The Pros & Cons Of Hosting The Site YourselfDO-IT-YOURSELF You host the Web site yourself, relying purely on in-house resources except for the external connectivity. PROS: * No service costs to pay * You have total control over the application CONS: * Can be difficult and expensive to maintain the required expertise * You may not have an ideal physical environment * Coping with future increase in demand may be painful.
YANILLA CO-LOCATION Hosting company provides the physical space and associated environmental services, including building access security, for your Web server and the connectivity to the Internet. However, the server is yours and you manage everything else to do with it, including the hardware, operating system and application. PROS: * Far cheaper than full-blown dedicated hosting, while avoiding all the environmental and connectivity issues of in-house hosting CONS: * You stilt need the resources to manage the Web server itself including operating system and application.
CO-MANAGED This is a half-way house, in which you still look after the application, but now the hosting company owns and administers the server and the operating system, as well as providing all the basic co-location facilities. This represents a split in responsibility between the IT platform and the application running on it. PROS: * It off-loads all responsibility for hardware and operating system, allowing you to focus on the application * Cheaper than full dedicated hosting CONS: * Considerably more expensive than co-location * You still have to look after the application, which is often the main source of reliability problems.
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Web Hosting: 4 Factors in Choosing a Hosting Company When choosing a web hosting company there are a whole lot of different factors that should go into your decision making process. One of the biggest factors should be:
1) Phone support. Email support is nice, but email occasionally falls in between the virtual cracks. Getting someone on the phone when your site goes down can take a lot of mystery out of the entire process. A lot of the bigger web hosting companies offer toll free support and weekend hours to boot. Phone support is a great benefit for any web hosting client.
2)Another factor to use in deciding whether to use a particular web hosting company is their history. How long has this company been in business? Web hosting companies that have been in existence for less than a year might not be the best choice. A hosting company with a proven track record and a ton of happy clients is certainly a good sign and might work well for you.
3)How about the company's software? This varies widely between web hosting companies. I am rather fond of Cpanel merely because I am used to it, understand where the buttons are and what the features do. It's much easier to stick with something you know than switching to a new User Interface. Some web hosts offer Frontpage features and others don't. Another specific area you might want to research are the statistics programs. What sort of web statistics software is included with your web hosting account? Is Awstats included? This is one area you definitely want to heavily research before signing up.
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