Traffic does not come cheap

If you have been reading my beauty blog recently or any one of my blogs you might have noticed that it has been difficult to access the blogs these couple of days. If you are lucky you get to a suspended page. If you are unlucky you get some time out error.

Its been frustrating to say the least!

But it was caused by some overload to the server that hosts my blogs. You see, I used to host all my blogs under one account. I thought it was sufficient. After all, blog only what right? Who’s going to read – we blog for our own gratification… right?

And then the traffic comes in and I was torn between wanting the traffic and the costs in maintaining the traffic and ensuring that my sites can keep up with the traffic load.

So, after some discussions with my awesome webhost Ixiy.com I’ve moved my beauty blog out to its own host that hosts no other blogs save one. At what cost? At the cost to my wallet. Sigh…

I presently have 3 hosting accounts with Ixiy.com which is saying a LOT about how much I trust them I’ve been hosting with them even before they were called Ixiy and here’s my reason why:-

• Support is based in Malaysia – Penang I believe. Because we are in the same time zone he usually gets back to me on enquiries within a few hours of a query and gets problems solved as quickly as he can. I can ask anything and he’ll sort it out which makes me think that…
• My webhost works magic! I am female and I’m fluffy. I have some basic web skills but when it comes to technical codes and PHP and SQL and strange 3 letter acronyms like that, my mind goes blank. Enter my lovely webhost who proceeds to sort out my tangles for me quickly and efficiently. He can even effect blog transfers for you and set up wordpress and things that many other hosts charge for, for free. He’s also flexible with anything you want to ask or need.
• Server is hosted overseas – good and bad. Good because I won’t be subject to our local restrictions. Bad because screamyx has been dragging its feet with international websites.
• Domains come with privacy - I tried buying domains myself from godaddy and was quite frankly shocked at how much the cost of a domain can come up to, especially if you have add ons like privacy. You can also use Ixiy.com to buy domains  and they sometimes have some nice deals like free privacy. I don’t know if its recurring though.
• Hosting is affordable - the starter hosting account is US$4.95 a month and less than $60 a year. You get 10G of bandwidth and that’s way sufficient for blogs! I can vouch for the fact that you can host a few different blogs (with reasonable traffic) on a starter hosting account and still have lots of spare space and bandwidth.
• Payment in Ringgit available - If you don’t want to use paypal or don’t have paypal, payment in Ringgit is available.

I’ve been with Ixiy.com since I started in 2007 and I’m happy where I am. In fact I just renewed my hosting for another year!

With my latest problem, we sat up late discussing how best to sort things out and the result is a more stable and smoother running site (I hope). So, if you want to give them a shot do me a favour and help me earn back some hosting fees by using my Ixiy affiliate link ok? It doesn’t cost you anything but it’ll help me!