What is Managed Hosting?

The ambiguity and complexity in the market can sometimes lead to a misunderstanding about the level and value of services provided.. through this weeks article we seek to help clarify. Anyone wishing to move an application, website or business system to the cloud will be faced with a huge plethora of options on how to do this. Unless you have a technical background or have someone technical in your business we’d advice consulting an expert. Many hosting providers can guide you through the best solution but be aware that their commercial goals may not be aligned with yours. One of the key first decisions based on your experience is whether you need unmanaged or managed hosting, At first glance it can appear one provider is charging 3 – 4 times the price for what appears to be the same server or cloud offering. We hope to help you understand the difference here.

Self Managed Hosting

For the technically experienced self managed hosting can seem like a great option. You’re in control of deciding what hosting infrastructure you need, specifying the dedicated, cloud or vps servers requirements. Self Managed hosting gives you direct control of the servers which will be running your application. This usually means command line, control panel setup, taking control of your own backups and if there is any issue with your application e.g. a Magento ecommerce site you will need to be able to fix this yourself or with your technical team. The hosting companies responsibility starts and ends with the provision of the hosting infrastructure, ensuring it has power and network access… and that’s pretty much it unless you have paid for any extras. Usually If you can’t fix your application the hosting provider will reset the server wiping anything stored on it allowing you to then reinstall from your backups. Now if this all sounds like you’re cup of tea there are some great self managed hosting providers out there… but if not, then read on.

Fully Managed Hosting

For customers who don’t want the headache, don’t have the time or experience Fully Managed Cloud Hosting is a great option. Let someone else worry about all the technical detail whilst you focus on growing your business. Fully Managed hosting specialists ensure the right architecture is provided to suit your application / ecommerce website, then set it up and manage any support, security or performance issues on an ongoing basis. Rather than have direct access to your server, through a managed hosting service the hosting specialist ensures it is setup correctly for performance, reliability and security. The service is bound by strict service level agreements and the responsibility for the availability of the system is the responsibility of the hosting provider.

3rd Party Managed Hosting

In addition to managing customers systems on our own infrastructure, Williams Commerce also provide a management service for systems hosted on IBM SoftLayer, Microsoft Azure and Amazon EC2. This can provide clients with the scale of services available from these large cloud providers but with a 24/7 managed service layer provided by our expert team.