Providing your own server hosting does not make sense financially for small and medium sized businesses. In fact, many larger companies do not host their own web servers, but instead outsource the work to save money. These same services are available to any business, but you need to first determine what type of system you will need to lease.

There are several types of services offered via the Internet. If your business needs a website, there are literally thousands of companies available. For those that need to have their internal software hosted for employees or companies, such as software as a service, there are a much smaller number of companies available.

For SaaS, or software as a service, the provider will need to allow a different type of usage that includes secure logins, subscriptions, and possibly other services. If you are offering this as a service to your customers, the provider may need to setup a special virtual private server to handle the particular load that can occur. If it is for internal employees, the type of system will depend on the software and storage needs.

Dedicated and Virtual Private Servers are available from most web providers. These are typically for higher end users. There are several advantages to using these services. First, you do not have to share an IP address with other customers. If another customer is banned from sites for spam, the fact that they share your IP in a non-dedicated environment means you will be banned as well. You also do not have to share the load. Your customers will not be competing with other companies\’ customers to access the web server.

Most providers offer a 99% uptime guarantee. Typically, they will offer credit for any unplanned downtime. If they have a reputation or history of excessive downtime, your business will suffer considerably. The credits offered are a percentage of the total bill you pay. If you pay ten dollars per month and your service is down 50% of the time, you will only be credited five dollars. They do not compensate for lost business due to the outage. This is important to consider when looking into the reliability of any companies you investigate.

The amount of traffic allowed should be scalable. If the host does not offer unlimited bandwidth, then you need to be sure that you can easily purchase more without interruption. In other words, if your traffic spikes suddenly, they should continue handling it for you while they bill you for the overage. Having a website stop service while they wait for payment is unacceptable because your site will go down at your peak service time.

If you are offering heavy media, you may want a dedicated server. The problem with offering video and other media hosting is that it will be a load on the system. If you are planning to offer video services, discuss this with your provider to be sure they have you on a system that can handle the extra load without interruption.

It is easy to find a server hosting company. You need to decide what type of service you will be offering your customers to be able to decide what type of system you should lease. Dedicated and virtual private systems allow the most freedom if your website will have lots of traffic or heavy media involved.

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Category: Computers and Technology
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