Can You Afford Low Cost Web Hosting?

How could that possibly happen? Unfortunately 67 customers of 123-reg are still trying to answer that question following failed maintenance of the company’s virtual private server (VPS). The result, the company said, was to have “effectively deleted” some websites. Despite launching a recovery process, customers were advised to use their own data backup to rebuild their websites – and a bad day got even worse!

Williams Commerce provides managed hosting for 200 ecommerce websites that handle millions of pounds worth of transactions a year. The infrastructure team is very focused providing great service, value and maximum availability and we believe that managed hosting is the ideal choice for ecommerce, amongst all the options you could consider.

IT isn’t your business, but your business depends on the quality and availability of your website, so you need to be completely confident about your hosting arrangements.

Your website depends on the computers or servers that host your web pages for thousands or millions of people at the same time. Of course, value for money is important, but reliability, ease of use, features and support must all be considered when comparing website hosting options.

If you want to be absolutely sure you are in charge, you could choose a dedicated private server that hosts only your website. It provides control without compromise and security and performance are great, but it’s an expensive option. Considerable in-house expertise is needed, with the continuing challenge of keeping up to date with innovations and technology

At the other end of the spectrum, a shared server is the cheapest option. Information is stored and bandwidth, internet connection, memory and applications all depend on resources that are shared with others. This option might suit you if you want to start small, but there is little control or scope for innovation and you might need to think about moving on quite quickly. Sharing resources can also mean that speed is an issue and security and performance can be concerns.

In between these options, a virtual private server (VPS) is effectively divided into sections which behave like separate dedicated servers. You might look at this option if you want to increase capacity while still being able to choose operating systems and applications without the expense of a dedicated server. A VPS will be slower than most dedicated servers but faster than most shared servers. However, you will still need a significant level of expertise and, as in the 123-reg case, it could be vulnerable to risks that are outside of your control.

Managed hosting is a more cost-effective alternative than any of these options, without having to compromise on suitability or control. It is effectively an extension of dedicated hosting without the need to own the technology or have all the expertise in-house.