The Fuel of Great Websites

Saturday, April 13, 2013 by Nicholas Gagne

If you are trying to establish yourself as a professional, having a web development studio build you a custom site can be the best investment of your business career. The market is a competitive place, and if someone clicks on your site and isn’t immediately impressed they will click on to someone else’s. But design and aesthetic appeal isn’t the only thing that can drive business away from your website. According to ‘Search Engine Optimization Journal’, slow Internet speed is the number two reason for driving business opportunities from your website. Having a website that attracts people and inspires them to do more searching in your site is important, but what good will the website be if it takes forever to load or freezes up? After all, a shiny new Porsche is only at maximum efficiency if it has the right fuel.

This is where web hosting comes into play—it is the fuel that will power, protect, and maintain your website. There are several available options when in comes to hosting and, depending on your needs, there is one option that is right for you. Continue reading to discover the best hosting solution for your custom website.

The 411 on dedicated hosting

If you have a moderate to large business, or one that is seeing steady growth with lots of Internet traffic, dedicated hosting would probably be your best bet. This option gives the user total control of the virtual environment and consists of a server located in a data center that is “dedicated” to you. In other words, nobody else shares your bandwidth or space. The hosting company you sign with will oversee network operations and keep your website and its functions running smoothly while being able to assist you with basic tasks. This option is the most expensive one, but well worth it if you have a larger operation that is simply too big to fit into the britches of a shared or VPS hosting solution.

The Fuel of Great Websites

Sharing is caring

If you are just launching a new business and are looking to spread yourself thin in the initial startup phase, shared hosting may be a great choice to meet your needs. This method utilizes one physical server that is used by multiple websites and website owners. The equipment that produces your digital real estate is divided among all the users. Sometimes the size of the shared hosting package dictates how much virtual land a user gets, but in general the portions are dead even. Here are the benefits:

  • Lower costs than other server types
  • Full technical support with no responsibility on your part
  • No maintenance needed
  • Great for those who are not tech savvy
  • User-friendly with easy control panel functions

This is a very popular solution with starter businesses that will aim to expand in the future while keeping things simple and cost-effective in the beginning.

VPS hosting

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting is the most popular option for small to moderate businesses. This method is a hybrid of shared and dedicated hosting. The server has its own operating system, disc space and bandwidth. At the end of the day, you have a physical server that resides in a data center used for VPS hosting. The server is sliced up into multiple spaces that create a virtual server of it’s own. The account holder on the virtual server can only see their environment and no others. As such, the space acts as a dedicated server but it is actually part of a large physical one.

Finding the right provider

Start by doing a Google search. When you find website hosting solutions on sites like AYKsolutions.com, which offers 1GBPS Unmetered VPS solutions, look for affordable web hosting packages with great technical support. Customer service is huge in website hosting, and in looking for the best Internet hosting provider, you will want some equally good customer service on the side.

Image source: http://www.immortal-rs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/hosting.jpg