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Source: WebhostingReview.biz

Dedicated hosting permits individuals and business to lease pre-configured, state-of-the-art equipment and connectivity from a hosting service provider. Instead of simply sharing server space on a virtual server, dedicated hosting gives you the opportunity to lease an entire server for your own exclusive use.

Dedicated services include the lease of pre-configured equipment and connectivity from a hosting provider. The equipment and connectivity are fully managed by the hosting firm, providing its customers with a customized Web server in first-class data center facilities.

With a dedicated server, you can exercise total control over your Web presence. You can choose the operating system and software you wish to use, and individualize settings for your multimedia and e-commerce requirements. Dedicated servers are a good choice for customers that require custom software or enhanced server control but do not want to make the significant up-front investment required in purchasing a server.

Dedicated hosting is more desirable for users with more sophisticated needs, since it permits the deployment of more complex applications, as such databases, streaming media, and high-end e-mail solutions. Dedicated hosting solutions also have the ability to host multiple sites on one machine. Such solutions are usually provided on a world-class network connection, and include 24×7 monitoring of the server and network availability.

The fact that the hosting provider owns the dedicated server is a significant benefit to you because they are responsible for maintaining the equipment and the redundant connections to the Internet. If a hardware component fails, the provider is responsible for replacing it at no cost. The other advantage of dedicated service is that it is custom-designed for each customer. Advanced hosting providers will allow you select specific CPU speeds, disk space requirements and other hardware components. Such automated server specification processes maximize your return-on-investment by ensuring that you only select the hardware you need.

Dedicated servers are excellent service options since only a consumer and their visitors can access the server. This means that Web server performance and the security of e-commerce applications are enhanced.

Because of these advantages, dedicated servers can be considered a superior service allowing you access to more reliable avenues of content distribution and control over your hosting environment. With more control, however, comes more responsibility. Customers who select dedicated hosting solutions will require a certain amount of competency in IT and server administration issues in order to properly maintain the server. This will mean a greater investment of time and human resources than what a “virtual” or “shared” server requires. Furthermore, dedicated servers will require a much larger financial investment.

Dedicated servers are usually offered for a single inclusive monthly fee to Web developers, e-commerce operators and content distributors. The cost can range from between $99 to $2,500 per month, depending on budget, and the level of customer care and technical support required.

Dedicated servers are therefore considered an entry-level hosting solution for the small to medium sized enterprises.

Source: http://webhosting.devshed.com/

As industries mature, you expect to see a certain degree of consolidation. But this can lead to monopolies, with all the problems they bring. Given all of the merger news we’ve seen recently, is this the challenge now facing the web hosting industry? And what can be done about it?

Recently investment firm GI Partners (http://www.gipartners.com/) made a huge news splash by acquiring controlling interests in two of the Internet’s largest dedicated hosting businesses, Everyone’s Internet (http://www.ev1.net/) and The Planet (http://www.theplanet.com/). This is pretty big news by itself, and has already been publicized to death. Not too long after the merger was announced, another announcement from GI Partners confirmed the obvious: ev1 and The Planet were being merged into one unit.

Any time a merger of this magnitude occurs it raises some questions. For starters, what kind of impact will the merger have on already existing clients? How will it affect the industry as a whole? Will the lessening of competition have negative ramifications for prospective hosting clients out there? Many of these questions are at the core of why the U.S. government created anti-trust laws so as to prevent monopolies from dominating commerce and to ensure a healthy competitive environment where only effective businesses would flourish.

I know what you are thinking. What about Microsoft? What about the telcos? Well what about them? Microsoft is now facing stiff competition from the open source movement, as well as from Google on the Internet front. The telcos never had it so bad with free Internet calling which they NEVER foresaw, as well as some deregulation by the U.S. Sooner or later monopolies – at least in the U.S. — are challenged one way or another by newer, more robust businesses. However, on occasion the lead time a company might receive before it garners any worthwhile competition could supply a pretty significant stranglehold, making it extremely difficult to remedy (see Microsoft).

Big Enough to Regulate?

