Posts belonging to Category 'Webhosting'

Reasons A Managed Dedicated Hosting Option Is Viable For Any Business

When most businesses venture onto the Internet for the first time, they have very little knowledge of websites and hosting. They would usually contact someone who develops websites on a freelance basis to do their first website. He would then arrange hosting for the site, perhaps on his own server or on a shared hosting account somewhere. Over time the needs of the business often change and they get frustrated with the limited control a shared hosting account gives them. For such a business a managed dedicated hosting server is a great solution.

There are many drawbacks to a shared hosting account. In the first place you normally don’t have the right to upload custom scripts or programs.

Another major drawback is that you are exposed to whatever goes wrong with one of the other few hundred websites on the server. If one of them uploads a runaway PHP script, it can bring the whole server down, including your website.

A further problem that many people experience with shared accounts is that of email. Anyone with experience of these shared accounts will tell you that one often has problem with emails not arriving or going out. The reason is that the mail server can only handle a limited number of emails per hour and if someone should for example send out SPAM and use an email address on the server as return address, it can bring the whole mail server down.

Many more people would go for the dedicated server option if it wasn’t for one reason: lack or perceived lack of the technical know-how to manage a server themselves. The software running on a server must be updated on a regular basis and you must also know how to troubleshoot hardware issues. If something goes wrong, only experienced support staff will know how to fix the problem without extended downtime.

Luckily there is another option. A managed dedicated server provides you with all the control over your website that you may need without you having to get involved in technical maintenance, software updates or trouble shooting. What happens is that the server company includes all these maintenance services with the monthly server rental fee.

Before you opt for a managed server, first make sure what exactly is included in the monthly contract. Some hosting companies include technical maintenance, but still charge you for troubleshooting and installing software. Try to find a contract that is all inclusive at a reasonable cost.

When you decide to rent your own managed server, there are more issues than server maintenance and trouble-shooting support. Bandwidth is also an important consideration. By now you should be well aware of your monthly bandwidth/data transfer needs. Make sure, therefore, that the hosting company includes at least that amount of bandwidth with the server deal. Allow for some extra bandwidth so that you can grow over time.

Disk space is also an important issue. If you have a single website, it’s not likely to ever use more space than that provided by the average hard drive, but if you’re for example a web designer who hosts a large number of client sites, disk space could easily become a problem.

A managed dedicated hosting server is therefore an ideal solution for someone who has outgrown his shared account, but does not have the required technical or software knowledge to manage his own server.

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Top 3 US Web Hosting Companies

Web presence is very important in every business today, irrespective of the sector it is in and its size. This can only be acquired through employing a web hosting company’s service. There will be no sense in putting up a website if it will not be viewed by anyone online. It is not only the efforts that will be wasted but your opportunity to make sales as well. There are many enterprises that offer such service. Different approaches are being used in order to attract clients but below are top three firms that millions of users in the US have trusted.

ANHosting is founded in 2001 and they have been one of the major players in this field. They offer their services in such a low price. They pride themselves on their plans that offer unlimited bandwidth, email autoresponders, sub-domains, email accounts and others. You can personalize your control panel so that you can manage your website according to your preferences.

They offer unlimited disk space in such a low price. InMotion is beyond doubt the appropriate choice for such service. They have reliable staffs that would be more than willing to handle your queries anytime. You can reach them through email, phone and live chat. They even have tutorials for non-techies.

On the other hand, FatCow is the web hosting firm that guarantees 100% uptime 24 hours a day. This is applicable for etailers or retailers who sell their products online as they can make sure that their own customers will be able to view the new products all the time. It is one of the ways in which they can keep their sales coming. FatCow can also cater to personal and other business’s sites.

They offer these services for as low as $5 monthly payment for a 3-year plan. For small business, this is fairly a good deal. But the best feature of this firm is its offer to the customers to register a domain for free so long as it will be hosted in the site. You would still have the liberty to transfer that domain into different server.

Lastly, there is Lunarpages. It boasts of 1500GB of disk space and 15000GB of bandwidth. It has a lot of “unlimited” offers such as sub and parked domains, FTP accounts, SQL databases, email accounts and more. It allows you to add up as much as 10 full domains. The control panel of this firm can also be personalized. It has file manager, domain, and email configuration plus the statistics that determines the generated traffic of your domain.

You can be rest assured that your connection is not only stable but secure as well. This is because it boasts of highly powered servers which use Quad Opteron. It provides lots of back ups should the system gets down. Either of the three would definitely give you an excellent web hosting service.

About Matt Ewing : Matt Ewing is a professional web hosting blogger. Visit WebHostingMadness.com to read his reviews on the top 10 hosting companies each month.

Upgrading to a Dedicated Server

A dedicated server is a must if you want more resources than what is offered by a shared hosting account, or even if you want to run an application which cannot be run on it. A dedicated server can also be upgraded to, if you need a good and a powerful solution for hosting many websites.

Most people who intend to start an online business are unaware about the web hosting packages available in the market. Though purchasing a package depends on the individual budget, most of them are unwilling to buy any package which costs more than $100 annually. In the initial period of their business, this strategy might be good for them since being new to the online business, they might not be aware of the many features of the web hosts, and they also learn new things about e-commerce and affiliate marketing. Besides, they gain the basic knowledge about the domain name server alterations, hosting control panel, FTP for file uploading, and many other things.

Reputed web host companies are better than ordinary ones.

Owing to the low cost, most of the small hosts are not foolproof and one can easily make a mistake on it. So remember that the company you select must have a very good customer support centre. A new business owner may require answers to his various queries which may relate to the server, among other things. He may want to know about how to build a website, or how much bandwidth is required for doing a particular job, etc. But a very important question which is often overlooked is how to register a URL in the personal name of the webmaster, to avoid cases of others claiming it to be illegal. Besides, read the fine print of the company carefully, and acquaint yourself with the terms and conditions. go through the domain registration bit very carefully since it will help you build goodwill in the market. Be on your toes if some companies offer attractive services at a throwaway price since they can illegally lock your domain without your knowledge. Also, be careful if the company terms appear vague and are capable of being understood in multiple manners. If this aspect is ignored, you will have to pay heavily (literally, since legal actions would be needed to be initiated) for it.

Go for committed servers from reputed companies to avoid these complexities. Don’t forget that every small business service provider is expensively selling his business services. Your cost may even be less than $1,000 annually if you choose the recommended solution for your business. What benefits will you get with this amount? Firstly, you will not have to upgrade the host every time the traffic to your site rises. For handling the increased traffic, and the customers from PPC as campaigns, most of the dedicated servers are pre-configured with sufficient bandwidth. They also have backup database options, multiple email accounts for the webmaster and the opening for having multiple IP addresses.

Dedicated servers are also important because many sites have a huge number of hits everyday, like MSN, Google, etc. A dedicated server handles traffic to your site very well. Besides, they allow you to install add-on applications like server side scripts, pythons, PHP Scripting, RSS feeds, etc. A dedicated server enables you to have full control over your business. After setting up the website and ensuring that the programs you have installed are working properly, you just have to bother yourself about the annual maintenance of the site, like creating attractive content to gain popularity among the search engines, and paying the server bills in advance for avoiding the deadline of payment. It is generally recommended that you must pay the bill in advance for at least 2-3 years, since many companies offer attractive discounts if clients’ make the payment for a long period of time upfront. Some of the other schemes that are included for people who pay advance fees are having free PPC credits for running ads without incurring any cost on valuable networks like Google AdWords and MS-AdCenter. So if you want to avail of some unavoidable benefits from the web hosting company, then you can opt for paying your bill for 2-3 years in advance. It’s very much worth it since the benefits will far exceed your expectations.

Upgrading the server is the company’s task.

Most people don’t consider the aspect of upgrading their server when they purchase a dedicated server. Keep in mind that in the future, the server will be needed to be upgraded. Given that you have leased the server from the provider, the company is responsible for upgrading it. Some companies withdraw their responsibility by mentioning it in their terms, or simply by failure of communication. So if you haven’t checked on this part, you might have to fight a legal battle with the company. So make it a point to check out on this issue with the company. Most parts of the server will need to be upgraded regularly, and would also require proper maintenance. So make sure that the company is taking the responsibility of upgrading and maintaining the server. The RAM and the hard drives are the ones requiring an upgrade most of the times. Though most companies provide the upgrade facility, there are a few of them who don’t.

The companies know that it’s their responsibility to provide the clients the necessary upgrades and other things which are required by them for conducting the business online. To cite an instance, if there is an upgrade required, the web host company is obliged to check and suggest you the best time when the business could be shut down for the upgrade. Remember that such an issue is something that is pre-determined, and not just done suddenly when there are many visitors on the site. The peoples’ expectations are increasing and for you to be able to meet them, the web host companies should extend you their full cooperation else they are not worth dealing with. To cut a long story short, proper communication is essential. You must take out sufficient time to take a decision of what will work for you and what won’t, based on pre-determined plans. If you fail to do this, you will have unsatisfied customers and resultantly, will lose out of customers and revenues. So carefully analyze these things before taking the plunge.

About The Author :Sick of over-hyped web hosting companies that can’t keep your site online!? Get the uptime reports and real user reviews you need to find the best hosting company for your website at www.webhostingmadness.com.

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