Cloud Hosting Vs. File Servers: A Pros And Cons Analysis

With cloud computing well into the mainstream and steadily replacing roles currently filled by traditional server architecture, it’s time to ask the big question: can cloud hosting replace traditional file servers for storing and sharing files between employees in your organization? Serving, sharing, and storing files was probably the very reason many small and midsize companies built out their intranet infrastructure in the first place, and may still be the only reason that many companies have a server in their office or are renting server space. And as the workforce became more mobile, these servers took on the additional duties of sharing your internal files with employees on the road or working from home, even though they may not have always been designed for those functions.

Cloud hosting, on the other hand, was born from a networked world with sharing, collaboration, and mobility being key considerations from the very beginning. Despite only being a relatively recent technological innovation, cloud computing has leveraged these strengths to quickly start eating away at the share of file hosting and file sharing duties of traditional server setups. Still, many companies are still hesitant to trust their files and security entirely to a third party where they may share space and resources with other companies, or entrust their proprietary data to some nebulous “cloud”. So which is better for your needs? What are the pros and cons of legacy file sharing servers compared to the newcomer cloud storage?

Traditional File Servers: Pros And Cons

File servers have been the mainstays and workhorses of the business world practically since business networking has been a term. There are a significant number of pros to keeping your files on an internal (or externally managed) server that you control. The biggest pro is ownership. While you may not own a rented server, if you are on shared hosting for example, you still control all of the contents of the server without doubt, and a hosting company cannot simply pull the plug on you, erase your data, or otherwise compromise the integrity of your data. This is even more so if you actually host your own file server on–premises or in a colocation space.

Another advantage of maintaining your own file server is the ability to configure it as much as you want, within certain limits (depending on your server type–self–hosted, shared, or dedicated). This gives you options about how you want files served, how credentials will be assigned, where people will be able to access files from, etc. This gives you flexibility and allows you to set things up in a way that is unique and specialized for your organization.

The major downside of having a traditional file server for sharing is the inflexibility and difficulty in maintaining such a server. Whether you host the server on–premises, have a shared hosting account, or a dedicated or co–located server, it is difficult to scale up and down as demand rises and falls. In fact, it’s impossible to do so dynamically in real time. That means during slow periods, you may be paying for way more server than you need, while during especially busy periods you may find that you are running out of bandwidth, RAM, or storage space. On top of that, unless you use a managed server, you will also have to be responsible for your own security and maintenance.

Cloud Storage: Pros And Cons

Cloud storage has pros that are the exact opposite of traditional servers. In order to utilize public cloud servers for storage and file sharing, you will be giving up a large portion of control in exchange for smooth operations. Public cloud storage allows you to not have to worry about buying server space, maintaining security, provisioning file space, or any of the other tasks that owning a server usually entails. The cloud storage provider will be responsible for security, for determining how access is granted, and where people can access the server from. You also gain flexibility. Many cloud storage services allow you to ramp services up and down to keep up with real–time demand. In fact, some will even do the automatic provisioning for you.

Downsides of a cloud storage and sharing solution are the loss of control that such a solution entails. You also have to worry about the cloud storage provider becoming a victim of cybercrime attacks. While most cloud service providers are much more security savvy than most small business IT teams, they are also much more likely to be seen as targets by hackers and other malicious elements.

Ultimately, each solution to the problem of file sharing and storage has its own pros and cons. Which works best for your business largely depends on your needs and your capabilities: a file server for companies with an IT budget to spend but a need for privacy, extra security, or their own special server build, or cloud storage for companies that don’t mind giving up a large measure of control in exchange for costs savings in IT management and technology.

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Shared Hosting vs WordPress Hosting: Which One Should You Use?

When creating a website, one of the most important decisions you’ll make is what type of hosting
plan to purchase. If you use a platform like WordPress, you’ll need hosting in order for your website to be available online. What’s more, selecting the right option is vital.

Two of the most popular choices for first-time website owners are shared hosting and WordPress hosting. Shared hosting is a type of low-cost plan where you share space on a server with other sites. WordPress hosting (which can be shared or not) means that the server comes optimized with the specific platform in mind.

In this post, we’ll talk you through your main hosting options, and explain how to find a plan that suits your needs. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to Shared Hosting

Put simply, a web hosting plan is a service that enables you to rent space for your website on a server. This is what gets your site online, and enables people to visit it. There are many different types of hosting plans available, however, and each one differs in terms of price and potential benefits.

Read More: Shared Web Hosting

One of the most common options is a shared hosting plan, where a single server is split between multiple websites. This is in contrast to dedicated hosting, where a single site has a physical server all to itself. Shared hosting is a popular choice for new and smaller sites, largely due to its low cost (often $5 per month or less).

While price is the primary benefit, there are some potential downsides to this kind of hosting. You’ll have to share resources with other websites, for example, which means your performance can suffer if those sites get a lot of traffic. Security can also be a concern, although a quality provider will offer additional protections.

What’s more, a standard shared hosting plan is not your only option. You can also opt for something more specific to the platform you’re using.

The Differences Between Shared Hosting and WordPress Hosting

As the name suggests, WordPress hosting is web hosting that has been optimized for the needs of a WordPress website. It’s important to understand that this isn’t a type of plan in the same way that shared hosting is. WordPress hosting can be shared, dedicated, or something else entirely.

What matters is that WordPress hosting better meets the performance and security needs of sites built using the platform. You may also get access to platform-specific features such as pre-installed sites, automatic WordPress updates, and dedicated WordPress support.

The details of your plan will depend on the provider you choose, of course. In addition, many hosts also offer both managed and unmanaged WordPress hosting plans. Unmanaged plans leave site optimization and server management up to you. A managed plan is slightly more expensive, but provides you with a lot more help keeping your site running smoothly.

How to Decide Which Type of Plan Is Best for Your Site

Both traditional shared hosting and WordPress hosting are viable options, making it difficult at times to choose the right one. However, directly comparing the two can make the decision easier.

Especially when you’re first starting out, one of the main criteria to consider is cost. As previously mentioned, shared hosting is about as cheap as it gets. This makes it a perfect option for those setting up new websites and blogs.

However, you’ll find that shared, WordPress-specific hosting plans can be almost or just as affordable as more platform-agnostic options. For that reason, it’s well worth looking into a WordPress hosting plan for most sites. A WordPress plan will be carefully designed to address the needs of your specific site, which is a significant benefit.

If you have the budget for it, you may also want to look into managed WordPress hosting. While these plans are often pricier, you’ll have a more efficient and secure site that’s taken care of by platform experts. This is an especially strong option for those completely new to WordPress, as well as business owners who don’t have the time or expertise to handle performance and security concerns personally.