Why am I discussing monopolies? Surely this doesn’t apply to the recent hosting merger, does it? Well no, not yet. But these things always start somewhere, and a huge merger among two of the most dominant hosting players seems like as logical of a birthplace as anywhere else for the beginnings of a monopoly.

The hosting business has been around almost since the advent of the Internet. No surprise there, since without hosting companies there really would be no Internet – at least not in the shape, form, and fashion we have become accustomed to. Hosting companies in general control how we experience the Internet: how slow or fast pages load, how secure websites are and the data they contain, how secure our transactions across it are – in effect, web hosting companies are in control of the very essence of the Internet. They aren’t solely in control, of course, but you can fathom the significant role the hosting industry plays when looking at it from a macro standpoint.

With the news of the recent merger, it made me wonder. Should the web hosting industry be regulated? Should there be a third party organization which sets guidelines that all hosting companies should follow no matter how big or how small they are? By this I mean things like data backup, security measures, support – things that we all take for granted until you need them, and by the time you need them it’s usually too late.

Of course in principle this sounds a lot easier than it actually is. Who would determine the rules and guidelines?  How would they be enforced? Would hosting companies actually follow such a governing body? These are all valid questions, but the answers are unclear. Still, those questions should not preclude us from at least considering whether or not such an organization would have merit.

A Turning Point

Obviously the impetus of any larger merger is profits first, and usually everything else second. The ev1/planet merger is large enough to have significant impact upon the hosting industry, especially in the dedicated segment which almost always consists of the mid to large size sites. It is safe to assume that the newly combined entity will encompass many large businesses. If a few more of these types of mergers occur we could start to see a much more condensed version of the hosting industry than we are used to.

Remember the old days when there were many search engines to choose from? You could happily choose from Yahoo, Alta Vista, DMOZ, Snap, and many more. Then Google came along and kicked everyone’s ass. Many of the search engines are left, but most people now use Google. Many are starting to become concerned that perhaps there is too much power resting with Google since it fields well over half of ALL searches run on the entire planet.

Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil” so I guess it’s OK that literally millions of businesses live or die depending on Google’s search results. Of course, the cat is already out of the bag, and as we all know, trying to correct something that has already transpired is MUCH more difficult than if the problem were addressed prior to its occurring. How about Google scrubbing data that China’s citizens see at the behest of the Chinese government? What if Google decides not to show offensive material in its search results, at least in certain countries? Well you no longer have to wonder “What if” because all of the above is already occurring, and it raises serious ethical implications for everyone who uses the Internet.

I believe we are at a crossroads now in the hosting industry. If there was a ideal time to instill some fair and guiding principles for the hosting industry it would be now. That is to say, before several large hosting providers turn into the telcos and power companies.

With that being said, we should not rush headlong into such a worthwhile endeavor. If any kind of regulation were to be done, it would need to be plotted out in detail and in advance so as to avoid the same mistakes that occurred when the government granted all domain control initially to Network Solutions. Network Solutions was given way too much unmitigated power, and was significantly profit driven, and that made for a dangerous combination. Eventually this was ironed out when the government started handing out more contracts for companies to be able to register and manage domains.

A Good Start

While I don’t believe there is only one right way to approach this concept, one good starting point might be putting together a non-profit entity which consists of large and small companies and businesses, and have them build a charter. This entity would have an elected body which would communicate with a similar hosting equivalent body. The group of hosting companies would ensure equal representation so that they would be able to offer a inside perspective into what may or may not be needed in the way of guidelines that hosting companies should follow.

This approach might be a bit utopian in plan and scope but I believe it is a necessary evil, as no industry would actually wish for or want outside input as to how it conducts its business. The only way a concept like this would fly is if on its face it comes across as a fair and equitable scenario in which both the consumer and the industry wins as a whole. Anything less and it would never get off the ground. I also tend to think that if this concept is laid out in such a fashion, it would appeal to the general Internet public and would create enough impetus to push it along.

