Category Archives: Shared Hosting

Reseller hosting vs Addon Domains - cPanel

Reseller Web Hosting – Reseller Hosting vs cPanel Addon Domains

When to choose reseller hosting over addon domains

Reseller web hosting and shared web hosting plans often include cPanel for managing your websites & domains. When you have multiple domains, you must decide on whether reseller hosting or a shared hosting plan is a better fit.

 

Reseller Web Hosting

  • master dashboard to control multiple cPanel accounts
  • ability to create multiple cPanel accounts
  • each cPanel account has a separate login; username & password
  • resources are allocated to each cPanel (memory, cpu, processes etc)

Shared Web Hosting

  • single cPanel login
  • uses “addon domains” (directories) for additional domains
  • no separate login for websites
  • resources are shared among all websites on the account

 

When do we recommend using a reseller web hosting plan?

If you have more than a few domains that you’d like to host, we recommend a reseller hosting plan to keep each domain isolated via their own cPanel account. The two biggest issues with addon domains are the use of resources such as memory, cpu & processes and then security concerns. Addon domains within cPanel are not inherently insecure, but since the directories reside under the same system user, there is no isolation between them. Unfortunately, this means if for example, a WordPress website becomes compromised, it can potentially spread to other addon domains.

While the addon domains & security does pose a risk to other websites residing on the same hosting plan, we do not see a higher ratio of compromised websites simply due to the fact that addon domains are being used. As long as the website(s) being hosted on the addon domains (and parent cPanel account) are properly secured, we see no issues with using addon domains.

 

Are you a web agency or providing website hosting services to customers?

If you’re providing website hosting services to customers or are hosting a large number of websites (from a web agency for example), we most definitely recommend using a reseller hosting account over a shared account with addon domains. There’s a few reasons for this, the main three being security, resources & accessibility. Having each domain on its own cPanel means that there is also a separate login.

You certainly would not want to have addon domains in this case as you would have to provide the same username/password to each customer in order for them to access anything within cPanel (which we HIGHLY do not recommend). Additionally, keeping each customer isolated from one another will ensure that in the event one site becomes compromised, it does not affect another customer site.

Lastly, resources are assigned per cPanel account, so having each website on its own cPanel means the resources are not being shared by any other account/website except for what resides on that cPanel account.

With addon domains (on a single shared web hosting account), if your cPanel account has 1GB of RAM available to it and you have 10 domains/websites via addon domains, all 10 of those websites are going to have to share that 1GB of RAM. With busy websites, this means contention, each website will fight one another for resources.

 

When to use addon domains?

If you have a shared web hosting account and would like to simply add a few personal or hobby type sites, we most definitely recommend addon domains for this. The concept of addon domains from cPanel is good however, when the websites being hosted using addon domains are customer websites or are busy sites, we don’t recommend using addon domains. Addon domains are another option that can be used for staging sites also, but we recommend using subdomains for that.

 

Are your sites income based or monetized sites?

If your websites are generating any type of income, we recommend that you at least host them on separate accounts. This could be a reseller hosting plan OR separate shared hosting plans if you don’t plan to add more sites over time. Shared hosting accounts can always be moved into a reseller account down the road if you add more accounts.

The biggest reasons we recommend multiple shared hosting cPanel accounts or a reseller account when you have multiple sites that are monetized is both performance and security.

If one of your monetized sites becomes compromised (let’s say a WordPress exploit from a bad plugin) and it spreads to your other site (via an addon domain), there’s a possibility that the platform being used for monetizing the site could pull the site from their platform. In instances like this, we feel the risk is simply too high and increases the possibility that the issue could interfere with the income being generated.

Light speed Hosting, SSD Hosting Veerotech

Faster Websites with LiteSpeed Cache and LiteSpeed Web Hosting

Website speed is of the utmost importance. A slow website can really hamper the growth of your business. In fact, Google and most other search engines take website speed into consideration when deciding the PageRank. Thankfully, we have LiteSpeed Web Server and LiteSpeed Cache at our service to help us improve our pageranks and speed up websites.

But what exactly is this LiteSpeed and how can LiteSpeed Cache be of use for websites? Does it really speed up websites?

Better Performance and Pagespeed with LiteSpeed Web Server and LiteSpeed Cache

Before going any further, let us take a moment to first understand what is LiteSpeed and its role.

