Why should an ISP not be used for hosting?

Quote: you can even attach the space to your own domain name, which was not originally the case

I guess it really depends on the ISP. All ISP's I ever had (back to 1996) would let you get a odmain name and host it there.

The two main issues I would see with it are both related to the fact that a hosting company deals almost completely with incoming traffic only, there are 3 areas that this can affect:

1. Tech support -- When you call a hosting company, they *should* be more knowledgeable about the hosting, as that is all they deal with. I amagine an ISP's tech support more answers people questions of why they can't get online, and that would be their primary support area.

2. Equipment support -- Again, a hosting company can almost fully dedicate their time maintaining and updating their web servers, not also having to worry about the equipment that deals with letting people call into them.

3. Traffic -- Most all fo the traffic would be incoming only to web servers. With an ISP, you have a ton of people streaming audio/video, running gmae servers, downloading, etc.

These are just what I see as the downfalls to an ISP over a pure hosting company. Now of course, if the ISP was properly setup and maintained these should not be an issue, as their connection to the net should be plenty enought to handle the most they would expect for incoming AND outgoing, and they could have dedicated support for just the hosting side.

But lets face it, in times of trying to get it cheapest, they will try to balance everything out so not wasting resources (both computer and human) on things that rarley are needed.

And of course, the smaller the ISP, the less I'd want to use them. I mean, compare a small ISP to something like http://www.pair.com/about/data_center_tour/ (where I use).

Just a side note, back in 1996, when I first started getting online, we had a dial in BBS and used a provider to get internet e-mail (there was a difference back then) to the system that used a protocol other than POP. Well we got invited over to this guys place where we got access from. We were expecting to see this big professional setup.

Imagine our surprise, we get to the address. It is a guys house, and he invites us in to his computer room. No bigger than 8'x6' area. Cluttered wosre than I could ever get LOL. Had a shelve with tons of modems on them for people to dial into, and about 4 computers. his main one he used was a COMMODORE Computer (IBM XT-compatable for those who remember what that is) to telnet into his server.

We were surprised. Now, he provided good service for the area, but it was jsut a reality check that one guy was an ISP out of his back bedroom! You know I just checked, and the service is still online. (no, after giving that description from 9 years ago, i'm not giving their name).

-Greg

timjpriebe wrote: I've always heard that an ISP should not be used for hosting your website. Obviously, many ISP's now offer this service, and you can even attach the space to your own domain name, which was not originally the case.

My own opinion aside for the moment, what do you guys think?

BTW - I will be blogging about this on my new small business web blog, but I wanted to do a bit of research first.

Actually in addition to Greg's reasons all of which are valid, it is a bad idea. What if you want to change your ISP? Are they going to keep your website and refuse to allow the change?

I have always felt that it was a good idea
-To have ISP's provide your Internet Service only unless, of course, you had a >= T1.
-That your registar should provide your domain registration.
-That your host should provide hosting.

This insures that you don't put all of your eggs in one basket. I have also not seen ISP's or registars that do as good a job of hosting as even some bad hosts.

A good web host must have some specialized knowledge and dedicated customer / tech support. An ISP will place more emphasis on supporting connectivity problems or e-mail than hosting problems.

Find a medium-sized host, large enough to be efficient and financially viable, but not so large as to consider you insignificant.

Also, buy your domain name from a third party - that way two companies will have to go out of business (or just generally screw up) at the same time to knock you irreparably off line...

I host my website with my ISP, I get 250mb webspace and 250mb bandwidth a day, aswell as a .co.uk domain for £1 a month!