What I do know is that there are many hosting companies with tons and tons of Better Business Bureau complaints and many businesses laid to rest due to negligent hosting companies which don’t back up their servers, don’t maintain proper security measures, don’t hire competent personnel and on and on – even though their website says they do all of the aforementioned and then some. So who protects the consumer? Right now many just file for refunds through their Visa or American Express merchant.

Certainly there has to be a better and more effective way to ensure these types of complaints and issues do not continue to occur. After all, the customer would only receive their hosting fees back (after much hassle with the credit card company) but what about all of the business, revenues, and data lost? They are never compensated for those things, and in many instances the damages are incalculable.

One other point that should not get lost in all the confusion is that, since there is no way to police existing hosting companies currently, there really is no way to determine who is running a business out of their garage and who is running a legitimate shop. This newly minted organization should focus on the issues that will matter most to the end consumer and in that respect the entire hosting industry should come through it stronger and smarter. It’s a win-win scenario.

Source: http://webhosting.devshed.com/

Choosing the Right Web Hosting Provider for Now and the Future

You’re starting a website and/or an online business on a shoestring, so you’re going to go with the least expensive web host you can find, right? Wrong. Keep reading to find out why this could be the most expensive mistake you ever make.

When most people want to start an online business, they shop around online to see what web hosting businesses are available. A lot of them end up going with a “budget” service that only costs a few bucks a month. While this is all well and good, what exactly are you getting yourself into when you pick a host solely on price? If you are starting an Internet business or expanding your current business to the Internet, then this website is going to be very important to your business, and is going to need the ability to grow as your business does.

I can tell you from first hand experience that there is virtually a ton of “budget” web hosting companies out there. These companies offer you tons of disk space, and virtually unlimited bandwidth, at prices starting as ridiculously low as $0.99 a month. Yes, I’ve seen them for less than a dollar a month. At prices like that, you need to stop and ask yourself, how do they REALLY make money? Obviously, they count on sheer volume in order to turn a profit. But what if they have 2000 customers, each paying $1 a month? So they bring in $2000 a month. Do you think they can REALLY guarantee each user that huge pipe of bandwidth?

No. They certainly can not. That’s why a majority of these budget web hosts have a reputation for being slow. And even a modest website, without a ton of graphics, will still load slowly if the web server it is hosted on is serving slowly due to CPU or bandwidth issues.

This is vitally important to businesses on the Internet. With high-speed Internet access becoming ever more widespread, people are less apt to wait for a website to load. A slow web service provider can be considered the touch of death, and can take an excellent business idea and turn it into an abysmal flop.

But this only scratches the surface of the issues faced when finding the right host to serve your business.

Plan your needs

Depending on the kind of business you are starting, there are different potential needs you may have, going forward.

For example, if you own a store and are trying to help attract customers, you might begin by creating an online showcase of your products. You might want nothing fancy, just something to entice people to either call to place an order on the phone, or even to come into your store. So a web host who provides the ability for HTML and images is all you need.

But what about when your business grows, or a lot of your customers express the desire to actually order their products online? Well, for starters, you’re going to need the ability to have a shopping cart system on your site. This can be a potential issue, as well.

There are many scripting languages available for websites. This being the case, I’m sure you can imagine that all of the shopping cart applications that have already been written are programmed in many different languages. So by paying attention to your web host’s available scripting languages, you can ensure that when the time comes that you need a shopping cart (or any other kind of script), your host will be able to support it.

But shopping carts aren’t the only thing to worry about. If your site deals with audio or video (maybe you’re a professional DJ or videographer, and want to show samples of your work online), you might need the ability for the customers to hear a sample sound-clip, or to view a sample video. In this case, you are going to want to be able to stream audio and/or video from your site. Again, some hosts have this option within their hosting packages, and some don’t. If this is something that you might eventually need, it’s smart to hook up with a host who offers it, right from the beginning.

Room to grow

Now that we’ve covered functionality, which is a REALLY good point, we come to another one: having room to grow.

Didn’t we just cover this? Didn’t we just talk about having the functionality we might need to expand down the road? The answer to this is yes and no. We DID talk about the web hosting provider having the features you need, but that’s not what I’m alluding to.

