Member Avatar for bsabev

Hey,

I am always in need of webhosting for my clients, php & mysql webhosting specifically.

Normally I rent a vserver for my clients.

Recently I stumbled upon this vendor from Austria, who is offering free domains + free webhosting for 12 months. The cost for the second year seems to be decent and it seems there are no mandatory minimum contracts.

Would this type of (probably shared) webhosting deal be suitable for webshops with 100s of visits dayly or should I stick to vservers?

The offer I am referring to: http://www.easyname.com/en/com-domain

Is this for real?

  • 3 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 435 Views
  • 7 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by stultuske

Dani AI

Generated

Short answer: use the promotional free period as a hands-on trial and staging environment, but avoid putting a paying client's production shop on it unless the plan explicitly meets resource, security and ownership requirements. is right that optimization, caching and offloading reduce load; is right to insist on a real-world test first.

Quick checklist to run during the trial:

  1. Verify PHP/MySQL versions and whether you can change settings (memory_limit, max_execution_time, max_input_vars).
  2. Measure resource limits: max concurrent processes, DB connections, disk I/O and inode quotas. Simulate peak visitors and concurrent checkouts.
  3. Confirm backups and restore: snapshot frequency, locations, and a documented restore process.
  4. Check email deliverability (SPF/DKIM), SSL support (Let’s Encrypt or provider SSL), error logs and support response time.
  5. Confirm ownership and portability: domain registration name, transfer rights, and how to export files/DB on short notice.
  6. Watch for forced banners, throttling, and the real renewal price after the promo.

Performance and security notes: shared plans work for a few hundred visits/day if the site is mostly read-heavy, uses opcode/page caching, and static media is served from a CDN or external object store. If the cart is DB-heavy, needs Redis/ElastiCache, or you must enforce PCI controls, a VPS/managed instance with snapshots and full configuration control is safer. Also plan monitoring (uptime, slow queries) and an immediate rollback/migration path.

Final recommendation: accept the free deal for a non-production test or low-risk client only. Use the trial to gather metrics, document a migration checklist, and only move a live ecommerce site when SLAs, security, backups and ownership are all clear and tested.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for pixelsoul

The old saying "You get what you pay for" comes to mind.
I get my domains from a trusted registrar, and I get my hosting based on quality+reputation+price.

A site with a couple hundred visitors a day should be fine on a shared hosting plan, as long as the site content is well optimized, so it isn't utilizing tons of bandwidth to download something on page loads. I would also leverage some caching system and something like Amazon S3 for images, and download files.

Member Avatar for stultuske

Sure, why not? But, "try before you buy".
Since it's 12 months free, first try it out for a personal website (not linked to your client) for a period of (at least) a month.
See if it's stable, see if you can get lots of people to visit your page without it going down, check whether or not it is indeed as easy to configure as they claim, check their reliability and efficiëncy against your requirements (data that must be able to be transferred, number of mailboxes, number of simultaneous users, ... ) and, most of all, check for hidden nuisances.

They say you don't have to pay, they don't say they don't want an income of it. Check that they don't add banners on it for that time.
Something tells me that your client wouldn't really appreciate it if they have a "professional site" with adds for "Big Bob's penis enlargers" or any of that crap.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.