Ultimately, there’s no one ‘correct’ choice of hosting for every website. You’ll need to assess the individual needs of your business and site. However, most WordPress users will be better off with a plan that takes their specific needs into account, whether that’s a shared option or something more powerful.

Sources: A2Hosting.Com

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The Advantages of DNS

DNS, for Domain Name Service, acts as a look-up table that allows the correct servers to be contacted when a user enters a URL into a Web browser. This somewhat transparent service also provides other features that are commonly used by webmasters to organize their data infrastructure.

Operational Overview

DNS runs on DNS servers. When a user enters a URL, such as www.google.com, into a Web browser the request is not directly sent to the Google servers. Instead, the request goes to a DNS server, which uses a look-up table to determine several pieces of information, most importantly the IP address of the website that is being requested. It then forwards this request to the proper servers and returns the information requested to the user's Web browser.

Domain Name System

The DNS server looks at three primary pieces of information, starting with the top level domain. The top-level domain is denoted by suffixes such as .com, .org, and .gov. Once the top-dlevel domain is established, the second-level domain is analyzed. For example, the URL www.google.com possesses a top-level domain of .com and the second-level domain name google. The second-level domain is usually referred to simply as a domain name. Finally, the DNS server resolves the third-level domain, or subdomain, which is the "www" portion of the URL.

Features of Subdomains

Aside from the "www" subdomain zone, other subdomains are also worth noting. For example, subdomains such as "pop" "irc" and "aliases" exist. Each subdomain represents a different service that may be accessed on the server. For example, "pop" is used for email communications. The use of the DNS server to resolve the IP addresses of these different services allows for complex network architectures to be implemented. Despite being under the same domain name, these different services may be hosted on different machines or different geographical locations. This also allows a level of redundancy when using aliases, in case the primary domain server goes down.

User Benefits

DNS servers allow standard Internet users to use Internet resources without having to remember port numbers and IP addresses. Even similar services, such as different areas of the website, may be hosted at different IP addresses for security reasons. This allows users to memorize simple URL addresses as opposed to complex, nonintuitive lists of IP addresses and port numbers. This also allows private servers made by home users to be freely available yet somewhat shielded from having their IP address publicly known.

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Primary DNS vs. Secondary DNS and Advanced Use Cases

What is Primary DNS?

A primary DNS server is the first point of contact for a browser, application or device that needs to translate a human-readable hostname into an IP address. The primary DNS server contains a DNS record that has the correct IP address for the hostname. If the primary DNS server is unavailable, the device contacts a secondary DNS server, containing a recent copy of the same DNS records.

How Does a Primary DNS Server Work?

When a computer or device needs to connect to another device on the Internet, it typically uses a human-readable domain name, like “www.example.com”. The browser or application needs to translate the domain name into a numeric Internet Protocol (IP) address like “192.100.100.1”. This translation is done by the Domain Name System (DNS).

The device first contacts the primary DNS server that hosts the controlling zone file. This file contains the authoritative DNS information for the domain or subdomain. “Authoritative” means it is the trusted source for information like the IP address of the domain, administrator contact information, and settings like Time to Live (how long this IP address should be saved in a local cache).

The primary DNS server server resolves the query by returning the IP address for the requested hostname. However, if the primary server is slow to respond, or is unavailable, the device is referred to one or more secondary DNS servers.

What is Secondary DNS (Slave DNS)?

Changes to DNS records—for example, changing the IP for a domain name—can only be done on a primary server, which can then update secondary DNS servers, also known as slaves. DNS servers can be primary for one DNS zone and secondary for another DNS zone.

A secondary server holds a secondary DNS zone—a read-only copy of the zone file, which contains the DNS records. It receives an updated version of the copy in an operation called zone transfer. Secondary servers can pass a change request if they wish to update their local copy of the DNS records.

Secondary DNS servers are not mandatory—the DNS system can work even if only a primary server is available. But it is standard, and often required by domain registrars, to have at least one secondary server.

Benefits of having a secondary DNS server for a domain:

◈ Provides redundancy in case the primary DNS server goes down. If there is no secondary server, when the primary fails, the website will become unavailable at its human-readable domain name (although it will still be accessible by its IP).

◈ Distributes the load between primary and secondary servers. Some resolvers use the Smooth Round Trip Time (SRTT) algorithm to prefer the lowest latency name server from the available pool of servers (primary and one or more secondaries).

◈ Part of a secure DNS strategy— DNS servers are exposed to security threats, first and foremost Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS). Setting up an an external DNS provider with DDoS protection as a secondary DNS, is a common way to deflect DDoS attacks.

DNS Zone, Primary DNS and Secondary DNS Configuration

In the preceding discussion we referred to DNS zones. A DNS zone is a distinct part of the domain name space, delegated to a specific legal entity which is responsible for managing it.

For example, a root domain such as “acme.com” is a DNS zone, which can be delegated to a company, Acme Corporation Inc. Acme Corporation then assumes responsibility for setting up a primary DNS server, called an Authoritative Name Server, which holds correct DNS records for that domain.

DNS zones exist at higher and lower levels of the DNS hierarchy. For example, the Top Level Domain “.com” is also a DNS zone, which has an Authoritative Name Server providing DNS records for all the domains in the “.com” namespace. A subdomain, such as “support.acme.com” is also a DNS zone, which can be managed by Acme Corporation, or delegated to another entity.

Primary and Secondary DNS Management in Modern DNS Infrastructure

The classic primary/secondary DNS architecture is no longer used by modern, managed DNS providers.

Today, most DNS providers offer customers several name server IPs to use. Behind each of these IPs are pools of DNS servers, with requests routed via anycast (a one-to-many transport protocol). This provides improved redundancy and high availability compared to the master/slave model.

However, even in advanced DNS deployments, secondary DNS can help you:

◈ Migrate to new DNS infrastructure, with dependencies on old DNS servers — organizations may have tools, code, or legacy systems which point to an old DNS server hosted in their organizations. There may be scripts automatically creating DNS records (for example, if you provision a new subdomain for each of your customers). In order to migrate to a modern, managed DNS provider, without breaking your dependencies, you can define the DNS provider as a secondary DNS server. This will keep all existing processes in sync, but in case of failure or slow response of in-house DNS servers, the high-performance, managed DNS server will respond.

◈ Avoid single points of failure — high traffic sites and mission-critical web applications cannot tolerate outages. Even if using a managed DNS provider, administrators might prefer to use two providers, to avoid any single point of failure. A simple way to do so is to configure one provider as primary DNS server and the other as secondary. This way, all management and creation of DNS records is done with one provider, and in case of failure or slow response, the secondary takes over.

