Online businesses survive by having the best ratings among competitors. Some of those high ratings come from the different web hosting services that make the online shopping experience so delightful. A business owner will rate the web host in many ways and hope that customers find the shopping experience pleasurable. These hosting ratings will go up and down when certain services are unavailable and online retailers search for web hosts that have the best uptime.
Customer feedback is responsible for the ratings that are posted on the internet. Internet hosting facilities that deliver the services as promised are the ones with ratings that are close to 10 in most cases. There might be a minor difference in services provided and website owners will have to look closely to realize how those rating numbers were created to ensure that they are participating in web hosting services that are worthy of their business interests.
Many of these hosting services will seem better than others when business owners are doing comparison shopping for the best deals offered for hosting services. The hosting package might offer online businesses the use of a domain name for as long as needed with no hidden charges for the domain service lurking in the background. The best internet hosting service will be rated on how many domain names can be achieved through one term of service. Unlimited is a beautiful word to those who are rating hosting services for an online business.
An online business will require a considerable amount of space to store images of the products that are listed for sale. The servers of a web hosting company will be rated on the amount of disk space that can be included in the monthly charges incurred by the customer. A gigabyte of storage space might be enough for a small business that sells only one product but 600 gigabytes is what some web hosting companies offer because that amount of disk space is enough to give online businesses room to grow.
The web hosting services will also be rated on the type of support system in place to help business owners operate the business throughout the year. Those hosting services will be rated on customer support through telephonic communications and how fast the business owner can contact the customer service department via emails. Those hosting sites that use auto responders are favored because the business owner will know that somebody on the other end knows about the inquiry and is already busy working on a solution.
New business owners will be concerned with the web hosting services that allow websites to be created at no charge. Some merchant solutions will charge outrageous prices for placing templates online which were basic templates with information about the company and the placement of a logo as the only services that were truly provided. A new business owner will rate web hosting firms that provide free setup of an online retail site high on the list of services that a web hosting facility should provide.
Co Location Web Hosting
Dedicated hosting means you're renting a server from a web hosting company. Your other choice is to buy your own server and pay the host to house it on their premises and connect it to the internet. This is what is known as colocated hosting.
Colocated hosting offers all the same advantages as dedicated hosting - you have ultimate control over your server. The extra benefit you get with colocated hosting is a lower monthly cost.
Because you've bought the server, you aren't paying to rent the equipment, you're only paying the host to physically house your server.
Your initial investment will obviously be higher but if you buy a quality server, the costs will be lower when averaged over a long period of time.
How Much Does Colocation Cost?
The cost will depend on how much space your server takes up. Data centers normally house the servers in racks, which are then housed in cabinets.
A cabinet is normally 40 rack units high - each rack unit being 1.75'. Rack mounted servers are measured in rack units - 1U being 1.75'. The most common sizes for servers are 1U, 2U and 4U, so your costs will depend on how many units your server uses.
The other factor in how much colocated hosting will cost is the bandwidth you use. Because your server is connected to the internet via the data center's connection, your cost will depend on how much of data is being transferred, and how much of their connection is afforded to your server.
Colocation vs. Dedicated Hosting
With colocation, you're in charge of the hardware which in turn means you're responsible for maintaining it in case of problems. If a hard drive crashes or a CPU malfunctions, you will need to arrange for it to be replaced.
With dedicated hosting, the web hosting company is responsible for these things so they'll take care of any problems that arise.
With colocated servers you're also responsible for any software licensing costs, such as the operating system and any server-based software you need. Dedicated hosts usually include the necessary software for you to run your server.
In the end, you need to decide whether the additional cost of dedicated hosting is worth the time and up-front investment saved compared to colocated hosting.
If you have the resources to maintain a colocated server, and your resource requirements are high, colocation may be your best choice.
Both James Brown & John Lenaghan are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.