Today and for the last few years a new band of service
providers have surface offering “Free” hosting services. When considering a
free hosting account is extremely important to understand what you are getting
and what the real cost is. There is no such thing as a “free” hosting account.
Many will advertise a free account but in reality they require you to agree to
have ads running on your site. Consider your type of business and whether or
not you want to advertise someone else’s products, services, or points of view
as if they were your own. Other provider’s will require you contact information
and your agreement to be contacted by them or their partner companies. When you
start to consider some of these nuisances that you’ll understand why these so
called “free accounts” are not really free.
In addition to the above issues you will also have to deal
with limited storage, limited traffic, limited bandwidth, no email services, no
backups, and no customer support. Acquiring any of these services from a third
party then will cost you quite a bit more than if you were to pay for a premium
hosting account.
The next and most popular of the hosting accounts is “shared
hosting”. A shared hosting means that you share server and features with other
web sites. The files are never mixed but the services might be slower if there
are a lot of websites being shared in the same server. Luckily there are a few
companies out there that use compression and SSD-equipped (non-moving parts) servers
to provide fast and efficient hosting services. In addition these companies
maintain a limit on the number of website that may be hosted under any given account.
Shared hosting accounts offer some of the same benefits that
dedicated hosting offer except management of the physical server. For most
small to medium organization a shared account with the right provider can prove
to be a money saver and a great system to host your website. Because shared
accounts are often hosted on cloud servers there is usually no resource limitations
(e.g. unlimited space, bandwidth, traffic, etc.).
A “Dedicated Server” allows you to lease your own server in
the provider’s data center. As such you get total control of your server
without the high cost of physical support. However, the cost of a dedicated
server account can be quite high and you will have a number of limitations. For
example, your storage will be limited to the server’s physical configuration
(usually under 500Gb) of storage, and traffic is limited to 10Tb per month. There
are many befits to a dedicated server including faster delivery of content,
ability to custom configure the server, and higher overall performance.
However, the cost might be an issue for smaller organizations that are dependent
on third parties for support.
There is also one more type of hosting account mostly
offered by Web Designers. It is a type of shared hosting account that is
managed by your web designer. The advantage of using that account is that the
cost of the hosting is usually low. The biggest disadvantage is that you have
no control what so ever of your features. For example, you will have limited to
no access to your control panel. This is very important if your account
includes email accounts, databases, as well as web design tools. Also, if you
ever want to transfer your domain or even your hosting account you will be at
the mercy of your web designer.
In summary, always do your research. Select a reputable
company with strong technical support that can provide 24/7 assistance. It will
be beneficial to keep your domain and your hosting account with the same vendor
on an account that you have 100% access. Select the best feature package for
the lowest possible cost without sacrificing quality. Remember the “big players”
don’t necessarily offer the best deals, just big names.
Small Business Network Administrators have been offering web
design, hosting services, and domain registration services for over a decade.
Our customer support group is second to none. For more information on our
services visit our site at http://sbnai.com or
email us at info@sbnai.com.
About the Author
Al Ortiz is the chief information officer of Small Business
Network Administrators International. Al has over 25 years of experience in the
technology field and can provide answers to most of your web design or web
hosting questions.
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