◈ Setup redundant DNS with one managed service — Want2host intelligent managed DNS can setup a dedicated DNS deployment for your organization, which runs on a separate network and servers from its regular managed DNS service. This gives you redundancy between two separate DNS servers, but can work with only one provider. The dedicated deployment is not shared with any other organizations, so it isn’t exposed to attacks targeting other customers on the Want2host DNS service.

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Understanding What Does Parked Domain Mean

Many-a-times it so happens that you purchase a domain name but before you can set up your website some issue arises. It could be anything from wanting to postpone the launch of the website or a backend issue and so, you have to wait! Well in such a scenario what would you do? Do you neglect the domain name or wait till you can figure out what next! The best way is to wait and the simplest way to do this is by parking your domain.

Let us have a look at what does parked domain mean:

Domain Parking is a process wherein you as an owner of the domain name can retain the domain name (say, for example, mybusinessworld.com) without hosting a functional website on it. In simple words, you can reserve your domain for future use with a ‘work in progress’ or an ‘under construction’ page.

Having covered what is a parked domain the next logical question that comes to mind is, why to use domain parking. There are several reasons why domain name owners would like to park their domain, let us see some of them:

1. To reserve it for the future

Many times, it might happen that you like a domain name but, you don’t know much about how to set up a website or need some time to do so. However, once you sort the idea in your mind and decide to set up the website, you see the domain name is no longer available.To save yourself from this hassle, you can park your domain. This way the domain is yours and no one else can register it until it expires.

2. Website not yet set up

In the first scenario, you didn’t have an idea of what kind of a website you wished to set up. However, sometimes it may also be possible that you have both the domain name as well as the idea for the website and yet your website isn’t up. This can happen due to several reasons. Some of them being- you’re unable to decide on the web hosting provider or it can be delayed due to some technical/personal reasons. Parking your domain name at a time like this helps you keep the domain till the issue is resolved.

3. Wish to shut down your website

Till now we’ve seen situations wherein your domain name doesn’t point to a website. But what if you already have a website? There are times you may be running more than one website and wish to discontinue one. But instead of discontinuing the functioning of your website immediately, you wish to wait till your domain name expires. In this case, you can opt for parking your domain and earn income from it.

4. Additional earning

One of the strongest reasons to park your domain is that you can earn money from it. Generating income from a non-functional domain name is easy. You can post advertisements & if someone visits your page and clicks on the advertisement, you get paid. Your revenue is generated based on the traffic and follows the pay-per-click model. This is one of the simplest ways to earn money and the best is you don’t have to do much. You should though, take care of the kind of content that is being displayed on your page.

Now that you know why you would want to opt to park your domain name.

You can either check with your registrar, if they offer domain parking facility or if they don’t provide this, then you can go for Sedo. Sedo stands for “Search Engine for Domain Offers” it is a professional web address trading platform. Also, it being a free service provider it is easy to set up and earn money. Moreover, you can cancel parking your domain at any given point.

At the end, even though you may have had the question as to what does parked domain mean with it sounding like an alien concept it isn’t, it is easy to understand & implement. Nonetheless, it is recommended that you research well on which domain you wish to park and where.

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What are the Benefits of WordPress Hosting?

WordPress Hosting is, in most cases the ideal hosting for WP websites. Not only does it provide great performance owing to the fact that it is configured to be highly compatible with WordPress, but it also provides a range of WordPress management features. This makes it very easy for website owners to manage and maintain the website without having to allocate additional resources to do the same. Although different hosting providers provide different features, we will talk about the benefits of WordPress Hosting.

◈ Highly compatible with WordPress

◈ Enhances the performance of WP websites.

◈ WordPress is pre-installed to provide a plug and play environment for developers.

◈ Automatic WordPress updates to keep you up to date all the time.

◈ Cloud-based hosting infrastructure that provides a high level of scalability.

◈ Automated backups using CodeGuard.

◈ Daily malware scanning and security with SiteLock.

◈ Pre-installed plugins that make your job easier

◈ Managed services that take-up WordPress maintenance.

To get a better understanding of the benefits of WP Hosting, let’s look at them individually in detail.

1. Performance:

Every software will have its own system requirements that determine how efficiently the software will function. With that in mind, even WordPress as a software has its ideal system requirements. WordPress Hosting ensures that the hardware, firmware, and software configuration is highly compatible so that it runs efficiently.

Having a system that is compatible ensures that you do not run into performance issues and system freezes. If the system does not function properly, the hosted website may crash, or temporarily be out of service which will have serious implications on the website’s authority and visitor’s experience.

2. WordPress is Pre-Installed:

Developers who take up WordPress projects regularly would love this feature. With WordPress pre-installed, you have no need to spend time downloading and installing the CMS on the server. You just purchase the plan and begin developing the website. This saves a lot of time and you never have to worry about compatibility issues.

3. Automatic WordPress Updates:

Another important benefit for WordPress Hosting is automatic WordPress updates. Every update that is released comes with a bunch of improvements and bug fixes. If your instance of WordPress hosting is not up-to-date, not only will you lose out on these essential improvements and bug fixes, but also become more susceptible to external security threats. The automatic update feature of WP Hosting ensures that you are covered on this front.At times, the website you are hosting is not compatible with newer versions of WordPress. Although this scenario is very rare, it still persists. In such cases, turning off automatic updates is just a switch flip away.

4. Cloud-Based Hosting:

One of the biggest benefits of WordPress Hosting plans is that the hosting is Cloud-Based. Which means the advantages of Cloud Hosting are cascaded to the WordPress Hosting. These advantages include scalability at the click of a button and a high level of reliability as there is no single point of failure. Moreover, we integrate

Varnish Cache within this Cloud-based environment that has the potential to increase your website’s speed by 1000%.

5. Great Security and Backup:

Our WordPress hosting packages provide the option to include premium website security and backup tools. One of them being CodeGuard, which automatically takes website backup periodically so that you have enough restore points in case of a disaster. The other tool that our WP Hosting contains is SiteLock. This software regularly monitors the website for malware and security threats and notifies you to take necessary action. SiteLock can also be configured in order to deal with security threats automatically in case of an encounter.

6. Pre-installed Jetpack Plugin:

Plugins form a very strong base for WordPress development. Any task or functionality that you can imagine can be made possible with plugins. Our WP Hosting plans integrate certain essential plugins such as Jetpack plugin. This plugin can be used for a variety of functions including provisioning of WordPress themes, lazy loading, marketing services such as analytics, automated social media and SEO tools, Payment gateway integrations and high-end security for your website.

