Hi all,
this is for the newbies out there just like me struggling to figure out some quality hosting for a reasonable budget while you still don't have any affiliate earnings.
When I started searching for beyond shared hosting and saw VPS and cloud hosting were totaly out of my budget reach, I digged deeper and God-knows-how ended up on DigitalOcean looking at it with misty eyes since there was this awsome affordable hosting that I couldnt handle (read - manage myself). After digging some more I've ran into Cloudways that make it all possible! They do the managing of the cloud server for you! Imagine my happiness!
I've sent a customer request with a few questions, and the response came literally 10min after that, tops! Is this really as good as it seams? Tell me what you think and I invite you to give me any advice since I don't have any experience with hosting what so ever. Thank you!!!
Here are the q's I sent:
"Hi,
I need an advice on which plan to buy. I am interested in combining Cloudways with DigitalOcean server.
More about me and the usage of the potential hosting - I am a newbie affiliate marketer and will be using the server to host landing pages that will serve as a presell pages for affiliate / CPA offers and also as opt-in pages.
I can not say what volume of traffic will they need to handle yet, but I plan to use paid traffic with hopefully good click-through-rate to my landing pages. Since I can not allow a huge budget for buying traffic from the start I gues that traffic would not be too demanding to a server at the beginning.
Can you please advise me:
1) is the 7$ plan enough to get me started?
2) what if suddenly the traffic goes rapidly up, can that 7$ plan (DO512MB 512 MB 1 Core 20GB 1TB ) handle it and what happens to my pages if the hosting properties are not enough? - does it get slower, does it stop "working" what's the worst that happenes if I'm sending traffic to it and it's not functional?
3) in the case of sudden increase of traffic what can I do quickly to prepare my server for it?
a) do I need to create another server
b) do I upgrade the existing 7$ one to a more robust one
c) can this be done automaticly and how so my server is flexible enough to serve the traffic well and fast
d) anything else you can say about this subject.
4) if it's easy to roughly say what plan can take what volume of traffic with no slowing down or crushin the site please specify.
And another q. regarding hosting a tracking tool, in this case FunnelFlux. It says on their website: "What are the minimum requirements to install Funnel Flux?
PHP 5.6+ with the following extensions: ionCube Loader 5.0+, zip, mcrypt, mbstring, json, hash, curl, mysqli, sockets. 99% of the web hosts out there should have these installed by default."
5) Do you advise for the tracking tool to be hosted on a separate server for the sake of speed or any other benifit or can it be hosted on the same server where my landing pages are? What does this depend on?
I am aware that there are surely a lot of variables that should be considered, but I have no experience to know what those are so please feel free to advise me on anything important or ask me additional questions so I get this right "
Here is the answer I received:
"Hello,
Greetings & Welcome to Cloudways.
This is Raheel from Cloudways. Thanks for showing interest on Cloudways. Let me tell you some features in more details and about our own infrastructure above all the five top server providers includes (Amazon, Google, DigitalOcean,Kyup and Vultr) and all the prices which you see on the pricing page is included with Cloudways + Server Provider. These are dedicated server along with dedicated IP. You don't have to pay anything extra to anyone. For more information about our pricing you can check our pricing page [I removed links - forum rules - don't have 10 posts yet]
Cloudways is a place where you can create, manage and grow your business. We have easy to use console its more user friendly and secure and enables you to add 1-click deploy applications including WordPress, PrestaShop, Magento, Drupal and many other applications. Currently we are having Debian 8 supported with PHP 7 available in the console with every launch of a new server. We don't provide Cpanel, But we have our own panel which is easy to use, manage and control your application.You will get access to connect your server through SSH and SFTP. We provide 1 Click Scaling option which help you to increase your server resources to powerful machine anytime and you can add multiple web applications to same server and host them easily depending upon the size of your website and the traffic on your website. You can add team member and give them specific right to application. You can check the below link which can help you to explain about giving access to team member: [I removed links - forum rules]
We manage and support all aspects related to the Cloudways platform (so all functionality in your console). We also monitor and pro-actively react to cloud provider or server related issues. We deal with server security and regularly patch your servers. We offer too one free migration per account.
