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Sunday, July 31, 2011

Finding The Best Server Hosting Services

By Adriana Noton


In-house server hosting can be expensive and result in major headaches for small and medium companies. Larger companies often outsource their web and SaaS hosting needs to save money on employment and infrastructure costs. The outsourcing is available to any sized business, but you will need to determine what your needs are before starting the search.

There are many different types of services available through the Internet. For a company that needs to have its website hosted, there are thousands of services available. For software as a service, or SaaS, there is a limited amount because it is more of a specialty type of service.

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 servers are available from many web providers. The cost depends on the level of management that is needed. These are often reserved for higher end customers because they often are not managed systems. Instead, the software updates and other work is done by someone in the leasing company. The advantage is the isolated IP address. This means if another customer in the system is banned for spam, your IP address is not affected. Sharing IP addresses can be a problem if other customers that share the IP are doing things that can get the IP address blocked from various search engines.

The uptime guarantee is not what it used to be. Most will offer a 99% uptime guarantee, however, they will only pay a percentage of your monthly fee. The problem is the amount of business you lose when your site is down does not compare to the credit you will received. It is important to search for a company that truly has a good uptime reputation. If there are ongoing problems with system outages, your site may be down more than expected. This has a very negative effect when customers are looking for your services.

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.

Streaming media sites place a heavy load on the servers. If you plan on including a lot of video services, you may want to lease a dedicated server. This will allow you to keep the burden to yourself, rather than affecting other customers in the system. Your site alone will have the full use of the system in the dedicated type of setup.

Finding a Virtual dedicated hosting company is easy. However, you may be disappointed if you do not think about what you are needing before beginning the search. Start with deciding if you are going to be providing streaming media services, how much traffic you expect, and whether or not you may need to expand systems to accommodate growth.




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