7. Managed Services:

Another very useful advantage is the inclusion of managed services. What this means is that the WP Hosting team takes care of dealing with all your website maintenance tasks. Without managed services, you as the website owner are responsible for taking care of the WordPress maintenance which requires resources.Managed services include a barrage of activities like scalability of hosting resources such as CPU, RAM and storage space. As your website grows, you will need more hosting resources to handle the incoming traffic load.This can be easily done by the managed team without you having to worry about the specifics.

Another example of managed services is the optimization of the WP Database. The WP Database holds all the important information of your website such as pages, posts, form entries, cookies, plugin settings, theme settings etc. As your website grows, this database becomes bulky. Bulky WP databases are usually slow and need to be optimized so that they do not affect the overall speed of the website. The managed hosting team takes care of this on their own without you having to intervene.

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DNS (Domain Name Server) - NetWorking

DNS is a host name to IP address translation service. DNS is a distributed database implemented in a hierarchy of name servers. It is an application layer protocol for message exchange between clients and servers.

Requirement

Every host is identified by the IP address but remembering numbers is very difficult for the people and also the IP addresses are not static therefore a mapping is required to change the domain name to IP address. So DNS is used to convert the domain name of the websites to their numerical IP address.

Domain :

There are various kinds of DOMAIN :

1. Generic domain : .com(commercial) .edu(educational) .mil(military) .org(non profit organization) .net(similar to commercial) all these are generic domain.
2. Country domain .in (india) .us .uk
3. Inverse domain if we want to know what is the domain name of the website. Ip to domain name mapping.So DNS can provide both the mapping for example to find the ip addresses of geeksforgeeks.org then we have to type nslookup www.geeksforgeeks.org.

Organization of Domain

It is Very difficult to find out the ip address associated to a website because there are millions of websites and with all those websites we should be able to generate the ip address immediately,

there should not be a lot of delay for that to happen organization of database is very important.

DNS record – Domain name, ip address what is the validity?? what is the time to live ?? and all the information related to that domain name. These records are stored in tree like structure.

Namespace – Set of possible names, flat or hierarchical . Naming system maintains a collection of bindings of names to values – given a name, a resolution mechanism returns the corresponding value 

Name server – It is an implementation of the resolution mechanism.. DNS (Domain Name System) = Name service in Internet – Zone is an administrative unit, domain is a subtree.

Name to Address Resolution

The host request the DNS name server to resolve the domain name. And the name server returns the IP address corresponding to that domain name to the host so that the host can future connect to that IP address.

Hierarchy of Name Servers

Root name servers – It is contacted by name servers that can not resolve the name. It contacts authoritative name server if name mapping is not known. It then gets the mapping and return the IP address to the host.

Top level server – It is responsible for com, org, edu etc and all top level country domains like uk, fr, ca, in etc. They have info about authoritative domain servers and know names and IP addresses of each authoritative name server for the second level domains.

Authoritative name servers This is organization’s DNS server, providing authoritative hostName to IP mapping for organization servers. It can be maintained by organization or service provider. In order to reach cse.dtu.in we have to ask the root DNS server, then it will point out to the top level domain server and then to authoritative domain name server which actually contains the IP address. So the authoritative domain server will return the associative ip address.

Domain Name Server

The client machine sends a request to the local name server, which , if root does not find the address in its database, sends a request to the root name server , which in turn, will route the query to an intermediate or authoritative name server. The root name server can also contain some hostName to IP address mappings . The intermediate name server always knows who the authoritative name server is. So finally the IP address is returned to the local name server which in turn returns the IP address to the host.

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Reseller Web Hosting – Reseller Hosting vs cPanel Addon Domains

When to choose reseller hosting over addon domains

Reseller web hosting and shared web hosting plans often include cPanel for managing your websites & domains. When you have multiple domains, you must decide on whether reseller hosting or a shared web hosting plan is a better fit.

Reseller Web Hosting

◈ master dashboard to control multiple cPanel accounts
◈ ability to create multiple cPanel accounts
◈ each cPanel account has a separate login; username & password
◈ resources are allocated to each cPanel (memory, cpu, processes etc)

Shared Web Hosting

◈ single cPanel login
◈ uses “addon domains” (directories) for additional domains
◈ no separate login for websites
◈ resources are shared among all websites on the account

When do we recommend using a reseller web hosting plan?

If you have more than a few domains that you’d like to host, we recommend a reseller hosting plan to keep each domain isolated via their own cPanel account. The two biggest issues with addon domains are the use of resources such as memory, cpu & processes and then security concerns. Addon domains within cPanel are not inherently insecure, but since the directories reside under the same system user, there is no isolation between them. Unfortunately, this means if for example, a WordPress website becomes compromised, it can potentially spread to other addon domains.

While the addon domains & security does pose a risk to other websites residing on the same hosting plan, we do not see a higher ratio of compromised websites simply due to the fact that addon domains are being used. As long as the website(s) being hosted on the addon domains (and parent cPanel account) are properly secured, we see no issues with using addon domains.

Are you a web agency or providing website hosting services to customers?

If you’re providing website hosting services to customers or are hosting a large number of websites (from a web agency for example), we most definitely recommend using a reseller hosting account over a shared account with addon domains. There’s a few reasons for this, the main three being security, resources & accessibility. Having each domain on its own cPanel means that there is also a separate login.

You certainly would not want to have addon domains in this case as you would have to provide the same username/password to each customer in order for them to access anything within cPanel (which we HIGHLY do not recommend). Additionally, keeping each customer isolated from one another will ensure that in the event one site becomes compromised, it does not affect another customer site.

Lastly, resources are assigned per cPanel account, so having each website on its own cPanel means the resources are not being shared by any other account/website except for what resides on that cPanel account.

With addon domains (on a single shared web hosting account), if your cPanel account has 1GB of RAM available to it and you have 10 domains/websites via addon domains, all 10 of those websites are going to have to share that 1GB of RAM. With busy websites, this means contention, each website will fight one another for resources.

When to use addon domains?

If you have a shared web hosting account and would like to simply add a few personal or hobby type sites, we most definitely recommend addon domains for this. The concept of addon domains from cPanel is good however, when the websites being hosted using addon domains are customer websites or are busy sites, we don’t recommend using addon domains. Addon domains are another option that can be used for staging sites also, but we recommend using subdomains for that.

Are your sites income based or monetized sites?

If your websites are generating any type of income, we recommend that you at least host them on separate accounts. This could be a reseller hosting plan OR separate shared hosting plans if you don’t plan to add more sites over time. Shared hosting accounts can always be moved into a reseller account down the road if you add more accounts.

The biggest reasons we recommend multiple shared hosting cPanel accounts or a reseller account when you have multiple sites that are monetized is both performance and security.