What is LiteSpeed Web Server?

Simply put, LiteSpeed Web Server is a highly scalable and reliable web server solution from LiteSpeed Technologies. Essentially, it is used as a web server solution in place of options such as Apache.

In other words, we can term LiteSpeed Web Server as a drop-in replacement for Apache server, without having to change a lot of software or making big changes to Apache-compatible tools. LiteSpeed brings many performance enhancements with itself, including the most obvious one — better speed.

LiteSpeed Web Server is available in various forms and plans, but that is for web hosts to choose from. As an end user, how does LiteSpeed prove beneficial for your website?

If we were to put it bluntly, LiteSpeed performs faster than Apache and other server solutions in terms of sheer raw speed and scalability. This means database operations run faster, websites load faster, and everything else is smoother to operate. PHP executions tend to happen faster as well.

LiteSpeed, as a result, is an ideal solution for servers that are meant to run dynamic websites, such as ones powered by WordPress, Drupal or Joomla.

But that is not all. There are many other obvious advantages associated with LiteSpeed!

Advantages of LiteSpeed Web Server

We have already discussed that LiteSpeed can make database queries and PHP executions faster. But beyond that, LiteSpeed Web Server can also prove useful in many other ways.

Fully Compatible with Apache

If you are wondering that you might have to give up on using a particular module, plugin or tool just because “it needs Apache”, then there is nothing to worry! LiteSpeed Web Server is fully compatible with Apache. This means any application that you have been running on a LAMP stack can easily run on LiteSpeed as well.

All of Apache features such as mod_rewrite and .htaccess files are available on LiteSpeed. Also, LiteSpeed Web Server can even handle and load Apache configuration files. Need cPanel? Yes, almost all major hosting control panels, including cPanel, work perfectly well on LiteSpeed.

Secure

Since LiteSpeed Web Server is compatible with mod_security feature of Apache, it is no less secure than Apache itself. But wait, there is more to it!

LiteSpeed Web Server has many unique anti-DDoS measures in place. Let us assume a given IP address is making way too many requests to your site, or attempting to login to cPanel. LiteSpeed Web Server has a throttling feature that can automatically detect such malicious requests and block the said IP address.

Naturally, in the hands of a good web hosting provider, LiteSpeed Web Server can prove to be a useful tool that can help in mitigating DDoS attacks. Overall, LiteSpeed-powered web hosting can make your site more secure.

Less Maintenance

LiteSpeed Web Server comes with various optimization measures built especially with PHP-based software such as WordPress in mind. It can handle sudden spikes in traffic and deliver pages much faster than most other web server solutions.

This implies running a website on LiteSpeed requires less overhead maintenance efforts than running an identical website on a server powered by, say, Apache. Of course, a good website does need to be optimized and maintained from time to time, but LiteSpeed does the hard work for you by ensuring that there are no hiccups on the server-side of things.

However, in the midst of all these feature, where does speed come in?

Meet LiteSpeed Cache or, as it is commonly called, LSCache.

LiteSpeed Cache — What and Why?

As the name suggests, LiteSpeed Cache is a caching solution for LiteSpeed Web Server. It works pretty much the same way as Varnish or mod_rewrite in Apache. This implies LiteSpeed Cache uses rewrite rules that can then be implemented on the server-side.

As a result, LiteSpeed Cache provides users with greater flexibility and enhanced performance. But it is not only limited to PHP code or dynamic content. LiteSpeed Cache can significantly enhance performance and speed even on static pages.

The biggest and most obvious advantage associated with LiteSpeed Cache is that it is built directly into the LiteSpeed Web Server. This removes the need of reverse proxy layers.

All LiteSpeed Web Server plans now come with LSCache integration. For the most part, LiteSpeed Cache needs to be enabled on the server-side. This means your web hosting provider should be able to support LiteSpeed Cache. However, any decent web hosting provider understands the importance of speed and performance on the internet. As such, more and more web hosts are now adding support for LiteSpeed Web Server and LiteSpeed Cache on their servers.

At VeeroTech, we’ve used and supported it for years, so you’re in good hands! Now, all that’s left to do for you is to enable a cache plugin in order to make use of LiteSpeed Cache.

Using LiteSpeed Cache Plugins on LiteSpeed Web Server

Using LSCache can prove beneficial for your website. But how do you actually activate it?

