One of the major hurdles for an individual or business getting set up on the web is knowing where to invest your energy. There are tons of little decisions that must be made when operating a website, some trivial and some important. Most hosting companies keep performance information tucked away in a blackbox, occasionally spewing out vague “uptime” and “load time” stats for those interested. This is understandable to say the least. Not all clients want to know the nitty-gritty details of what their host is doing to keep their website running, they just care that it’s working. Unfortunately, by keeping server side optimization obscured from the client’s eye, they reduce the client’s awareness of how greatly it impacts their them.
Not all webservers are created equal. When we think about this we usually consider the fact that most hosting providers offer multiple types of hosting plans (shared, dedicated, cloud, VPS) but we never really consider that fact that equal tiers of hosting aren’t equal from provider to provider.
Host ≠ Host
A quick glance stroll through Google will reveal the vast array of hosting companies. A little time and you can peruse their various sites and learn about the plans they offer. For example, BlueHost and DreamHost currently offer 2GB VPS services for around $30 a month. Similar technical specs for similar pricing, but there is no guarantee of similar performance. Another quick search of “Bluehost vs Dreamhost” will provide you with a myriad of resulting articles where groups/individuals have done in-depth analysis on the two services and determined where they both excel and falter. Now, many different factors going into these comparisons but one interesting thing to note is how vastly similar services vary in terms of performance.
Some of this variance is derived from the infrastructures each hosting network relies upon; how many networks each requests has to jump through before reaching it’s final destination. However, the other contributing factor is how well their respective webservers operate. In other words, the primary variable in determining website performance from host to host is how well their server’s are optimized. And because few users demand it, few providers offer much information about it, let alone devote much effort to it. That’s where Zero Daedalus is different.
We make certain to be open about our performance optimizations, not only for the sake of transparency but also for the sake of improvement. We know that we aren’t always right. There are sometimes better solutions out there. So we encourage an open dialogue around performance and optimization. We aren’t afraid of being challenged nor admitting when we might be wrong. We strive to build websites that are fast, secure and openly operated for our clients. That’s what makes us different.
Need a website? Looking to upgrade an old website? Get a free consult and we can have you up and running within 24 hours.