Choosing the right web hosting is an important decision in the success of a website. There are many different options and it is wise to decide what the priorities are. To some website owners price is the most important thing, whereas for others it may be the amount of bandwidth or the support available from the hosting company. We are going to look at the different considerations for hosting both business websites and personal websites. HOSTING FOR A BUSINESS WEBSITE With business hosting getting the hosting right is very important and in the most extreme cases can make the difference between the success or failure of the entire business. There is free web hosting available but this is unlikely to be considered as there are usually too many limitations for business hosting. For the hosting of a business website a large amount of downtime is not acceptable. Some downtime may be inevitable but if it is happening regularly it could have a significant impact on a business. If potential customers come to a website and it is down they will simply go to one of the competitors, so a site can lose business when this is the case. Depending on the size of a site disk space may be of importance. For large websites significant disk space will be required, as it might for sites that are contently being updated, for example those where news stories are being adding regularly and the stories remain in the database. For a new business website it can be difficult to predict the number of visitors that it will have. This makes it hard to work out how much bandwidth is needed. As the site may have more visitors than predicted it is wise to make sure there is additional bandwidth available in case the site is particularly popular. Support is something most deem important for business hosting. If there are problems they will need to be sorted out quickly, so 24/7 support might be preferable. It also comes down to the type of hosting. HOSTING FOR A PERSONAL WEBSITE If there are problems with a personal website, it is less likely to have an impact on someone’s income, which means getting the hosting right is not quite so important. This means that it can come more down to price, with some simply choosing the cheapest hosting possible. Free hosting may be adequate. Downtime will not be as much of an issue as with a business website. The site may only be viewed by family and friends so if it is down they are likely to come back at another time. Plus, this will not lose you money. Again the amount of disk space required will come down to the specifics of the website. It is likely that there will only be a small number of pages and in this case there won’t need to be too much disk space. A personal website is unlikely to have a large database for example. It is much easier with a personal website to predict the number of visitors the site will have, meaning deciding on an adequate amount of bandwidth is simpler. This is likely to be less than with business hosting. One thing that might need to be considered for personal hosting is the options for media on the site and how the hosting will be able to handle this. If it is a personal site about your family you might want to upload videos and pictures for people to see. CONCLUSION With personal hosting any short comings are unlikely to be catastrophic as they won’t mean the failure of a business and lost income, as it might with business hosting. This means less necessity for contingency plans so the price may end up being the main factor. With business hosting the price is less likely to be the determining factor. Any problems will cost the business money so more may need to be spent to limit the possibility of potential issues. Support is much more likely to be needed. Andrew Marshall (c)
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