Picture this. You put up your website, do a little advertising, and it’s a complete hit. Customers flock to your site, and you find yourself upgrading your site with new functionality a few months later. With more functionality comes even more traffic. Next thing you know, your website starts to run super slow. There are just too many visitors to your site for your web hosting provider’s web server to handle.

So what are your options? Well, they are to either a) move to a web server with less customers on it (which might be a premium plan, if your web hosting provider offers it), or b) move to a dedicated server. The benefits of a web server with fewer websites running on it should be obvious. This should become more apparent when you understand that a single server supporting shared hosting accounts (which is the standard inexpensive hosting account) can have literally HUNDREDS of websites on it.

A dedicated server is just what it sounds like. It’s a whole web server dedicated to only you and your company. Yes, this is more expensive, but by the time you need this level of service, it should more than pay for itself.

Is that all there is to worry about?

Absolutely not. We’ve talked about functionality. We’ve talked about having room to grow as your needs do. But there’s one vital element that we haven’t touched on yet, and it may be the most important of them all: available bandwidth.

It just makes sense, with all of the web hosting providers on the Internet, that some of them have faster connections to the Internet than others. This is the one thing that I am most critical about when looking for a web hosting provider. I always want to know how many connections to the Internet they have, and how fast they are. If I find a provider who has a T1 to the Internet and nothing else, I’m moving on to find something better. Good web hosting providers have more than one connection to the Internet. This is not only for speed purposes, but for back up; what if one of those connections fails? Its nice to know that there is some sort of redundancy built into your website’s availability.

So don’t neglect to ask the question. What kind of connection does this provider have to the Internet? And does the provider have more than one? This should quickly help separate the fly-by-night hosting companies from the well-established ones.

And this, in turn, brings up yet another good point. How long has this web hosting provider been in business? Obviously, if you are building a website, you want for it to be around for awhile. Several years ago, I made the mistake of signing up with a relatively inexpensive hosting company. I didn’t check to see how long they were in business. I signed up, and paid a year in advance. Two months later, my website was gone. The company folded up and went out of business.

Consequences of a bad choice

So why is it so important that you choose the best web hosting provider? Well, lets take a look, shall we?

Q: What if the web hosting provider doesn’t have the functionality I need?

A: You need to switch to a new web hosting provider.

Q: What if my site has become so big that I can no longer host it on a shared hosting account, but my web hosting provider has nothing better for me to move to?

A: You need to switch to a new web hosting provider.

Q: What if the web hosting provider you are hosted with cannot support the bandwidth you have grown to need?

A: You need to switch to a new web hosting provider.

If you don’t take these items into consideration when you are first selecting a web hosting provider, sooner or later you will have to move to a new provider. And between you and me, this is no picnic. I mean, let’s put aside the complexity of moving the code and maybe even databases from one place to another, then any configurations that may be needed to actually make your site operate in the new location. Those can be hard enough, but the bigger problem you have is called DNS propagation.

What is DNS propagation? When your website is up and running in your new location, you need to tell all of the Domain Name Servers (DNS) in the world that your website can now be found at its new location. You do this by changing your site’s DNS servers with your domain registrar. But once this is done, it can take up to 48 hours for this information to completely cycle through the Internet. In that timeframe, customers can potentially be hitting both websites, so you now have the nightmare of either a) having the old website say you are closed to business, or b) have the old website keep running as usual, and try to somehow sync up the two sites after DNS propagation is finished.

Doesn’t sound like fun, does it? It’s not. Making bad decisions on a web hosting provider, even though they won’t impact you right away, may impact you in the future. What’s worse, if you are moving out of necessity, then the move is going to impact your bottom line, since your customers will not be able to successfully be able to use your site in its new location for up to 48 hours.

So the what’s the moral here? Spending a little time and research in the beginning can save customers, frustration, and money in the long run. Making an informed decision up front is the right way to go, and can be the difference between a successful online venture and a failed attempt.