We also provide automatic backups which is already included in the plan it will cost you $0.33 per GB per month, and if you want to download the backup to your locally this feature is also available : [I removed links - forum rules]
and one click application restoration is available as well which can make you to restore your application to older version if anything goes wrong [I removed links - forum rules]
All of these ionCube Loader 5.0+, zip, mcrypt, mbstring, json, hash, curl, mysqli, sockets are available on Cloudways server. Not only that we have different cache layers (Ngnix, Apache, Varnish and Memcached). We have launched many new features like PHP-FPM, Let's encrypt SSL certificate and HTTP2 as well which can help you to run your website in a better and efficient way. We provide 24 x 7 Live chat support service and ticket support service where our technical team make sure to solve your server issues on time so that you can focus more on your main business and website. Just to remind you that, we are offering one managed migration of each account for FREE. To avail this offer you need to upgrade your account from Trial account to Paid account or you can easily migrate your wordpress website by our migrator plugin which will migrate your website all files.For more information read this KB: [I removed links - forum rules]
1) is the 7$ plan enough to get me started?
Yes, you can start with 512 MB server to test initially.
2) what if suddenly the traffic goes rapidly up, can that 7$ plan (DO512MB 512 MB 1 Core 20GB 1TB ) handle it and what happens to my pages if the hosting properties are not enough? - does it get slower, does it stop "working" what's the worst that happenes if I'm sending traffic to it and it's not functional?
Well if the traffic increases and load on your website get higher then your website might be not able to get accessible or take time to get load/open.
3) in the case of sudden increase of traffic what can I do quickly to prepare my server for it?
We have 1 Click scale up option available, Which will allow you to scale up the server resources.
a) do I need to create another server
No need to create another server if load increases.
b) do I upgrade the existing 7$ one to a more robust one
[/]
c) can this be done automatically and how so my server is flexible enough to serve the traffic well and fast
Unfortunately, this features is not available on DigitalOcean, Yes but we have this option available on KYUP. which can allow you to scale up the server automatically when the traffic will be increases. but scale down process is manual.
4) If it's easy to roughly say what plan can take what volume of traffic with no slowing down or crushing the site please specify.
Roughly are the page views with the server size.
512MB server for 0-20K pageviews/month
1GB server for 20-60K pageviews/month
2GB server for 60-130K pageviews/month
4GB server for 130K-300K pageviews/month
8GB server for 300K-650K pageviews/month
16GB server for 650K-1.25m pageviews/month
32GB server for 1.25 m-3m pageviews/month
48GB server for 3m-4.6m pageviews/month
FREE signup using the link: [I removed links - forum rules]
can help you to compare and test the services and make decision about your hosting solutions. Further, if you need any other assistance feel free to contact me back.
Cheers,
Raheel Alam"
It was one looong post, but I hope it helps someone with hosting decisions
Live long and take action!
this is for the newbies out there just like me struggling to figure out some quality hosting for a reasonable budget while you still don't have any affiliate earnings.
When I started searching for beyond shared hosting and saw VPS and cloud hosting were totaly out of my budget reach, I digged deeper and God-knows-how ended up on DigitalOcean looking at it with misty eyes since there was this awsome affordable hosting that I couldnt handle (read - manage myself). After digging some more I've ran into Cloudways that make it all possible! They do the managing of the cloud server for you! Imagine my happiness!
I've sent a customer request with a few questions, and the response came literally 10min after that, tops! Is this really as good as it seams? Tell me what you think and I invite you to give me any advice since I don't have any experience with hosting what so ever. Thank you!!!
Here are the q's I sent:
"Hi,
I need an advice on which plan to buy. I am interested in combining Cloudways with DigitalOcean server.
More about me and the usage of the potential hosting - I am a newbie affiliate marketer and will be using the server to host landing pages that will serve as a presell pages for affiliate / CPA offers and also as opt-in pages.
I can not say what volume of traffic will they need to handle yet, but I plan to use paid traffic with hopefully good click-through-rate to my landing pages. Since I can not allow a huge budget for buying traffic from the start I gues that traffic would not be too demanding to a server at the beginning.
Can you please advise me:
1) is the 7$ plan enough to get me started?
2) what if suddenly the traffic goes rapidly up, can that 7$ plan (DO512MB 512 MB 1 Core 20GB 1TB ) handle it and what happens to my pages if the hosting properties are not enough? - does it get slower, does it stop "working" what's the worst that happenes if I'm sending traffic to it and it's not functional?
3) in the case of sudden increase of traffic what can I do quickly to prepare my server for it?
a) do I need to create another server
b) do I upgrade the existing 7$ one to a more robust one
c) can this be done automaticly and how so my server is flexible enough to serve the traffic well and fast
d) anything else you can say about this subject.
4) if it's easy to roughly say what plan can take what volume of traffic with no slowing down or crushin the site please specify.
And another q. regarding hosting a tracking tool, in this case FunnelFlux. It says on their website: "What are the minimum requirements to install Funnel Flux?
PHP 5.6+ with the following extensions: ionCube Loader 5.0+, zip, mcrypt, mbstring, json, hash, curl, mysqli, sockets. 99% of the web hosts out there should have these installed by default."
