Web Hosting Service Comparison
Not all Web Hosting Services are created equal…
Before you can perform a meaningful web hosting service comparison and evaluate the pros and cons for you personally in terms of what constitutes value for money, you really have to focus back onto the basics of what hosting actually needs to do for you, not for someone else; If anyone wants any resource to be accessible on the internet, it’s going to need to be delivered from a ‘Web Host Service’. It’s your end point. It’s where the software lives that receives requests from the internet and delivers results back to end users. This article focuses on the physical bits. At the very basic level, this means a computer sitting somewhere waiting to receive, think about and reply to messages from the internet. That computer could be in your building, or practically anywhere else in the world. What YOUR service may or may not need to look like is key to determining who should provide it. But let’s do a even more focusing by spelling out to ourselves what a web hosting service isn’t…
What a Web Hosting Service is not;
- Web Hosting is not the IP or web address that web routers and indexes use to look your resources up on the wobbly-wide-web; that address is just a label like a digital Post Office Box Number the internet uses to find stuff, and the actual computer box could be anywhere in the world.
- And it is not the infrastructure around the world that transports messages between end users and your resources, and back again. That’s another bunch of computers boxes and wires, any part of which can fall over at any minute and require your messages to be re-routed or re-sent. No guarantees, just a lot of options and a whole load of fiber optimistic wires.
- A Web Hosting Service is also never an infinite or even consistently reliable thing; Because there has to be a physical computer box or two at the end of the line, you might find your box can’t handle all the messages it is receiving at any given time, for example if lots of people want to ask for your stuff all at the same time. Then again everything might be going swimmingly until there is a power surge or somebody accidentally switches your computer boxes off by mistake, or a button gets pressed and the wrong file gets updated or over written; It happens to Google, it happens to High Street Banks, it happens to Software Security companies, Government departments and Charities who underestimate the traffic they would get when they launched new products. The smart ones of course have ways to recover when, not if things go wrong.
From hosting a single static web page for Mary’s Cake Shop, to delivering thousands of in-depth search results in a fraction of a second like Google appears to do, it’s all possible with the right Web Hosting infrastructure and software.
When it all works, it might just as well be smoke and mirrors, or string and baked bean tins for all anybody cares or notices. And that’s the way we want it, just there, now, without having to think about it, or wondering if it’s going to work at all.
So what do you need?
Of course, don’t get what you don’t need, sure! That would be a waste.
But the discussion so far has highlighted how imperative it is to make sure your real needs are covered, and what that looks like depends on who you are. Here are a few questions you’ll need to consider;
Do you genuinely need triple redundancy? Real time data backup? Automatic scale-ability of mobile app resources to keep pace with changes in demand? Split second response times from the nearest data center? Maybe for some things you just need a cheap or free website host that can cope with two website visitors once it’s warmed up, so long as neither of the visitors want to download something, or just send your customers an email, or phone, or send a postcard, or go and see them; for some things it just works better, right? Maybe…and maybe not.
Assuming for the moment that computer based services and support, specifically web based items, are the ticket, here are a few more soul searching questions this time with bullet points for variety 🙂 seriously these things really should be considered carefully and honestly and changed if they aren’t right, egos aside;
- Can you afford to loose data? Which data?
- How big a deal is it if your services go down?
- At what point is cheap a false economy? When you start loosing customers? When your reputation is affected? When the insurance wont cover it?
- If you’re considering doing some things in-house, is that really necessary? Really more secure? Will it help you focus on your business and personal goals or detract from them?
- (my favorite) What if that part just wasn’t there…would it actually matter? Why? Is there another way?
- and so on…
The bottom line
The bottom line from this page is that you need to decide to do whatever it takes to really get a sense of what needs to happen for your stuff to work and what does not. You need a degree of immunity to all the bells, whistles and snake oil that hosting solution providers may want to flood you with; sure their proud of what their data centers or developers can do. Doesn’t mean it’s right for you…ultimately, it’s best if you can determine what that looks like, and recognize it when you see it. Our hope is that the resources on these pages will help you to do that.
Further articles will cover the types and level of services you can get from different Web Hosting Service Providers along with some examples, and what some of the specific software requirements are to effectively fulfil specific Website and Web Service functions …