Depending on the Content Management System of your choice, there is a very good chance that there is already an LSCache plugin available. And yes, before you ask, all of the LiteSpeed Cache plugins are free for you to use! They won’t work that well on a non-LiteSpeed server, obviously.

WordPress

WordPress is the world’s most popular Content Management System and it is only natural that LiteSpeed Cache has a separate plugin for WordPress users.

Better Performance and Pagespeed with LiteSpeed Web Server and LiteSpeed Cache

Better Performance and Pagespeed with LiteSpeed Web Server and LiteSpeed Cache

LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin is very popular and currently has over 400,000 active users. It is fully compatible with all the major versions of WordPress and comes with features such as JS and CSS minification and even database optimization. For websites relying on WordPress hosting, LiteSpeed Cache is a must-have!

Learn how to install LiteSpeed Cache on your WordPress website.

Learn more directly from LiteSpeed

Joomla

LiteSpeed Cache is available for Joomla versions 3.x and higher. If you are running a Joomla site hosted on VeeroTech servers, installing the LiteSpeed Cache will automatically pre-configure all the rules for your site’s caching. The only tweaking required will be if you have a separate mobile view for your site.

LiteSpeed Cache Joomla

Drupal

LiteSpeed Cache module for Drupal users works only on Drupal 8 and above (not the older versions).

If you are a Drupal user, you might already be aware that Drupal comes with its own native caching engine. If you are using LSCache, there is no need to turn off the native caching mechanism. LSCache automatically works in sync with the built-in cache system of Drupal 8.

Better Performance and Pagespeed with LiteSpeed Web Server and LiteSpeed Cache

However, unlike LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress, LiteSpeed Cache for Drupal does not currently have additional features such as crawler.

LiteSpeed Cache Drupal

Magento

Magento users can make use of the LiteMage cache extension for caching. Depending on whether you are using Magento 1.x or 2.x, you will need to pick the right version of the extension.

The LiteMage cache extension is fairly rich in terms of features and is also backed by a crawler script (that needs to be downloaded separately).

LiteSpeed Cache Magento

PrestaShop

PrestaShop currently does not have any cache module that can support both esi:include and esi:inline

LSCache is the only module that supports both of these options. This means the LSCache module can help your PrestaShop store run as fast as a static site!

Note that the LSCache plugin does support multiple storefronts in PrestaShop — this is especially useful if you are running a complex eCommerce mechanism in PrestaShop.

LiteSpeed Cache Prestashop

OpenCart

Many OpenCart users often find that the CMS is faster to operate, but the end users have trouble in terms of pagespeed. This is mainly because as the size of an OpenCart store rises, the database queries and code executions tend to rise manifolds. For a poorly optimized OpenCart setup, this can cause issues such as repeated database queries which will slow down the overall website.

LiteSpeed Cache plugin for OpenCart can take care of all of such problems. Here is how it describes its major benefit:

LiteSpeed Cache will automatically purge a page when the related product/category/information/manufacturer data has changed. You can set a longer cache expiration time to improve visitor experience, confident that the cache will be purged when relevant content changes.

LiteSpeed Cache OpenCart

XenForo

LiteSpeed Cache is available for both XenForo 1.x and XenForo 2.x

If you are hosting a XenForo site on VeeroTech hosting, it is strongly recommended to use SFTP or SSH to install the LSCache plugin. You can find more details at the following link:

LiteSpeed Cache XenForo

MediaWiki

LiteSpeed Cache for MediaWiki sites requires MediaWiki 1.25 or higher. Since content on a wiki site is likely to change often, LiteSpeed Cache lets admins define custom purge rules to clear cache whenever content is updated.

Better Performance and Pagespeed with LiteSpeed Web Server and LiteSpeed Cache

Note that the private cache setting in this plugin is optional. Private cache is generally meant for logged-in users of your wiki.

LIteSpeed Cache MediaWiki

Conclusion

At this point, we have seen the various plugins that we can make use of to leverage the benefits of LiteSpeed Web Server for our websites.

But the question is, why should you rely on LiteSpeed Cache at all? There are several caching plugins for WordPress, whereas Drupal comes with its own in-built caching tools! Similarly, CMS’s like Magento have various premium options that have a proven track record of great caching and speed enhancing performance.