If one of your monetized sites becomes compromised (let’s say a WordPress exploit from a bad plugin) and it spreads to your other site (via an addon domain), there’s a possibility that the platform being used for monetizing the site could pull the site from their platform. In instances like this, we feel the risk is simply too high and increases the possibility that the issue could interfere with the income being generated.

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What Is LiteSpeed Web Server?

LiteSpeed is a web server that is known for providing excellent performance and higher scalability. An existing Apache server can be replaced by LiteSpeed server without making any modifications in the operating system details and also without hindering any other process or program. LiteSpeed has the capacity to solve any major bottleneck in your existing web hosting solution. LiteSpeed comprises of impressive features and user-friendly web administration console that ensures a safe and fast web hosting environment.

LiteSpeed Web Server Editions:

OpenLiteSpeed Edition

The OpenLiteSpeed edition is ideal for the high traffic websites. However, this edition does not work with any web hosting control panel. This edition is open source and can be used freely.

Standard Edition

The standard edition is ideal for the small and low traffic websites. It is compatible with web hosting control panels like cPanel, WHM and Direct Admin. This edition is free for personal and professional use.

Enterprise Edition

The enterprise edition is commonly used for the large and high traffic websites and it works great with all the web hosting control panels. This edition is generally used by the web hosting companies to provide supreme web hosting experience to their customers. This edition ensures stability and performance.

LiteSpeed Features:

LiteSpeed is excellent when it comes to speed and stability. LiteSpeed is fast in comparison to Apache and it also servers the PHP content within a short span of time. Therefore, LiteSpeed is considered as an ideal web hosting solution for the websites using WordPress, Joomla and Drupal as it enhances the PHP performance.

Here are some impressive LiteSpeed features:

Compatible With Apache

LiteSpeed is compatible with Apache and one can avail features like mod_rewrite, mod_security and .htaccess. Apache configuration files can be easily loaded by LiteSpeed and it can also operate as a replacement to Apache. LiteSpeed also works great with all the web hosting control panels.

Great Performance And Scalability

LiteSpeed improves the performance and scalability of the web hosting platforms as it is crafted to ensure excellence. LiteSpeed is capable of serving a large number of clients at a time along with ensuring minimum usage of server resources. LiteSpeed’s code is perfectly optimized for enhancing the PHP performance and for serving the static websites faster than Apache. LiteSpeed also has the capability of taking care of the sudden traffic spikes and it also helps in handling the DDOS attack without the need of any DDOS management hardware resources.

Security

LiteSpeed works perfectly with Apache’s mod_security feature and also has the anti-DDOS feature. LiteSpeed consists of customizable features like request, per-IP connection, bandwidth throttling. The IPs through which there are too many connections or requests are blocked thereby stopping the attackers from ruining your server.

Affordability

Hosting on a LiteSpeed server is an easy task and affordable as well. The licensing cost of LiteSpeed is lower as compared to any hardware upgrade needed for optimizing an Apache based server. LiteSpeed reduces the support costs through its excellent features ensuring a secure and stable hosting environment.

Web App Acceleration

LiteSpeed consists of standard compliant ESI cache engine; therefore, LiteSpeed has the capacity to implement the complex caching solutions with ease. This is a necessary feature for meeting the requirement of the highly dynamic web applications used by the webmasters today.

Efficient Hardware Utilization

In comparison to Apache or NGINX, the LiteSpeed server ensures 2x-5x faster page loading speed along with 98% lesser server load. This goes on to say that you can host a large number of clients on one hardware platform. LiteSpeed reduces the hardware footprint along with ensuring cost saving in CapEx and other associated recurring costs.

Simple Management

The best thing about LiteSpeed is that managing LiteSpeed is extremely simple. LiteSpeed can easily read your Apache config files and supports the .htaccess files. The integrated control panel plugins in LiteSpeed ensure easy configuration and deployment. You can switch between your Apache installation and LiteSpeed and manage your website content on LiteSpeed with just a few clicks. You can enable cache control for every account along with tag-based purging and automatic clean up.

Specific LiteSpeed Server Benefits For The Website Owners:

◈ Reduce the page load times to half

◈ Reduce the website response time significantly

◈ Increase the number of concurrent website served

◈ Deliver lightening fast web applications through LiteSpeed cache solutions

◈ Enhance website security with in-built anti-DDOS features

LiteSpeed Cache For Magento : Magento Acceleration

The LiteMage cache is powerful and is built for Magento stores using the LiteSpeed server. As the LiteMage cache is a part of the web server, it wades away the overheads and communication problems that might have an adverse effect on the other page caching solutions. LiteMage automatically integrates all the Magento installations with LiteSpeed’s ESI implementation. LiteMage ensures the greatest Magento website performance along with an easy set up.

Features Of LiteMage:

◈ Edge Side Includes (ESI) engine for hole punching

◈ Customizable punched holes mapped to the blocks defined in Magento website page layout

◈ Main page and publics blocks are cached just once and served to all the users

◈ Retrieve multiple blocks per request , thus minimizing the overhead of multi-block pages

◈ Support available for Last viewed product, stock trading, and product comparison

LiteSpeed Cache For WordPress : WordPress Acceleration

LiteSpeed cache for WordPress is a personalized caching solution that is crafted for hyper-active WordPress websites. This cache requires very little or almost no configuration. As caching is performed at the web server level, the overhead is significantly reduced. LiteSpeed cache for WordPress is the ultimate and complete WordPress hosting solution. It offers single and multi-website support and it is also compatible with most of the popular WordPress plugins.

Features Of LiteSpeed Cache For WordPress:

◈ LiteSpeed cache for WordPress will always serve an up-to-date page

◈ The default settings of this cache are optimized for most of the WordPress installations

◈ Caching is done at the web server level, therefore your website content is served quickly

◈ Easily customizable

◈ LiteSpeed cache for WordPress is compatible with single and multi-site installations

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How to Choose the Best Caching Solution for Your Website

Consider this: you’ve set up your website and you finally have customers. However, the wait is long, and the website is slow to load. By the time it loads, you’ve lost your opportunity to convert a visitor to a paying customer – leading to a loss of revenue. In a matter of seconds, they’ve moved on.

Why?

Studies have shown that nearly half of the customers expect page load times of about three seconds. By recognizing this problem early enough, you can take steps to prevent this from happening. How? By implementing the right caching solution for your website.

What is Web Cache?

Caching refers to the process of storing data, temporarily, in a computing environment – namely a cache. When customers look at your web page, those files are automatically stored on the hard disk, in a cache subdirectory on their browser. When they return to look at that page, the browser can access those files from the cache, rather than returning to the original server to fetch the data again.

Without caching: When a customer visits your website, the browser will send a request to your server for site data, like content, media, code etc. The data is then sent to the customer’s browser. Each piece of this data needs to be loaded individually before it can be displayed. There are always delays while the transfer is happening and a lot of additional factors that can slow the process down. For e.g., if the visitor is located far away from your server, it can adversely affect your loading time.

