Reseller Web Hosting

When web-hosting providers offer their services, typically with a discount, to a third-party (a reseller that will thus become a web-hosting provider itself) and latter subsequently offers web-hosting services under his branding.

Indeed technically reseller web hosting is very similar to shared web hosting, as many web sites end up sharing space and bandwidth on same web server.

The resellers usually are web designers or web developers who offer web hosting services as part of their integrated services. As web-hosting provider offers resellers important discounts, price they can offer is among smallest in industry.

Compared with shared web hosting, this system has technical support problem. It takes time and communication problems may occur on course of your problem from reseller to web-hosting provider.

Unless your site is a personal web site or non-commercial one, this poor support issue is enough to not consider this your primary option.

Continuing this line of thought, how can you distinguish a reseller from a real web-hosting provider? It’s not professional design of web site, not even support contact facilities offered as may resellers might have contracts with provider on technical support and person taking your calls might be working for provider and identify himself to you as an employee of reseller.

Solid company information is made available usually only by serious providers. The price, that can get as low as under 5$/month is another hint, but you should consider it carefully with prices dropping through industry.

Dedicated Web Hosting

In dedicated web hosting one single web server is rented to a single customer.

Although this is common belief, web-hosting providers usually divide a single web server computer between up to three customers.

On other hand there are web-hosting providers that actually give an entire web server to a customer. Even with three customers sharing web server, dedicated web hosting option offers customers option to host more than one web site, configure software to best meet needs of his site or scale available bandwidth.

The high prices combined with availability of resources recommend this type of web hosting for highly important web sites such as e-commerce sites.

Co-location Web Hosting

Co-locating web hosting is similar with dedicated web hosting. The main difference is that while in dedicated web hosting web server computer belongs to web-hosting provider and is only rented by customer, in co-locating web hosting customer owns web server computer.

The web-hosting provider only houses web server computer and sells bandwidth to customer. This gives customer using co-locating web hosting full control of web server combined with security of data center.

Now you should be equipped with necessary information to decide on you web hosting.

You shouldn’t try and find lowest price possible, but give some extra thought to quality of service you are buying and to support offered by a web host provider.

Calin Indre is editor at HostPinPin (www.hostpinpin.com), a Cheap Web Hosting Directory.

HostPinPin.com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company. Providing web hosting articles, tips, web hosting reviews and more.

This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the “About” and “weblinks” are kept intact.

Server administrators must be able to apply kernel upgrades, service packs, and software patches, as well as provide ample security, monitor traffic, update server applications, balance server loads, and configure email, FTP, and DNS services.

In exchange for competency in above functions, best uses for a dedicated web server environment would be:

· mission-critical sites requiring custom server management and software implementation. · dedicated hosting resellers, web developers and designers who need greater flexibility, reliability and security for their clients · backbones of corporate intranets · robust and dependable servers for streaming media, online gaming, and e-mail or chat applications · complex application sites with high traffic and secure information such as ecommerce, database, and multimedia sites. · enterprise-level web sites · Web sites which may have content restrictions if hosted elsewhere (e.g. adult targeted sites.)

How to decide: Overall, cost, security of data and equipment, bandwidth availability, knowledge and integrity of web-hosting provider, uptime, hardware maintenance, and any technical support offered by dedicated web host are important deciding factors. Although your specific dedicated web hosting needs may be unique in a few ways, generally, one can make a decision on a dedicated web server provider by considering following things:

Data Transfer Rates: Data transfer will need to be determined based on amount of information that will be downloaded, as well as type of content a site will be sharing (general text vs. high resolution graphics and multimedia). A dedicated web host will generally have various packages that will allow one to choose data transfer level, normally measured in “gigabytes per month”. Higher levels of data transfer rates normally mean more cost, so utilization of first few months to correlate data transfer rates and traffic patterns is key.

Platforms: The two most common systems available are Windows based servers versus some flavor of UNIX (Linux and Solaris). Windows is historically more expensive, but is generally regarded as more user-friendly, especially with ubiquitous presence of Windows-based pc’s and administrators. Linux, on other hand, is less expensive to install, but harder to maintain, as a steeper learning curve exists for those unfamiliar with it. Therefore, operating system installed on a dedicated web server should depend on a couple of factors.

First, platform should be conducive to coding in which website and necessary applications are developed. Next, since administration of dedicated server will be done by subscriber, necessary skill base to support platform must be in place. Commands and administration techniques are definitely platform-specific.

Monitoring: Dedicated server monitoring works to prevent service interruptions. The web host will provide a service that can, at a pre-set frequency, check a website to see downtime.

Automation: Although dedicated web servers may require a greater degree of skill, certain dedicated web hosting companies may offer software that will automate common procedures, thus lessening high level knowledge necessary to maintain servers and implement new services.

Data Backup: Some dedicated web hosting providers assist web hosting subscriber with data backups. Finding a dedicated server provider who will assist in this process could alleviate hassle of doing it yourself and can allow one to devote time to other things.

Scalability: Dedicated web hosting providers should be able to account for major growth. Progressive expansion can be accounted for by asking a web host if modules of extra space, bandwidth, or better yet, larger packages can be purchased to allow easy transition to better hardware and software.

Service Level Agreements: More dedicated web hosts are publishing their SLA’s, which thoroughly documents what they will do in exchange for what customer is responsible for. For instance, some dedicated server hosts are offering features such as: 100% uptime guarantees, unlimited live answer technical phone-based support, free upgrades of patches, hot-fixes, personal Dedicated Sales account managers, maintenance staff with spare parts for all server configurations, and more. A full understanding of commitment that a dedicated web host is offering will help in a decision to utilize that service.