Well, surely all of such plugins and extensions are amazing in their own right. However, LSCache works closely with the server-side architecture of LiteSpeed itself, thereby enabling it to leverage the server-centric caching mechanism. This is fairly identical to using Varnish or NGINX server-side caching — page-level caching of additional plugins is good to have, but it is not the most beneficial if there is no server-side cache system.

LSCache also has various other features, including the ability to minify code and requests. This means your website consumes lesser memory and can, in fact, run better in a shared environment. Even in case of a sudden spike or surge in traffic, LiteSpeed Cache can ensure that static pages are served to users and as many resources and objects are cached as possible. This will help maintain your site running in good health and ensure speedier performance.

If you have web hosting with VeeroTech, LSCache can improve your website’s performance. Try it an see! Still have doubts? Check out the LiteSpeed benchmarks.

Talk with LiteSpeed directly on their GoLiteSpeed Slack workspace.

If you have any questions simply open a support ticket and we will get it sorted in no time!

Interested in learning about our services feel free to Contact Us.

shared-vs-reseller-hosting

What’s the Difference Between Shared and Reseller Hosting?

What is the difference between shared hosting and reseller hosting?

Bottom line up front:

Generally speaking, shared web hosting is best for single websites, but can be used for more in certain situations. Reseller web hosting is designed for those who plan on hosting multiple websites for their clients and customers or have requirements to ensure isolation between websites and guaranteed resources for each customer. Read below for further clarification on when to use each.

Shared Hosting:

Shared hosting accounts typically consist of a single username in order to access the hosting account & data. You may/may not be able to add multiple websites/domains onto a shared hosting account depending on the plan that you choose however, you would only have one login for accessing this hosting account. Additional websites/domains would be added as addon domains, sub-domains or parked domains.

Shared hosting plans are typically a good choice for those with single websites, business websites or those who just have a few websites. When adding multiple websites onto a shared hosting account, it’s important to note that a shared hosting account is assigned a specific amount of resources – CPU, Memory, Processes etc. This means each additional website will share those resources with the other websites/domains you have on this single account.

There are two large downsides to having multiple websites under the same hosting account as addon domains, parked domains or sub-domains: Performance & Security. With performance, each website located on the same “single” hosting account is forced to shared the resources available with each of your addon domains. This means that if you have 10 websites (and your hosting account has for example 2GB of memory), each website can potentially fight each other for their share of memory. When it comes to security, in the event one of the addon domains, parked or sub-domains becomes compromised, it can potentially put the entire shared hosting account at risk since everything is running as the same user account. When there are multiple websites being used, we generally recommend reseller hosting.

Reseller Hosting:

Reseller hosting allows the account holder to utilize a control panel called “Web Host Manager” or “WHM” for short, to control multiple individual cPanel hosting accounts. These are great solutions for those with multiple websites, website designers/developers or those who wish to resell web hosting. When creating multiple individual cPanel accounts you’re effectively removing some of the performance & security concerns listed above by separating your websites onto their own cPanel accounts. This means each account will have its own set of resources assigned to it as well as its own username/password & system user account.

A few added benefits to having reseller web hosting is you have the following abilities:

The biggest benefit to having a reseller plan is being able to separate websites into their own cPanel accounts & is certainly what we recommend when managing multiple websites. This is especially important if you plan to provide services to other companies/businesses and if you plan to host websites for your customers.

shared-semidedicated-reseller-vps

What are the Differences Between Shared, Semi-Dedicated, Reseller and VPS Hosting?

There are many types of web hosting plans offered by hosting providers. When you add in the marketing terminology, it can become very confusing and difficult to compare. In this information blog post, we’ll try to help you better understand the various types of hosting services so you can make an educated decision based on your web hosting needs.

  • Shared
    • Designed for small to medium websites.
    • Can have multiple websites under one account.
    • If one site is compromised the other sites can become compromised.
  • Semi-dedicated
    • Designed for larger websites.
    • Can be more cost and time effective than a Virtual Private Server (VPS). You manage your website and the provider manages the OS (patching, administration, security, etc.).
    • If one site is compromised, the other sites can become compromised.
  • Reseller
    • Designed for multiple websites owned by different people or businesses.
    • Multiple accounts vs. one account with Shared Hosting.
    • If one website under that account is compromised other websites under the other accounts will not be.
  • Virtual Private Server (VPS)
    • Designed for any size website or application where isolation, OS and application customization, or corporate policy dictates.
    • Can scale well beyond the resource limits of other hosting types.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting plans are “single user” plans designed for single website applications. This is the preferred choice for a small business with a single website or an individual looking to host their portfolio site, blog site, forum, or to start learning how to do website development.

