By Combining Shared Web Hosting Services You Can Get Extensive Capabilities at a Very Low Cost
We recently ran across web hosting resource problems on a client website. The short version of this story is that we combined the services of the two web hosting companies HostGator and Bluehost to provide a very robust solution. Hostgator hosts the websites and Bluehost hosts the email hosting services.
Total hosting cost? $11.31 per month!
The Problem: A Known iPhone IMAP Problem Consumed All System Resources, Took the Web Hosting Down
Our clients 80+ field techs were retrieving email with their iPhones and it was consuming server resources so much that it took their website(s) and email down. The problem is a known one with iOS-based devices like the iPhone, iPad and iMac when IMAP is used for their email protocol. IMAP allows emails to remain on the server after you view them with a mobile device. It is normal to use IMAP for mobile phones. This problem we had only occurs if you use push mail on an iOS device, which is enabled by default.
The Solution: Combine Web Hosting Companies to Maximize Resource Availability
A possible solution, but not so practical for this client, was to turn off push mail. The technicians just weren’t so tech-savvy and if only one of them did not change their settings then the systems could go down again.
The solution we chose was to combine the web hosting services of HostGator and Bluehost to stabilize the systems.
Hostgator has basically unlimited web hosting with powerful servers, but they have a limit of 25 processes which the iPhone emails were maxing out. When a Bluehost website exceeds their allotted resources Bluehost puts them into time out which seriously affects the websites performance. Bluehost, however, has essentially unlimited email resources that don’t end at 25 processes.
Our solution of combining the two web hosting companies stabilized our clients systems. We ended up with page load times under a second at a total monthly cost of $11.34.
Problem solved, customer happy.
Website Uptime Monitoring Service
In the process of attaining this solution we used a powerful and free online web hosting monitoring service. You need to read this post about the free web hosting uptime monitoring tool and get the service. It is a real safety net for your business if you depend on your website for revenues.