5) Do you advise for the tracking tool to be hosted on a separate server for the sake of speed or any other benifit or can it be hosted on the same server where my landing pages are? What does this depend on?
I am aware that there are surely a lot of variables that should be considered, but I have no experience to know what those are so please feel free to advise me on anything important or ask me additional questions so I get this right "
Here is the answer I received:
"Hello,
Greetings & Welcome to Cloudways.
This is Raheel from Cloudways. Thanks for showing interest on Cloudways. Let me tell you some features in more details and about our own infrastructure above all the five top server providers includes (Amazon, Google, DigitalOcean,Kyup and Vultr) and all the prices which you see on the pricing page is included with Cloudways + Server Provider. These are dedicated server along with dedicated IP. You don't have to pay anything extra to anyone. For more information about our pricing you can check our pricing page [I removed links - forum rules - don't have 10 posts yet]
Cloudways is a place where you can create, manage and grow your business. We have easy to use console its more user friendly and secure and enables you to add 1-click deploy applications including WordPress, PrestaShop, Magento, Drupal and many other applications. Currently we are having Debian 8 supported with PHP 7 available in the console with every launch of a new server. We don't provide Cpanel, But we have our own panel which is easy to use, manage and control your application.You will get access to connect your server through SSH and SFTP. We provide 1 Click Scaling option which help you to increase your server resources to powerful machine anytime and you can add multiple web applications to same server and host them easily depending upon the size of your website and the traffic on your website. You can add team member and give them specific right to application. You can check the below link which can help you to explain about giving access to team member: [I removed links - forum rules]
We manage and support all aspects related to the Cloudways platform (so all functionality in your console). We also monitor and pro-actively react to cloud provider or server related issues. We deal with server security and regularly patch your servers. We offer too one free migration per account.
We also provide automatic backups which is already included in the plan it will cost you $0.33 per GB per month, and if you want to download the backup to your locally this feature is also available : [I removed links - forum rules]
and one click application restoration is available as well which can make you to restore your application to older version if anything goes wrong [I removed links - forum rules]
All of these ionCube Loader 5.0+, zip, mcrypt, mbstring, json, hash, curl, mysqli, sockets are available on Cloudways server. Not only that we have different cache layers (Ngnix, Apache, Varnish and Memcached). We have launched many new features like PHP-FPM, Let's encrypt SSL certificate and HTTP2 as well which can help you to run your website in a better and efficient way. We provide 24 x 7 Live chat support service and ticket support service where our technical team make sure to solve your server issues on time so that you can focus more on your main business and website. Just to remind you that, we are offering one managed migration of each account for FREE. To avail this offer you need to upgrade your account from Trial account to Paid account or you can easily migrate your wordpress website by our migrator plugin which will migrate your website all files.For more information read this KB: [I removed links - forum rules]
1) is the 7$ plan enough to get me started?
Yes, you can start with 512 MB server to test initially.
2) what if suddenly the traffic goes rapidly up, can that 7$ plan (DO512MB 512 MB 1 Core 20GB 1TB ) handle it and what happens to my pages if the hosting properties are not enough? - does it get slower, does it stop "working" what's the worst that happenes if I'm sending traffic to it and it's not functional?
Well if the traffic increases and load on your website get higher then your website might be not able to get accessible or take time to get load/open.
3) in the case of sudden increase of traffic what can I do quickly to prepare my server for it?
We have 1 Click scale up option available, Which will allow you to scale up the server resources.
a) do I need to create another server
No need to create another server if load increases.
b) do I upgrade the existing 7$ one to a more robust one
[/]
c) can this be done automatically and how so my server is flexible enough to serve the traffic well and fast
Unfortunately, this features is not available on DigitalOcean, Yes but we have this option available on KYUP. which can allow you to scale up the server automatically when the traffic will be increases. but scale down process is manual.
4) If it's easy to roughly say what plan can take what volume of traffic with no slowing down or crushing the site please specify.
Roughly are the page views with the server size.
512MB server for 0-20K pageviews/month
1GB server for 20-60K pageviews/month
2GB server for 60-130K pageviews/month
4GB server for 130K-300K pageviews/month
8GB server for 300K-650K pageviews/month
16GB server for 650K-1.25m pageviews/month
32GB server for 1.25 m-3m pageviews/month
48GB server for 3m-4.6m pageviews/month
FREE signup using the link: [I removed links - forum rules]
can help you to compare and test the services and make decision about your hosting solutions. Further, if you need any other assistance feel free to contact me back.
Cheers,
Raheel Alam"
It was one looong post, but I hope it helps someone with hosting decisions
Live long and take action!