With caching: The data is stored in a location close to your customer – it goes to where your customer is, cutting down on loading time. For example, web browser stores data at your customer’s end once the page is loaded for the first time. This reduces the page load speed by a mile for a returning user.

The advantages are clear. What you need to do is choose a caching solution that suits your website. There are many methods of caching available. We’re going to discuss three: server caching, browser caching and caching plugins and how each could impact your website.

Server caching: 

If your website is busy, dynamic, content heavy and experiences high volumes of traffic, you may want to look into server caching. One of the best cache servers is Varnish. This is how it works – when your customer visits your site, a series of requests are sent to the server to enable the page to load. The server then looks for the files pertaining to the request, execute any code related to that request and then return the web page to the user. By installing caching mechanisms like Varnish, it essentially acts as a middleman, between the user and the server and look out for duplicate requests from before. The next time the customer visits your website, Varnish will respond by quickly sending a cached version of the result. This can increase the speed of your site exponentially. It also cuts down on how much processing power you need to respond to high volumes of traffic.

Browser caching: 

Whenever a browser loads a web page, it needs to download all the files to display the page properly – this includes HTML, CSS, images and JavaScript. If your website has a lot of files, you can face two issues – first, large files take longer to load (especially if your customers are using a slow internet connection). Secondly, each file makes a separate request to your server, which adds to the work your server needs to do. Browser caching will help by storing some of the files on your customer’s browser. The first time your customer visits your site, it may take time to load, but as they continue to interact with your website (either by refreshing, revisiting or even moving to another page on your site) files are being cached onto their browser. This cuts down on the data that your customer uses to load your site, and it saves bandwidth on your server.

Browser caching works by identifying elements of your website that can be saved offline. These elements are those that are not likely to be changed on a regular basis – like your logo for instance. To enable browser caching, you’ll need to edit your HTTP headers in order to set expiry times for certain files. If certain files are updated frequently, you can give them shorter expiry times.

Caching plugins: 

Currently, WordPress powers nearly 33 per cent of the web. If your website is one among this number, you can look at third-party caching plugins. These are simple and easy to install. The only catch is the sheer number of plugins available to you. However, some of these plugins are highly recommended, like W3 Total Cache, which offers caching via memory, disk or CDN (Content Delivery Network). It also removes unnecessary or redundant data on posts, pages, feeds, JavaScript and more. Thanks to this you can save on server bandwidth, which leads to increased server performance, reduced download time, and boosts conversion rates – all good news for you. You can also look at other popular plugins like WP Super Cache and WP- FFPC.

What are the benefits overall?

1. Reduced network burden: Between your content and your customer, data can be cached at several points. For example with server caching, web pages are stored and served to your customer efficiently. When it is closer to the customer, requests will not place a burden on the network between the customer and your website – just the cache.

2. Increased performance: When you choose caching as an option, it frees up resources on the original server to improve the overall performance.

3. Ranking: Site speed is one of the most important factors when it comes to your website’s ranking. Faster websites are favoured by search engines (and aided by great SEO setting and good quality content). The slower your website, the lower you drop in the rankings.

4. User Experience: You want your customers to have the best experience on your website. A faster website will help your customers browse better. What’s more, cached data saves on your user’s data (to a certain extent) due to the fact that static files are less of a load, as compared to dynamic requests.

At the end of the day, caching is an excellent solution to speed up your website. Our Cloud Hosting services make use of advanced caching mechanisms like Varnish to ensure that the server caching is taken care off. Choosing which caching solution suits your website will require careful consideration on your part – which parts need to be cached and which data on your website will change with time.

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How to Secure Your Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Today, many organisations and enterprises are moving into a more hybrid cloud environment. And why not? Hybrid clouds are agile – they adapt and change to the needs of the organisation. With their unique mix of private, on-premises clouds and public clouds, you can get the scalability, low cost and reliability of a public cloud, while you can get the security, control and customisation and flexibility of a private cloud- It is the best of both worlds. It is projected that by 2020, almost 90 per cent of organisations would have shifted to a hybrid cloud environment (source). However, due to this flexibility and these two worlds (private and public) the security of a hybrid cloud becomes a bit more challenging. In this article, we’re going to look at how to secure hybrid cloud.

What is Hybrid Cloud?

Simply put, a hybrid cloud is an environment that uses a mix of third-party public clouds and on-premises, private cloud – with orchestration between the two. When workloads move between these two platforms – the private and public clouds – you get greater flexibility and more data deployment options. This allows you to respond to computing changes and business needs with agility. Sounds good right?

In order to establish this unique cloud computing environment, you need the availability of a public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) like AWS (Amazon Web Services) Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure. Secondly, you need the construction of a private cloud (either through a cloud provider or on your own premises). The third component is a good Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity between the public and private cloud. Finally, you need to make sure that your Hybrid Cloud is secure. This is where the matter of hybrid cloud security comes in – why is it important and what does it entail?

Hybrid Cloud Security

While you may have a firm grip on the data in your own private cloud, once you begin to venture into the public cloud space, things become more complex. As more enterprises move to a hybrid cloud environment, more data security concerns arise. These are the top concerns:

1. Cross-Cloud Policy Management:

While policies and procedures within the organisation’s private data centre are set, these policies might not transfer well when it comes to the public cloud. Therefore, the challenge is to create, configure and maintain a security policy that is uniform across the entire network. This includes firewall rules, user identification/ authentication and IPS signatures amongst other things.

2. Data Leaks:

A key issue for data security administrators is data visibility. When it comes to deciding where data should be stored, organisations must put in the time, care and a tremendous amount of thought. And even then, it’s easy to lose track of the data without ensuring proper data visibility.

3. Data compliance:

Before organisations can move data and applications to a service provider cloud, they must make sure they understand all regulatory compliance laws that apply to their data – whether that’s customer credit card data or data spread across multiple geographical locations. Ultimately, it’s the responsibility of the organisation to make sure data of any nature is well-protected. Cloud providers and Cloud web hosting service providers will tell organisations which compliance standards they adhere to. If more is required then the responsibility lies with the organisation to spell out those needs.

4. Scalability:

All security tools, procedures and practices need to be scaled for growth. If that hasn’t been done, companies can hit roadblocks because they neglected to build a security architecture that scales itself to the organisation’s infrastructure resources.

This brings us to the final question: How to secure Hybrid Cloud?

While hybrid cloud environments are more complex, there are multiple hybrid cloud security solutions and practices organisations can put in place, to keep it secure.

