web hosting

Do You Need Cloud Hosting?

Cloud hosting services have generated a lot of buzz in recent times.  While you may or may have not heard of this type of offering before, you are probably more familiar with it than you think.  In fact, if use Gmail for checking your webmail, Flickr for sharing photos and perform online searches with Google, you are making use of services that operate in the cloud hosting infrastructure.  Let’s take a closer look at this unique form of hosting to see what the cloud has to offer.

What is Cloud Hosting?

Also known as clustered hosting, cloud hosting is a solution that often uses virtualization technology to facilitate load balancing, security and system resources over multiple servers.  This basically means that instead of relying a single piece of hardware, your website and applications can benefit from the resources of multiple servers.   In the typical shared hosting environment, a website is limited to the bandwidth, disk space, RAM, processing power and others resources allocated to the physical machine.  Cloud hosting is a concept that frees you of these limitations, providing you with on-demand access to an infrastructure that is virtually inexhaustible.  The mere structure of the cloud makes it easy to scale up or down based on your individual requirements.

Who Needs Cloud Hosting?

Throughout the years, a countless number of websites have been the victims of their own success.  This is the website then ends up suffering because of its sudden boost in popularity and traffic.  The environment in which this situation occurs the most is shared web hosting.  Once your website exceeds the limitations of a single physical server, it is susceptible to choking.   Cloud hosting is the perfect alternative as it gives you access to a cluster of servers, allowing your website to benefit from additional bandwidth, RAM, processing power and other resources it might require.  The major selling point to this solution as that you can obtain this extra boost in computing power when you need it.  If the popularity of your website subsides a bit, you can easily place the resources back into the cloud and make them available to other users.

Are There Other Benefits?

Cloud hosting services offer benefits from numerous angles.  The most obvious advantages are its scalability and cost efficiency.  Being that cloud computing is a highly scalable technology, websites and applications can be expanded greatly thanks to the additional resources.  Dealing with slow responses and frequent crashes just because your site experienced a sudden surge in traffic is a common thing in the shared hosting environment.  The cloud’s scalability allows you to avoid this problem with ease.  Another major benefit of cloud hosting is the flexible pay-per-usage model.  When signing up with a provider, you are only charged for the amount of computing power you use, similar to how you pay for your gas and electrical bill.   No longer do you have to lease and maintain a costly and complex dedicated server just to improve performance.   These are a few of many benefits that have made the cloud the talk of the IT world.

VPS Web Hosting – Do Your Really Need a Control Panel?

Control panels are certainly a vital element in today’s web hosting operation, helping to transform complex tasks into simple processes that can be handled by users of varying skill levels.  The vendors that distribute these products and the hosting industry in general have no trouble pushing the software on the market, but critics are now questioning whether control panels are truly necessary in the VPS environment and what value they actually provide.

Potential Issues

In terms of performance and security, industry leading control panels such as cPanel and Plesk are not always what they are cracked up to be.  These powerful applications consume a great deal of resources and often force customers to upgrade their packages to continuously thrive in a VPS hosting environment.  This consumption is due to HTTPD processes ran by web servers like Apache that make a VPS more susceptible to performance issues and less able to handle exploits such as DOS (Denial of Service) attacks.  Though very useful, cPanel and Plesk are both resource hogs that are more likely to reduce the overall responsiveness and performance of web applications, leading customers to upgrade to more costly packages they do not necessarily need.  In addition to this, even simple tasks such as creating email account and managing databases are slow and lagging processes that generally take too long to complete.

Alternative VPS Control Panels

cPanel and Plesk are ideal for shared and dedicated hosting arrangements but could result in more problems then you bargained for when using them with a virtual private server.  Two more efficient control panels you may want to consider for your VPS hosting solution are DirectAdmin and LxAdmin as both are incredibly lightweight and consume notably less system resources than cPanel and Plesk.  This essentially means they are far more responsive, faster and likely to give you a better performance than the leading products.  A number of tests are increasingly showing that they are also more stable and secure than the competition.

