News Room

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Top 3 Reasons To Use Dedicated Server Hosting Rather Than Shared Hosting

Choosing the type of hosting to use for your website can make or break your business. Two popular methods are using shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting means that your site has a full computer dedicated to the needs of your website. Shared hosting means that your site is on the same server as hundreds or thousands of other websites. Here is why you should use a dedicated server if you can afford it:

  • Your site will run faster
    • Using a dedicated server will ensure that your website will always perform fast. This is especially important since visitors to your site will quickly leave if your site is slow. With shared hosting your site can easily become bogged down because of problems with the hundreds of other websites on the same computer.
  • You site is more secure
    • Since there are at least hundreds of other websites on a shared server security becomes a problem. It is exponentially more probable that hackers will be attempting to breach the security of a shared server rather than a dedicated server, since the number of potential targets is so much higher.
  • You can survive traffic spikes
    • If you are actively advertising and promoting your site it is very likely that your site will experience traffic spikes at times. For instance, suppose you sent a news release about a new product or service one day. That will hopefully result in many visitors coming to your website. With a dedicated server you can be sure that your site has the capacity to perform well during a traffic spike. With shared hosting it is likely that the server is already taxed from the traffic going to other websites.
Shared hosting is generally cheap, but the risk of losing business due to poor performance, security problems, or traffic spikes is a real problem. If you have the budget it is much wiser to spend the extra money on a dedicated server.

Technorati tags:
IceRocket tags:
Posted by at 10 comments:
Labels:

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Cheap Dedicated Server Web Hosting - Free!

Usually starter or beginner webmasters start with a cheap shared hosting package. Once a web site takes off in a big way and there are a lot of visitors, it may be time to upgrade your shared hosting package to dedicated web hosting. In the cheap shared server web hosting plans, webmasters share one server with a lot of other webmasters, which may be shared by hundreds. The performance of all websites take a performance hit if some other webmaster is using the resources of the web server excessively. These shared plans are usually available for $3-10 per month. Some of the other webmasters may be running proxy sites which are resource hungry, and may lead to a very slow response from your site, or could even force your website to become inaccessible. Even a DoS attack against any other site in the shared host can affect your website adversely. So what is the solution?

The answer lies with web hosting companies offering Cheap Dedicated Server web hosting plans that are quite cheap in terms of monthly payments. These plans usually start from a minimum of $30 per month and go upwards depending upon server configuration and bandwidth usage. Cheap Dedicated Server web hosting plans come in two flavors. The first type is the Virtual Private Server where you are still on a shared host, but it runs a few virtual private servers. Virtual private servers are the least expensive type of hosting amongst cheap dedicated server web hosting plans. Users of these servers have a set amount of resources to use of the server, and there are far less people sharing the server. Each virtual server appears to be a complete machine in it self and is under complete control buy it's user.

The second variety of cheap dedicated server web hosting plans provides for a dedicated server physically. Usually these are small value servers located at data centers or server farms and are available for exclusive use for one user. The webmaster who pays for a dedicated web server, may at his or her discretion, host one or more website and completely controls his dedicated server. No limits as opposed to using shared hosting which heavily limits what you can do. The hosting company only provides the physical hosting, operating system installation, backup and OS updates of your server, and nothing else. All other things are controlled by the webmaster.

When you find that traffic to your shared hosting website has grown so much that the shared host is not able to handle the load without affecting others on the server, then its time to switch over to cheap dedicated server web hosting plans. As a dedicated server does not share its resources with any other webmaster, the cost of such a plan is much higher, but the facilities provided by cheap dedicated server web hosting is far greater as you have a lot of control over the server's operations and a lot more resources available. Leaving aside the cost factor, cheap dedicated server web hosting is the best option for an webmaster who's learnt the ropes, starting to get more traffic, and simply needs to upgrade.



Technorati tags:
IceRocket tags:
Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Cheap Dedicated Server Hosting - The Long Term Relationship

Everybody knows that one of the keys to a mutually beneficial business agreement is a long term relationship. The more time and effort both parties put into building each other's trust and making the business relationship work, the better and more profitable the business is.

This is a widely known principle, and yet many companies that offer cheap dedicated servers don't seem to take their role seriously. Trust me, my friend, I've been left alone too many times when I was just trying out cheap dedicated servers, and there are certainly many companies I'll not even think about hiring again.

The thing is this: when you rent a cheap dedicated server, you are not just renting a computer; you are in fact renting technical service, maintenance and monitoring. The fact that you have chosen a cheap dedicated server should not imply that the provider won't supply at least a minimum amount of support just to get you started, or that you'll have to wait forever for an answer to a question you ask them. If they don't seem to take you seriously, then you must ask yourself what you should expect from a long term relationship with them.

Here is a good tip: When you rent a cheap dedicated server hosting service, think of it as a marriage. Would you like to spend the rest of your internet business life with them? You better choose wisely.

Let me tell you something that happened with the first dedicated server I rented. Back in those days, there weren't many places where to look for information about dedicated servers, and the few sites dealing with the subject were just mere commercial pages designed to make you purchase what they were offering. So, with no objective, real information to help me, I had to choose based on what they said rather than on others' opinion.

At first it seemed like a great deal, but when the first problem came up I realized that it wasn't such a good deal at all. I noticed that one of my hosted sites was not working, so I sent an email to my provider asking what had happened, and how to solve the problem.

They answered... four days later. As a result, I lost the customer whose web site had the problem, and based on how offended he was I can say he'll never trust me again. All because they took forever to answer a simple and to the point email about a problem that, by the way, turned out to be caused by them in the first place.

Nowadays when I think about that, I'm glad I switched providers and moved to another cheap dedicated server. If I had stayed with them, chances are that I would lose more customers and lose everybody's trust.

So, my friend, if you are going to rent a cheap dedicated server from a hosting company, I strongly recommend you take the time to find out what are their customers saying about their service. This critical matter can be the foundation of a long term relationship that benefits you both, and the lack of support can definitely make your company and reputability fade away.

See you later, and good luck hunting around!



Technorati tags:
IceRocket tags:
Posted by at 20 comments:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)