I've been interested in finding out what it takes to attract traffic to a site and what type of money it draws in with Google's Adsense program. So along with building a website I'm also going to learn python and django to develop the site. So recently I've been spending some of my free time going through django tutorials and writing small applications to get the hang of python. I've also discovered not to enter python into a browser and push ctrl-enter at work because python.com is very different from python.org. What I found while performing the initial implementation and developing a basic blogging application is that it's not the python and django programming where I ran into most of the problems rather all of the setup of apache, the database, finding web hosting, etc. The following is going to be talking about my experience searching for a good host for my django applications.

My initial criteria when selecting a company to provide hosting is first to be inexpensive. This criteria was key since I'll be primarily using the hosting for a blog and any experimentation so I didn't want to start dumping buckets of money into this project. Along with the financial aspect, the web host must support python and django (obviously!), and is able to provide useful support with quick response.

Given that I wanted an inexpensive option that supported python and django, my selection of hosting sites was limited. Since this is is my first experience with web hosting I also wanted a company that would be supportive of any issues I encountered. I began my search, where else, with Google and found two (DjangoProject and DjangoFriendly) lengthy listings of web hosts that support django to some extent. Although these provided lengthy listings there was very little covering their support, customer service or ease of use with django.

I discovered on StackOverflow and HackerNews several helpful articles that narrowed down the listings with good recommendations. From those I gathered WebFaction, SliceHost, and MochaHost. SliceHost was eliminated quickly because the cost of their cheapest plan started at $20 dollars a month. Now left with WebFaction and MochaHost the choice became much more difficult.

The benefits I found with WebFaction were that it gave complete shell access to the server and applications could be installed in the user's home directory. The cost of hosting is $8.50 a month with a yearly plan. With MochaHost only their second and third tiered plans support django. The cost of their second tiered plan is $6.62 with purchase of a yearly plan. Purchase of this plan also includes a lifetime domain name but MochaHost does not allow shell access. I contacted both company's support team with questions on their service, instructions on what is required to support django, which plan is necessary, how difficult is it to setup to figure out their knowledge of django and gain an understanding of their response time requesting support. Both companies had excellent response time of several hours and responded with links to forum articles and detailed explanations to my questions.

After fully reviewing both companies I decided on the MochaHost service. Both companies seemed exceptional however the cost savings and the convenience having the domain registration and web hosting all maintained by one company was the deciding factor. Since my purchase the service I've received has been amazing. From the time I signed up and submitted the request for service my domain was purchased and hosting setup within the hour. It was simple to take the website I had been developing locally and transition it to their servers using following written tutorials and documentation that MochaHost provided.