Many observers are stepping out to the make the claim that cPanel’s days as a VPS control panel are numbered, attributing this to the fact that is the most resource leeching solution.  Due to its mass popularity and widespread use, it is also among the highly targeted by hackers, which presents numerous potential security risks to your hosting environment and sensitive data.  For this reason, you may want to carefully consider utilizing this control panel with your virtual private server.  Unless you have a robust VPS plan with a lot of RAM or absolutely require automation, it might be worth the risk to install a glamorous commercial product.

Conclusion

We are not telling you to refrain from using cPanel or Plesk as both are on top of the control panel market for obvious reasons.  However, in many situations, going with a lighter product or performing command line administration will allow you to get the job done in a faster, more efficient and secure manner.  Fortunately, there are several control panel applications specifically designed for the VPS environment, better assuring the optimal performance and adequate security you need to thrive with your web presence.

Managed vs Shared Hosting – Which Type to Consider

Before deciding on a web host, it is important to know that web hosting is available in many different variations.  Two of the most common forms of hosting are shared and managed hosting.  While quite similar, the differences set these types of web hosting apart by far.

Shared Hosting

For someone who only requires a small, basic website, leasing an entire web server just isn’t practical.  If this sounds like you, then shared hosting would be the perfect solution.  It is cost effective and specifically designed to suite the needs of small websites.  With shared hosting, the web host stores multiple websites on single server, allowing them to offer a service that is much cheaper than dedicated hosting.

Web servers are more powerful than the average computer used in the desktop setting.  They offer plenty of disk space as well as RAM and CPU.  The catch is that you are required to share these resources with other customers, a factor that could lead to performance and security issues. If your requirements are minimal, you should be able to find a shared hosting provider able to supply all the resources you need.  However, as your site becomes more popular, it is very likely that you will exceed the resources the web host is able to provide.  In this case, you need to either consider purchasing upgrades that supply you with additional bandwidth, storage capacity and other essential components.  If the provider is not able to accommodate your needs, it is time to move up to a dedicated server and possibly consider managed hosting.

Managed Hosting

Websites that experience a high volume of traffic and run mission-critical business operations are best suited for a dedicated server.  Unlike shared hosting, a dedicated server provides you with all the resources on the machine.  This includes disk space, RAM, CPU and guaranteed bandwidth as well.  On the other hand, a dedicated server calls for you to deal with server administrative tasks that can be very complex and time consuming.

In its purest form, having a dedicated server means you are responsible for all the maintenance.  This includes basic administration to keep the machine thriving on a day to day basis as well addressing any security issues that may arise.  Those who require a dedicated server but are not up for all the technical challenges often opt for managed hosting.

Managed hosting offers benefits to the website owner or business that either lacks the skills required to maintain a dedicated server or simply do not have the time to invest.  You can generally select the options that best suit your needs, freeing you up to concentrate on other vital aspects while the server is maintained by the web host.   When viewing it from this perspective, managed hosting is pretty much like outsourcing your dedicated server tasks to a third-party company.

Making a Choice

Managed hosting is the perfect alternative to the limitations of the shared server and complexity of a dedicated server.  Keep in mind that these benefits come with a higher price tag.  Therefore, it is very important to make sure you truly require this type of service before making an investment.

Shared Hosting: The Ideal Small Business Solution

Shared hosting is the most popular web hosting solution today, ideal for individuals and small business owners as well.  So, what exactly is shared hosting?  Well, as the name implies, it refers to an arrangement where you share space on a web server and resources such as bandwidth and RAM with other hosting customers.  Though shared hosting providers are abundant, the key is finding a company that will set you up for success.  This article will provide a checklist to help you use the shared hosting platform as a vehicle to establishing your small business.

Finding a Reliable Shared Host

In order to give yourself the best chance of succeeding with a small business, you need a shared hosting provider that takes hosting serious.  First and foremost, they should be dedicated to making sure your site is always up and running, ensuring that visitors enjoy a smooth performance.  If your site is frequently down due to technical difficulties or performs sluggishly, converting visitors into customers will be nearly impossible.  You can better assure accessibility and performance by looking for these technical specifics:

Uptime - This refers to the amount of time your site will be available on the web.  Right now, the industry standard is 99.9% so anything less than that can be considered unacceptable.  Don’t simply take the provider’s word on its advertised guarantee.  Do a little investigating and find out how the percentage is calculated and what is actually covered in the guarantee.

