What is the best way to host an ASP.NET website?

May 13, 2009 1:55 PM

What is the best way to host an ASP.NET website?

I'm the Sysadmin for a small non-profit and am beginning the process of a website redesign/redevelopment. I figure this is a good time to also take a look at how the site is hosted.

Our website uses DotNetNuke running under Windows 2003/SQL Server/ASP.NET. Right now we rent out 1U of rack space from a local company @ $150/month plus $4/GB of data transfer. We usually end up using 15GB per month.

I'd appreciate some advice on the following options:

1. Keep renting rack space
2. Host the site locally on a dedicated server
3. Host the site locally on a virtual server
4. Host the site remotely on a virtual private server

Right now I'm leaning towards a remote VPS due to cost savings, increased reliability and ease of upgrading.

If you do end up recommending a remote VPS do you have any recommendations on good providers?

posted by talkingmuffin to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I would recommend renting space, or hosting remotely. Not having to deal with hardware/ISP/bandwidth/uptime has always been worth the extra cost for me.

In the realm of specific recommendations, take a look at MaximumASP. I worked for them about four years ago and I vouch for their reputation as a technologically sound company with great customer support.

They currently offer virtual private hosting and dedicated servers, both of which look to be in your price range. They're an all-Microsoft shop, so they specialize in supporting your kind of setup.
posted by lholladay at 3:37 PM on May 13

We use Mosso, Rackspace's cloud offering. It would probably suit your purposes, but it's not that much cheaper, at $105/month for 50GB of bandwidth, 500GB of disk space, and 100MB of SQL Server space. Whether the savings are worth the loss of a dedicated machine depends on your priorities.
posted by jedicus at 7:36 PM on May 13

Pretty much the authoritative site for reviewing hosts: www.webhostingtalk.com.

For your needs, a low end VPS should be more than adequate. You should be able to find something for ~$50-$100/m that meets your needs/bandwidth.
posted by SirStan at 8:04 PM on May 13