Skip to main content

What’s best for your business?

Hosting Considerations for Business – Your website needs to be hosted somewhere in order for the general public to view it and you may very well have a trusted web agency that you hire and pay a monthly or annual fee to, but there are differences in the quality of service which impact on the usability of the website.

When checking out Hosting Considerations for Business here is a quick overview of four of the most common types of hosting. Your business website will no doubt fall into one of these categories.

Shared hosting

most small companies whether they know it or not are generally on a shared hosting platform. This means that the website sits alongside other websites on the same server and they all share the same resources. For hosting companies to make money, the more websites that are on each server, the better. It is quite typical to see 2,000 to 3,000 websites on the same server, all sharing the same resources. This can be a cause of slow loading websites and performance issues. It is not ideal for shopping cart sites, ecommerce, high traffic sites or sites where spikes in visitors are expected. If we liken shared hosting to everyday life, it’s like living in an open community where everything is shared amongst everyone in the community.

VPS (Virtual Private Server)

this offers more power and flexibility than shared hosting. A separate administration login will allow you to allocate resources, start and stop services and take more control of your website and emails. Using our housing analogy, this is like owning a penthouse suite in a large complex. All the utilities are owned and paid for by you and you have a certain amount of control and independence, but you don’t own the building.

Dedicated Server

This is where you effectively own the server and are therefore responsible for the maintenance, security and upgrades. It is a faster, more robust solution than the previous ones but more expensive and usually means having a technical person look after the server for you on a regular basis. This is like owning your own home.

Cloud based hosting

Think of cloud based hosting as you would electricity or gas. It works on a similar grid system and you as the user can use as much or as little as you see fit. Any spikes in demand are taken care of and you only pay for what you use. As it is a distributed system, the performance, security and reliability are very good indeed and included in the price you pay.

The cost of hosting space has reduced greatly over the last few years and it is worth asking your provider if you are on the best type of server and payment plan. If you haven’t’ broached the subject in over a year, now may be a good time. An ethical company or the person looking after the hosting of your website won’t want to lose your custom and will try and ensure you are getting the best deal.

Leave a Reply