If you install MySQL in your local PC as a MySQL server, it is good enough for self-studying. However if you start doing serious development on top of MySQL, you’ll need a remote dedicated MySQL server so you can access it anywhere anytime and by any member of your team with internet connection.
There are a lot of hosting companies offering MySQL hosting with all kinds of hosting plans. When choosing a MySQL hosting provider, you do need to consider several additional options beyond the standard features such as MySQL version, MySQL server uptime, backup, bandwidth and storage:
- “Unlimited” MySQL database with unlimited storage. This feature is very important of you want to scale up your operations and create more database without being charge. You need to do serious research to compare services of a good number of hosting provides before going forward with that them.
- Database client management tools. To have a good database client management tool is so important because you’ll use it to interact with MySQL databases on a frequent basis. The MySQL client management tools provided by hosting provider must be intuitive and designed for DBA and developers who working often with MySQL. Most hosting companies offer phpmyadmin as a default tool for interacting with MySQL database server. The phpmyadmin is a free tool that allows you to perform various database tasks including running query, backing up data, uploading data… so when you choose a hosting service, check this tool to make sure that it is available.
- Secure connection to MySQL server. If your data is sensitive, you’ll need a secure connection to the MySQL servers. Ask the MySQL hosting provider to provide you A secure shell (SSH) tunnel.
Regardless of MySQL hosting providers if you sign up with any of the following hosting companies, you can be sure that you’ll get very good hosting quality. We have done a lot of serious researches to find the best hosting services based on price, performance, feature and support. We highly recommend you to use the following hosting provider for your MySQL database as well as other application such as website, blog, forum, CMS and shopping carts. See our MySQL hosting recommendation below to have more information: