Sunday 24 February 2013

An Inside Guide To Choosing The Best Business Hosting

Starting your own online business is not an easy task. A lot of research must go into producing the perfect website that will be able to bring you a steady income. This is not a job that should be rushed, because a mistake made at the very beginning of the process is hard to fix later on. Aside from planning out your business and putting all of your ideas in the right place, you will also need an excellent web host to help create your website.

There are plenty of options for you out there, and it will take a little time to go through all of them and pick the best one, but when it comes to business web hosting, the more time you spend on researching the area, the better.

Make sure that you first take into account the amount of space that your website will need. This is one of the first things that distinguish one hosting package from another. If you are planning on using music files, videos, or a lot of flash animation on your website, then you will certainly need more space than someone who will only be writing articles on it with just a few pictures. Space is of the utmost importance, because once you run out of it, your website will automatically become offline.

Bandwidth is also part of this space. However, you should make sure that you read the Terms and Conditions in detail before you settle on being certain that you know how much bandwidth you have. Bandwidth is usually advertised as being unlimited, but is almost never the case, as there is always a limit to how much bandwidth you can use at any point. So make sure that you are very familiar with this information.

Business web hosting from www.serverspace.co.uk or others are much more detailed and very well planned out than any other hosting option. Businesses do bring the most profit for hosting companies after all, so it is in their best interest that they attract as many business websites as possible. You don’t have to start out with the highest hosting package of course, but it is still important that you are starting out with a business one. If you choose any other hosting package, like the ones that are more suited for blog owners than business websites, it will be a bit of a hassle to move to a different hosting server once you need more space and bandwidth.

The smallest packages are usually around 10GB for file space, a Dedicated IP, and about 100GB of bandwidth. This is more than enough to start a business. It usually takes anything from six months to an entire year before such websites need to move to bigger packages due to higher traffic income. There are also cases where websites become extremely popular almost overnight. However, this is a very rare occurrence, and usually only happens with websites whose products are already very popular, so they don’t need any more promotions to attract visitors.


Finally, make sure that the customer service is up to par. It is very important that you can reach your host 24/7, both through email and through phone contacts. Websites do not have working hours, they need to be online all the time, and so if there is ever anything that goes wrong, it needs to be sorted out as soon as possible. Make sure that the customer service department is also very quick to reply and give you some more advice should you need it. After all, starting up your own online business is not something that you will be doing every day.

Wednesday 20 February 2013

Advantages and Disadvantages of Colocation Hosting

Colocation hosting has become an excellent way for website owners to store their precious files without having to worry about their safety or maintenance. It is one of the most effective ways to run an IT based business, and it has many additional features as well as the owner’s complete control over which files are needed and which ones are not. However, even though collocation servers have a great number of advantages, they also have some disadvantages that future users should become familiar with before making their final decision to sign up for collocation hosting.


One of the biggest advantages of this type of hosting is the very stable and largely available bandwidth. With collocation servers, there is no need to worry whether or not you have exceeded your bandwidth limit. The reason being is because you only pay for the amount of bandwidth that your website is using. So as the number of visitors increases, so does your bandwidth bill, but it will also decrease once the traffic becomes less hectic.

The collocation centres where all the files are kept are under constant security measure that are very strict and prevent almost everyone from entering, unless they are an official. Aside from physical security, these centres also have power generators in case of any unwanted and sudden loss of electricity. This means that regardless of where you are, or what the weather decides to be like, your website will continue to run full power, and none of your visitors will even begin to notice that anything has gone wrong.

You own everything related to your server and website, because you have physically brought your own IT machine and allowed it to be installed on the collocation server. You can do anything you want with your files and software as well as update them whenever you want. This is not possible with traditional web hosts because their users need to wait for upgrades and new addons, which often takes a lot of time.

Collocation centres will also do all the file management for you if you wish them to do so. It often costs a bit more money for this privilege, but it is a great time saver in the long run, and is especially a good option if you are not even sure what sort of maintenance your files will need in the future. Although you are welcome to do everything on your own, it is also the responsibility of your collocation hosting company to make the process as easy as possible for you.

There are also disadvantages to this type of hosting. Namely, finding a collocation centre near you is not an easy thing to do. They are very big structures and require a lot of space as well as a full number of very experienced IT professionals to run the entire process. These centres are not something that can be created easily, which is why they are usually only found in big cities where the likelihood of people needing collocation services is the highest possible.

Despite all of its benefits, collocation hosting is more expensive than other web hosting options. This is because it requires a lot more security as well as a greater number of staff members. Reaching your equipment also requires you to travel to the collocation centre personally. This may not be a big deal if the centre is near you, but it can be quite time confusing for those that live far away. If the benefits of colocation are exactly what you're after however a good company to start off with is ServerSpace as they are fully equipped for businesses large and small.

Another disadvantage is that your monthly bills will change depending on how much space and bandwidth you need to keep your servers and websites active. This requires you to have a bank account that will always be full with enough money to pay for all of these expenses.