1. Isolate Critical Infrastructure: Organisations store incredibly sensitive data on the cloud. However, access to this data needs to be isolated and restricted to a few key personnel, or those who specifically require it.

2. Securing Endpoints: Using the cloud infrastructure does not remove the need for endpoint security. Often, threats and attacks start at the endpoint level. Accordingly, enterprises and organisations need to implement proper endpoint security by choosing comprehensive security solutions that offer application whitelisting and browser exploit protection.

3. Encrypting data: Data – in transit and at rest – needs to be encrypted as a security measure. Organisations must also protect data, while it’s being used and processed by a cloud application. This will ensure that the data is protected for its entire lifecycle. While encryption methods vary according to service providers, organisations can choose the encryption method they prefer and then look for hosting providers who offer the same.

4. Back up Data: It is essential that organisations backup their data – both physically and virtually – in case an attack or system failure leads to a loss of data (either temporary or permanent). Backing up data for your website and other applications will ensure that the data is accessible at all times.

5. Create a continuity and recovery plan: It’s vital that organisations create a backup plan to ensure that operations continue to run smoothly in a time of crisis (this could include power outages at data centres or disruption of services). A recovery plan could include image-based backups, which will create copies of computers or VMs, which can be used to recover or restore data.

6. Risk Assessment: One good practice for organisations to follow is to constantly update risk assessment and analysis practices. That way, organisations can review the cloud provider’s compliance status and security capabilities. It also allows organisations to look at their own internal development and orchestration tools. Organisations must also keep an eye on operation management, monitoring tools, security tools and controls – both internally and in the public cloud. Vigilance like this allows security teams to maintain clarity and confidence in the controls that are currently in place and will give them time to modify them if required.

7. Choose a Reliable Web Hosting Provider: When choosing a Cloud Hosting provider for your website, organisations must look at the security capabilities. The service provider should be aware that security is a key concern and they should provide adequate security measures to keep your data safe. Good Cloud Hosting providers use the storage systems to ensure unshakeable stability. This ensures that you don’t have to worry about the loss of data due to hardware failures.

Ultimately, every hybrid cloud security issue has a corresponding solution. The trick is to identify specific problems early and then create a comprehensive security solution. If organisations do that, they will end up with a powerful hybrid cloud that functions smoothly, is easy to manage and remains secure.

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Pros and Cons of Linux Web Hosting

There are many advantages and disadvantages to using Linux web hosting. But, it’s a decision you must make before selecting a web hosting company.

Choosing your web hosting package is so much more complicated than choosing different types of web hosting. There are thousands of hosts, but the decision between Linux and Windows is a question I get asked over and over. One of the bigger questions you need to consider is the platform you use. There are a lot of software platforms out there on the market. But, really only two when talking about web hosting. Sometimes the choices can become way too overwhelming. Sometimes we end up asking ourselves, “which one is the right fit?”

One of the more popular operating system to choose from and use is Linux. The other popular brand of software platform happens to be Windows. I did write an article on the pros and cons of Windows.

It’s important to identify what CMS you’re going to use. If you use, WordPress Linux might be a better option for you. But, Windows will allow WordPress to be installed. It just takes a little bit of extra added effort.

Today, though, we will be looking at the Linux System. Below you will find a list of pros and cons associated with the Linux Web Hosting platform.

Linux Hosting Advantages:

◈ It’s an open source operating system. This means that a bulk of your resources, tools and software programs will be free. This is perfect for those who are being mindful of their business and/or personal spending. It’s also perfect for those looking to experiment with the different options Linux provides. You can experiment with each thing, without worrying if it’s going to cost you a dime.

◈ Linux has an amazing reputation. It’s so good that it has even surpassed the Windows platform, in some respects. Yes, there are scheduled downtimes. Yes, you will need to navigate through that. However, when being compared to Windows, it’s really not a big issue.

◈ Security is quite good with Linux hosting. You can easily customize your security settings. It’s a little bit easier to adjust your security settings as opposed to using a Windows server.

◈ The cost can be both a pro and a con. Linux is open source software which means you don’t have to pay a licensing fee. However, the truth is, it’s not necessarily going to give you a better deal or package. The other con is that you will have to deal with installing applications. Some of these applications can end up costing you a monthly fee. This could add up to some extra costs.

◈ Linux does support lots of scripts. It’s important to check which scripts and applications you’re going to need before using Linux hosting. Linux web hosting supports PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python.

Linux Hosting Disadvantages:

◈ There can be some migration issues. If you are already using Windows for your hosting, then it might take some time to switch everything over. Please expect some wait time with this. Due to this con, it’s best to use this platform as a “starting point” for your server. I would recommend backing up your data frequently. This will save on any issue you might have.

◈ There could be some issues with familiarity. This kind of goes along with the migration issues. Developing websites do take work, and a different operating system could require an extra learning curve.

◈ Linux is not as developed as Windows. It’s open source software, so it’s proprietary software. Windows tends to be more highly-evolved. Please take this into consideration. This is not to say that it’s not as good as Windows. Security patches could be delayed with Linux hosting, though.

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5 Reasons to Avoid Cheap Or Free Cloud Hosting

Choosing the right website hosting is crucial to the success of your online business and so is the choice of the hosting provider. A quick google search would list a number of web hosting services for you to choose. From cheap to costly the options are many and at first glance, the price can be an important factor used to convert visitors to customers. However, not everything that is cheap is wonderful, sometimes it might just prove to be not worth it in the long run.

In this article, we’ll talk about cheap or free cloud hosting and list down 5 reasons why it is best to avoid such web hosting services. So without further ado, let us begin!

What matters?

There are several features customers look out for when it comes to choosing web hosting for their website – performance and speed being the top two, with Cloud Hosting being the best bet. And in this quest of finding the best hosting service, we often times neglect another important feature – cost.

This is probably because we see a lot of hosting companies offering free or cheap web hosting with reasonable features and it seems like the best bet especially at the start. Be that as it may, a free or cheap web hosting can really mess up your website resulting in poor performance and unhappy customers.

Whether you are considering going for cheap Cloud Hosting due to limited funds or have already purchased it, we ask you to scroll down and consider the 5 reasons you should avoid free or cheap cloud web hosting for your website.

5 Reasons to Avoid Cheap Cloud Hosting

1. Poor Page Load Speed

Cloud Hosting, in general, is known for its fast page load speed and scalability. In fact, according to a report by Hubspot, the ideal page load speed for a website’s HTML should be less than 1.5 seconds. Given these statistics, it is evident that Cloud Hosting is the most logical choice for blazing fast website speed.
However, with cheap Cloud Hosting, there are two factors to be considered:

1.1 Is the Cloud Hosting cheap always or

1.2 Is there some promo going on

If the prices of Cloud Hosting are always on the cheaper end, chances are the server is hosted in a Shared Hosting platform. Here multiple websites share the same server which, in turn, might impact the page load speed of your website. However, if the case is the latter then do your research thoroughly because the Cloud Hosting might be good and the provider might just be running the promo to up their sales in the competitive market.

