How many users are using the shared hosting website?
I am planning to host 3 or 4 REST web services for WCF / .NET 3.5 to be consumed by a new iPhone application.
I've heard good reviews about DiscountASP.NET ( http://www.discountasp.net/index.aspx ), but I'm pretty unaware of hosting performance. At the same time, I think it is still too early to pay $ 90 / month for a scalable Amazon EC2 server instance.
So, any idea how many hits / months a shared hosting website will handle?
a source to share
It depends on how good your shared hosting is. To determine concurrent users, you can try to compare your server's performance by clicking on multiple queries.
Your host will most likely yell at you if they see you are using a lot of your CPU. For web services, bandwidth is not so much an issue as the availability of your processor / memory.
You should worry more about concurrent users instead of monthly hits. You want to be able to handle any bursts of traffic. Shared hosting is less predictable because you have no control over the use of other users on the machine.
I would say that if you get started, shared hosting will probably be fine, just review it and update when you see a drop in response times. Your host will probably let you know when you are affecting the performance of everyone else on the server.
a source to share
They are all different. It depends on how much bandwidth they give you. (GB / Month is a typical metric).
I would say that the number of page views per month can range in the hundreds of thousands without causing major issues on many managed hosts. It all depends on how intensified your WCF services are. The advantage is that many managed hosting objects will allow you to dynamically add additional hosting resources to your site. (For more $ is obvious).
a source to share