Managed Hosting vs Co-Location: Evaluating Your Options

Webmasters, who are looking towards hosting their web sites, tend to face a confusing situation, when they find an array of web hosting providers who claim to provide the most efficient web hosting service of all. It is also true that there are different types of web hosting that makes the selection all the more difficult and confusing. Here are two of the well-known web hosting categories available for you to use are managed hosting and co-location hosting. Here are some salient features, advantages and demerits of these hosting services:

What is managed web hosting?

Managed hosting is for those users, who would like to have their web site activities, operating systems, and other supporting features managed and administered exclusively by the web hosting provider. If you can not manage the website functions or when you do not have the required technical staff to manage them, then you should choose managed web hosting option.

Advantages of managed web hosting:

• It is an excellent solution for mid to very high level web hosting needs and requirements. If you have a very busy e commerce site with extremely dynamic and database enabled web pages, then managed web hosting is the right solution for you.

• It also provides a reliable and effective solution for medium and large type of businesses.

• If you need a dedicated server but have neither the required technical resources nor the time to manage it, then you can choose this wonderful option.

• Since you are the sole client on the server, upgrade capacity and management is practically unlimited and plentiful. You can add additional drives, enhance software functions, add more memory, and combine different clusters when you feel the need to provide more features to the web site.

• Most Managed Hosting services provide free server back-up facilities, which ensure safeguards and safety features to preserve your important data and information. It is especially useful, when you face undesirable hardware failure or accidental data loss by deletion and over-writing. You do not need sophisticated technical knowledge to manage all these functions.

Disadvantages of managed hosting:

• The cost of setting up managed web hosting server could be quite high. If the budget does not fit your business, then you can look for other alternatives.

• Managed hosting also involves using technical resources and management of server. If you are a newbie and fresh to this type of server, you may face obstacles and problems.

• You may also worry about the available bandwidth with this type of server.

• The most important aspect of managed hosting is the reliability and integrity of the service providers themselves! They may not provide the required standards of service like year-round uptime, necessary hardware functions and the required technical support.

What is co-location hosting?

With this type of web hosting, as a webmaster, you will own the co-location web server, while the web hosting service provider will host your co-location server on your behalf. The most notable advantage of this type of service is your ability to have the physical access to the server as often as you wish to make the necessary changes and modification to the server. However, the downside of this service is that you have the responsibility of managing the server in case there is a major hardware or software failure, with your own expense and technical experience. You will also need to pay a web hosting fee in the form of subscription and an uplink charge.

Advantages of co-location web hosting:

• You are the virtual owner of the server and its associated functions.

• With co-location server, you have the liberty to choose the most secure co-location facility for your server.

• You can also choose the right co-location service provider to host your web site.

• You can also choose the operating system to run on the server.

• You can also add and enhance the features of the server with a range of software and security applications.

• It is also possible to monitor and inspect the co-location data center.

• You can also start reselling programs with your co-location web hosting package.

• You just need to pay a small rack fee to the hosting service provider and not the hosting fee.

Disadvantages of co-location hosting:

• Co-location type of web hosting is always costly and premium.

• There is another extra cost involved with this hosting plan- paying the rack fee.

• You will also need to pay for any additional server maintenance facilities.

• You will also deal with occasional hardware and software failures and pay for the repair and maintenance charges.

• There is another additional cost called Internet Unlinking fees involved with this type of web hosting.

Deciding on the type of web hosting service, managed hosting or co-location hosting, is actually a practical decision and the choice depends entirely on your website’s needs and requirements. If you have a large business website with needs for a sophisticated and efficient web server, you can opt to choose the managed web hosting package to cater to enhanced demands and technical needs.

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