Web Hosting
Once your website or application is ready to launch, it must be hosted on a publicly available server in order to be accessed by the world. Here is where things can get complicated, as the options are almost endless, and good information is hard to come by.
Option One: Shared Hosting
For years, most small businesses and individuals have opted for shared hosting plans from companies such as GoDaddy, Bluehost, or HostGator, due to the low price and relative ease of setup. However, modern web applications have many requirements, and these traditional hosting services (even our long-recommended DreamHost) simply have not kept pace with the demands. For that reason, we do not recommend using a shared hosting service. Period. Read on to see why.
Option Two: Dedicated Hosting
Until recently, the only other viable option has been dedicated hosting, which offers customers their own “private” server. Unlike shared hosting, where your site may share a single server’s resources with tens, hundreds, or even thousands of other sites, with a dedicated hosting plan you are essentially leasing a server and bandwidth from the hosting company. But these plans are expensive—typically in the hundreds of dollars per month. And even though you have your own cordoned-off resources, your site may still be running on slow, outdated hardware, and you still may be prevented from installing everything your application requires.
Option Three: High Performance Cloud VPS
So where does that leave us? Well, a new model of hosting has emerged over the past few years. Companies like DigitalOcean, Linode, and Amazon now offer cloud-based virtual private servers (VPS) with stellar hardware and complete configurability, starting around $5/month with NO long-term commitment. The catch? You are renting a “bare metal” server—no operating system or pre-installed software. Not exactly ideal for anyone lacking server administration skills! Fortunately, we are here to help. If you choose one of these options, we will provision the server exactly as needed: Nothing more, nothing less. Perfect.
The Silver Lining (TL;DR)
And finally, if all this seems too much to digest (and we can certainly see why), we are pleased to offer Managed Cloud VPS Hosting to our clients. We take care of everything from provisioning to deployment to backups and monitoring. All for under $20 per month. Booyeah! So what are you waiting for?