of a dedi: Want to add a new domain? Doesn't cost you any more than the name purchase.

[thinkbig]

your saying convert the ecomms from win to linux? Then i guess they all could reside on the same box not a bad idea...