OK. Up front I have to say that I am getting ready to set up additional sites on Mosso but I have not done it yet.

This post is not about how great Mosso is.  Instead, I want to address how you are choosing your Membership Site Hosting.

I have several membership sites on Bluehost.   The total cost is less than $10 per month.  Support has been good, service is fair.  It does slow down sometimes and goes down for brief times occasionally, but I am willing to live with that for the low cost.

I use WP Wishlist Member to manage the sites.

So why am I setting up membership sites on Mosso going forward?  I will still use my Bluehost account, but I will put all revenue sites on Mosso going forward because, even though it is much more expensive, it is still very reasonable compared to having your own servers (which I do as well) and it covers many of the reliability issues I worry about with other options.

Since Mosso still costs a little over $3 per day, I can still justify that I can make that back quickly and the peace of mind from having my site on a cloud of servers is fantastic.  Reliability, Scalability and Speed are why I will take it over.  However, if you are just starting your first membership site, choose Bluehost for  hosting your membership site and grow into the better solutions.

Ultimately, it depends on your budget, your needs and your tolerance of outages and speed.

I use Bluehost for some of my smaller online membership websites.  I recommend them not because they are perfect, but because they are a cheap membership website host and the scripts they have to set up sites work well.  I have frequent short outages, but I know that and I can live with it when a membership site is only netting me a small income.

However, I would not trust serving video from Bluehost, which is why I use Amazon S3 to Distribute videos for my membership sites.  This gives me video reliability for a very low cost.

As I grow my websites and membership communities, I have to think about a better membership website hosting solution.  So I started exploring and I found Mosso – which seems like a great option.  I have not tried it yet, but will in the near future.  The biggest thing I do not like about Mosso is the charge for cycles.  I can measure storage and keep an eye on bandwidth, but the whole cycle thing makes me feel uneasy because it could just go nuts on me and ruin my business model.

However, it seems the best reliable option.  For the $100 a month you get great reliability.  Go do some searches on Mosso and you will see that many people say good things.

I will let you know how my experience with Mosso goes after I have been with them for a while.  Until then, they are definitely worth taking a look at if you have outgrown your membership website hosting.

I believe that you should minimize your startup costs for your membership site.  That means going with a low cost website host.

However, you need to know what you are buying with a low cost membership host.

I use Bluehost as my low cost membership host.  But here are the risks.

1. I need to do my own backups, and even occasional database repairs.
2. There are regular outages that usually do not last more than a minute.
3. They have great software in the c panel that help you set up wordpress  – but you will not feel comfortable with this if you intimidated by technology.

I have provided people with full service hosting in the past.  However, it can run hundreds of dollars per month when things do not go wrong, and even more when there are problems.  For that reason, my feeling is to live with the occasional headaches of an inexpensive host.  Make sure you do regular backups yourself and have a tech person on call that can help you when you need it.

If you decide to use a host like BlueHost, the good news is that you can put a lot of membership websites on one hosting account.  So you should be able to cover your hosting costs with one member per month.  Just plan for problems and make sure you have back ups handy.

PS:  This blog is hosted on the very bluehost account I am talking about.