Shared hosting plans can also host multiple websites using what’s called “addon domains.” These are simply sub-directories under the main account with DNS maps that point to them. While hosting multiple sites on a single account may sound like a good option, there are security and performance issues that can arise:

  • Security: Let’s say you have a shared hosting account with 10 addon domains and one of them was to get hacked. Now the hacker has access to all the websites residing on this account.
  • Performance: Each account (cPanel account or shared account) is allocated a certain amount of resources (memory, CPU and disk IO). Every additional website added to this single hosting account consumes more of the finite resources that are available. As more websites are added, they start to compete against each other for memory, CPU and disk IO (commonly called contention) which ultimately will slow down all of the websites hosted on the account.

If you plan to host multiple websites, a Reseller account will be the better choice.

Semi-dedicated Hosting

Semi-dedicated hosting is on the same platform as Shared Hosting but includes additional resources tailored for large, high-traffic, or resource-intensive websites and applications. Semi-dedicated plans are a great alternative to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) when:

  • you don’t need isolation, OS and application customization, or have corporate policy mandates.
  • you don’t have the experience or staff to administer, patch and secure your own VPS.

If you’ve outgrown Shared Hosting, consider Semi-dedicated before moving to a VPS.  

Reseller Hosting

A Reseller account is not just for those interested in reselling web hosting. Its primary function is to properly partition or separate multiple hosted websites into their own “containers.” 

Reseller hosting is similar to shared hosting with one major difference: You have a dashboard to manage multiple accounts. This means you can create multiple “shared” style hosting plans and use a single dashboard (WHM) to manage them. As additional websites or customers are added, each can be assigned to its own cPanel account. Each account has its own unique login, username and password, email accounts, and most importantly, its own resources. This ensures each site is more secure and has access to its memory, CPU and disk IO.

In addition to simply using a Reseller plan for hosting multiple websites, many hosting resellers utilize reseller plans from a parent provider such as VeeroTech to sell web hosting to their clients. You can utilize the included billing software (WHMCS) to automatically bill your clients, provide a support desk, and provision hosting accounts from automated ordering.

Reseller hosting accounts are also great for web designers, development firms, and companies that need to host multiple website accounts.

Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting

A Virtual Private Server is similar to a physical server except that it is virtual. We utilize very powerful datacenter-grade physical servers that host multiple virtual servers on high speed RAID 10 SSD disk arrays with many disks for safety and performance. A VPS is a solution for those who require one or more of the following:

  • Custom application or application stacks
  • Custom scripts
  • Specialized server settings
  • Larger amounts of resources
  • Company policies/guidelines that require isolation

VeeroTech offers three types of VPS solutions:

A fully managed VPS is a virtual server that is fully managed by our staff. Our engineers monitor, tune and maintain each VPS and respond to any issues that may arise. We handle all of the server-side tasks, daily backups, as well as customer requests that may need to be completed. The most common operating systems deployed on a VPS are flavors of Linux like CentOS and Ubuntu. A managed VPS is ideal for those who require an isolated solution or larger amounts of dedicated resources but don’t want the hassle of managing a server. Our managed VPS’s also include a licensed version of cPanel & WHM, firewall, Softaculous script installer, R1Soft backups & more.

A self-managed VPS (also known as unmanaged, droplet, root access, or instance) is managed by you. The hosting provider ensures only the virtual server is online, not the OS. It also does not include backups, control panels or any type of maintenance. A self-managed VPS is a good solution for those who have the expertise and resources to manage, secure, and maintain their own servers.

Although this is a cheaper option, it can quickly become compromised or break due to the knowledge required to maintain and secure the server. If you’re running a business, this is an important factor to consider.

A storage or backup VPS is a great alternative to other “cloud storage” options because, not only is it your data, it is on your server. This provides an extra layer of security, privacy, and management. 

Starting with a Shared, Semi-dedicated or Reseller Hosting plan can be a more cost-effective solution to handle most needs, unless yours require a VPS. If you are still unsure which option to choose, feel free to ask us.