WEBSITE HOSTING

How To Choose A Web Hosting Company

Anyone seeking a web hosting solution will find there are so many different options available that it can become a very overwhelming process. Before choosing one of the millions of different website hosting companies you first need to decide what type of hosting solution is right for your business. There are two different avenues to look into: dedicated hosting environments and shared hosting environments. By looking at the pros and cons of both shared hosting and dedicated hosting you should be able to determine which hosting environment is right for your website.

Shared Hosting Environments

A shared hosting environment is one in which a third party hosts your website along with multiple other websites on the same web server. Just as it implies, shared hosting is a hosting environment on a shared server.

Being on a shared hosting environment comes with many downfalls. Shared hosting cons include:

• Using a shared hosting environment means that you do not know who else is on that server with your website. If you are hosted on the same server as a bunch of spam sites that can create serious issues for your website including having your IP address blocked.
• Sharing a server with many other websites, if the server is very overloaded can cause your website to load very slowly. Slow loading websites can not only cause you to lose site visitors but if a search engine tries to index your site and it is running extremely slow it can make them think your site is no longer there and cause them to not index you.
• If one of the other people on your server uploads a bad file it could cause not only their website to go down, but it could also cause the entire server to go down. While this is not always the case, it is common for shared hosting environments are to have a high down rate.
• Most third party hosting companies do not allow anyone to just add on additional applications to the server. If your website requires special, non common software to run mostly likely a shared hosting environment will not work.

As you can see there are a few very important cons of shared hosting, but there is also a couple of advantages of shared hosting which include:

• You are only responsible for your website’s content and the hosting company does the rest. Shared hosting providers handle all the server setup, bandwidth management, security and all the other details which can be difficult for the average person to manage.
• Since you are just using a piece of a single server, the cost for the server is spread out between all of the companies on that server. Because you are only paying for part of a server shared hosting is typically a cheaper hosting solution than dedicated hosting environments.

Due to the limitations of shared hosting environments this solution is aimed more at the small business just starting out online with low traffic and a very limited budget. If you are looking into a shared hosting environment we highly recommend that you choose a company located in the United States. If there are ever problems with your server you want to be sure you can get in touch with the company in a timely manner.

While shared servers might be a good solution for start up businesses, WebDuck Designs recommends using a dedicated hosting environment which offers its own benefits and disadvantages, but we find for most people it is ultimately a better solution.

Dedicated Hosting Environments

A dedicated hosting environment is one in which your server is owned and managed by you. The extent of the server management depends on the service provider but many providers will continuously monitor your server’s performance and perform routine tasks like data backups. While anyone can purchase their own dedicated server, WebDuck Designs also offers a different solution. We own a few dedicated servers which we use to house websites that are built entirely by us and don’t offer ftp server access to anyone other than our employees. This approach allows us offer clients a secure environment with all the benefits of dedicated servers but without having to manage the server themselves.

WebDuck Designs recommends a dedicated hosting environment to most companies for many reasons:

• Dedicated servers allow you to the flexibility and control over what applications are running on it. Since we manage our own dedicated servers we were able to set up the servers to work with all of our programming needs and can add anything on at any time.
• Dedicated servers are typically more secure than shared hosting environments because the only people with server access are you and the hosting company. The less people having server access the less likely something harmful will be uploaded. The only people you have to worry about are you and the hosting company. Because we are the only ones with access to our dedicated servers we are able to guarantee clients that nothing harmful will occur.
• Because your site is the only one running on a dedicated server there is no need to worry about other sites slowing down your website. Even though WebDuck Designs’ dedicated servers house many clients websites we are still able to keep all of our website’s load times fast as we constantly monitor server strain and purchase additional servers before the server strain gets to be too much.

The benefits of a dedicated server far outweigh disadvantages, but there are some possible disadvantages of dedicated servers including:

• Since the entire space on dedicated servers is owned by you they typically cost more than a shared environment which you are only renting a piece of the space. However, we have found that WebDuck Designs’ dedicated hosting environment is often a cheaper solution for clients than purchasing a shared hosting package from a hosting company.
• Depending on the hosting company which houses your dedicated server you might be responsible for managing the server, which if you are not knowledgeable about servers can be a difficult task and may even require you to hire an individual to manage the server, costing you more money. If hosted on WebDuck Designs’ dedicated server we manage and monitor the servers and websites so you don’t have to.

Purchasing your own dedicated server is recommended for high traffic sites and sites which require a lot of bandwidth to run. While we have some clients that require their own dedicated server to run their website, most of our clients are able to take advantage of the dedicated hosting benefits on our dedicated hosting environment at the price of shared hosting space.

Contact WebDuck Designs if you still uncertain as to what hosting environment is best for your company.