2. Negative impact on SEO and rankings

Speed impacts SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Google considers page load speed while determining the page rank it assigns to a particular page. In fact, this is of utmost importance when it comes to mobile searches.

If your website speed is slow then your page will load slower from the server end which would eventually affect your google page rank. Thus, cheap Cloud Hosting has a negative impact on SEO and page rankings.

3. Uptime/Downtime issues

Cheap hosting spells server issues. If the server your website is hosted on is down there will be a lot of downtime. This is mostly true because multiple websites share the same server space and there is limited bandwidth.

Thus, if a particular website receives heavy traffic it might not only affect the performance of that website but also of the other websites hosted on the server. Moreover, if your server faces a lot of downtime, it will indirectly affect the uptime and your website may not recover as fast as it should have.

4. Security Concerns

Everything comes with a price! Cheap or free Cloud Hosting doesn’t guarantee security. This means your website is vulnerable to security flaws, malicious viruses and so on. Furthermore, with multiple websites sharing the same server and a lack of firewall can increase your security concerns. You may have your own security in place, however, if the server is compromised all is lost.

5. Customer Support

Most cheap or free hosting services do not offer managed support to their clients. This means that if you are not tech savvy you might land yourself in a glitch. Before choosing a free hosting provider, make sure to check if they have good customer support via calls/emails/tickets/chats. If you feel anything is lacking then it is wise to not go ahead with the deal. After all, good support is helpful in times of need.

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Importance of a Website and the Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses

Everything starts small and then grows big, even businesses. By definition, a small business is a business that is owned independently and is limited in terms of size and revenue generated. For instance, a cake shop or a web design agency with an employee size of 10-12 can be said to be a small business. Furthermore, the upper limit to the employee count is 500. Thus, if your business falls under the bracket of 1 – 500 employees you are a small business.

Moving on, irrespective of your business size in today’s competitive online trending world having a social presence is a must. Be it a Facebook business page, Twitter or Instagram to engage more users and reach a wider audience base, however, a business website is also a must and shouldn’t be overlooked.

In this article, we’ll be covering the importance of a business website and the best hosting for small business websites. So let us begin!

Importance of a website

If we were to say, having a business website adds to a business’s credibility, wouldn’t you agree? You most likely would! In fact, it is easier to browse through a website listed on Google as it is more detailed along with your YouTube, Facebook Marketplace or Instagram.

In fact, according to a report, 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses, whereas, another finding says, only 64% of small businesses have their own website. If we are to go by the results of these two findings, we can conclude the importance of having a business website. Chances are 64% of businesses will perform better than you in gaining an audience and broadening their outreach. Retaining the customer, however, is a secondary thing.

Let us see the top 4 reasons why having a business website is important:

1. Your website shows up in the local internet search results, resulting in more people to know about your existence.

2. You can leverage your digital marketing strategy by running dedicated campaigns on social media and linking back to your website for more in-depth information.

3. You can collect customer information by asking them to subscribe and keep in touch with them on a timely basis with the right email marketing.

4. Content is king, and you can use it to sell products to your customers by attracting them with the right words and information. Your website is like a one-stop-shop for customers looking for a dedicated product, albeit, a virtual one. Thriftbooks, an online bookstore is one example of a website that is a virtual bookstore and has steadily grown over the years.

Now, that we’ve seen the importance of a website for your small business. Let us move on to tackle the next big thing, the backend of your website. You may wonder, why the backend? However, you must know the technicalities while running your website.

Things to look out in web hosting

Imagine you finally decide to set up your website and are launching it at 11 AM local time. The invites have been mailed, the social media poster launched and bang as the clock strikes 11, your current and potential future customers click on the much-awaited link! However, to their surprise and your utter horror, the website is down because the server you hosted on crashed due to or your website loads slowly because of so much traffic. And if this is a recurring issue, instead of your website helping you gain more customers it will end up making you lose more customers. Tragic, isn’t it? Calm down, it isn’t tragic, the right web hosting can help you avoid this problem, however, what is the right web hosting?

When it comes to web hosting solutions for a small business there is always a doubt which is the best hosting for small businesses? Before tackling that question, let us first understand what are the things that you need to look out for in web hosting.

1. Managed Servers 

Being a small business you will have a limited number of employees to manage your business and marketing activities. Along with that if you were told that you even need to manage the technical aspect of running your website, it might complicate matters. Web hosting that provides managed services is simple and helps take care of your business website by maintaining it, upgrading the software, managing the security, backup and much more so that you can concentrate on running your business without worrying about the website.

RC Advantage: We offer managed hosting services that are simple and secure along with an easy intuitive dashboard, cPanel, for free to help you navigate through your orders easily. This means you can take care of running your business while we take care of the website management.

2. Website loading speed 

Website loading speed is an important factor when it comes to how your customers feel about your website. According to a survey, 40% of users abandon a site if it takes 3 mins to load. To make sure your website visitors don’t get the same experience which, in turn, can hamper your performance make sure to choose a web hosting service that offers good load speed.

RC Advantage: Our web hosting services, especially Cloud Hosting comes with varnish cache and ceph storage. Varnish cache helps in boosting your website speed by 1000x that means, blazing fast website load speed, while, ceph ensures there is no single point of failure!

3. Support 

System admin support is very important in case you are stuck with something and don’t know how to proceed further. A good web hosting service provider will always offer 24/7 website support.

RC Advantage: We offer round-the-clock expert website support to resolve any of your technical queries to provide uninterrupted services.

4. Resource upgradation 

Today you are a small business, tomorrow your performance may multiple and you will outgrow your hosting resources. At this time, it is important that your hosting provider offers resources upgradation like RAM, CPU, etc.to accommodate your growing traffic.

RC Advantages: Our hosting plans are easily scalable. We offer easy single click upgradation of hosting resources like RAM, OS and CPU with our Cloud Hosting.

Best web hosting for small business

Having seen what are the things that your chosen web hosting should have it is time to figure out which web hosting is best for small businesses?

There are several web hosting options available, however, one that we would recommend to small businesses is Cloud Hosting. In Cloud hosting your website data is stored across multiple devices, which improves redundancy and website load time. Moreover, it offers all the above features, along with, data mirroring, several 1-click application installations like WordPress, Joomla, etc. an intuitive panel to monitor your resources and much more. Above all reliability is of utmost importance and Cloud Hosting promises that and we believe it is the best hosting for small business.

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