Disk Space – If you are planning to start an online business, a shared hosting plan must provide an adequate amount of disk space to store your content.  You probably won’t require a tremendous amount of storage space so look for something that suits your needs rather than falling for the glamorous “unlimited” offering.

Bandwidth – Equally important is bandwidth, often referred to as data transfer.  Bandwidth is another resource that is often advertised as an unlimited offering, but just as with disk space, that simply isn’t true.  We suggest selecting a shared host that offers an accurate amount of bandwidth to support your web traffic.  Without enough, your site will lag.  If you exceed the allotted amount, you could be taxed hefty overage fees despite the unlimited offering.

E-commerce Tools – Shared hosting is your ticket into online business and essentially the world of e-commerce.  Depending on the nature of your business, some of the e-commerce features you may want to look out for are shopping cart programs, multiple email accounts, SSL support, and database access among other features.   These tools will give you the ability to open up an online storefront, keep in touch with customers and facilitate secure transactions on your site.

Support - A small business hosting solution just wouldn’t be complete without solid support.  A reliable shared host should offer support 24/7 to step in and make the save when you have questions or concerns.  If they can’t provide quality customer support, the overall quality of their hosting service is questionable as well.

The most attractive benefit of shared hosting is cost efficiency.  By referring to this checklist, you should be able to find a small business solution that is both reliable and affordable.

Do You Need Dedicated Hosting?

Has your online business grown to the point where it exceeds the offerings of a shared hosting environment?  If so, it might to time to upgrade to dedicated hosting.  Often referred to as a dedicated server, dedicated hosting is a solution where you have the entire server to yourself.  The hosting provider monitors the hardware, routing equipment and network connectivity while granting you control over the server software.   Though more complex and expensive than shared hosting, leasing a dedicated server gives you the unparalleled flexibility and control needed to run a thriving business that experiences a high volume of web traffic.

Because of its highly technical nature, many online business owners elect to outsource the administrative tasks of their dedicated servers to experienced IT professionals.  Despite the costs and complexity, dedicated hosting can serve numerous benefits to your business, especially if you have the resources required to maintain the server.  Below are just a few of many advantages you will enjoy with this advanced web hosting solution.

Faster Server Response

One of the biggest knocks on shared hosting is slow server response time which is the direct result of sharing the machine and associated resources with other customers.  In this hosting environment, the performance of your site could suffer drastically if another site experiences a sudden boost in traffic.  This spells bad news for your business when potential clients stop by and are greeted by pages that take forever to load.  With dedicated hosting, you have the server all to yourself, allowing you to plan for traffic levels and any other scenarios that may impact server response time.

Flexibility

What most business owners love about dedicated hosting is the flexibility it grants.  In a shared hosting environment, you are limited to the operating system, software and technologies provided the web host.  A dedicated server allows you to choose your own operating system be it Windows or Linux, as well as customized software applications that best suite your business.

Scalability

Scalability is what you need to support the growth of your business.  Whereas options for upgrading are limited on a shared server, dedicated hosting allows you to scale up or down at any time.  With this hosting solution you can increase the amount of storage space, RAM processors and even purchase additional bandwidth to support an increase in web traffic.

Security

Security is one of the biggest reasons to consider dedicated hosting.  Try as they may, a shared hosting provider can never guarantee the security you get with your own server.  A dedicated server will be as secure as you make it as firewalls, virus protection and other security mechanisms can be installed.  The security of your applications and client data should be of the utmost importance if you are running a business.

Conclusion

Aside from all the benefits, you should also know that dedicated hosting isn’t suited for everyone.  For instance, if you are running a small business with low to medium traffic, a shared server is probably the best option.  After establishing your business to a point where it requires more flexibility, only then should you consider moving up to dedicated hosting.