by Gray Rollins
Lets see what you have to consider before you plan to set up a website. You will either go for buying a web server along with its support equipments and a qualified technician to run it properly or you will pay a monthly fee to a company that runs websites to hold your website on their equipment. A big company who wants to go online can afford to spend this kind of amount but for others, it is better to go for the second option. You don’t need to spend buckets full of money on setting up the required web server infrastructure. So all you need to do is rent a server space from one of the web server companies. If you think it is as simple as it sounds, read ahead.
If you think it is simple, just go through the number of options available for you to choose from. Before you actually decide the company, you have to decide if you want to go for a shared or a reseller web hosting service. Read on to find out the difference between the two.
In a nutshell, the difference is scale. In shared web hosting, you rent server space for a single website with a single domain name. You would pay a separate monthly fee for each additional website you set up. In reseller web hosting, you rent a large amount of web hosting server space, divide it up among as many websites as you need, and then have the option to resell the left over server space to other people to set up websites-essentially making you a web hosting subcontractor. So which option should you choose? There are advantages and disadvantages to both, and we’ll examine each below.
If you want to use this facility for personal or small business, then you should opt for shared web hosting. It also turns out to be cheaper, efficient and simple for a small-scale requirement. You will get one domain name for one website and you can set up sub-domains for the different parts of this website in most cases. The main advantage of shared web hosting is that you get the support along with the web space that you are paying for. Your web hosting provider makes sure that your website is easily accessible and faces no problems. If you need any technical support at any time, they will be there to take care of that. So, one of your major problems is tackled without you putting any effort. Another advantage is that it is around five to twenty times less costly than the reseller web hosting with the rent of $5 or sometimes even free.
There are drawbacks to free web hosting sites, however. The main one is reliability. As you are not a paying customer, if the site goes down, all you can do is wait. You have no contract guaranteeing you a set response time for internet outages. Free web hosting is great for a personal website, but if you’re running a small business where your website needs to be available 24/7/365 and you need quick, reliable support for any and technical problems, then you’ll definitely want to go with a paid shared web host. The costs vary depending on how big your web site is, and how much web traffic you anticipate. The web hosting company Hostgator, for example, offers three shared web hosting packages varying between $4.95 and $12.95 a month. Finally, if you want to set up another website, you have to buy another shared web hosting plan, and your monthly expenses have just doubled.
Reseller web hosting is more flexible and has a major advantage of economies of scale. If your business is expanding or you are running multiple businesses then you will have you pay a lot for renting multiple shared web hosting every month. But if you choose reseller web hosting, you will be able to set up as many websites as you require.. Even after they grow, you can relocate the resources among them. You can also utilise the left over space by renting it to other small businesses or individuals. With proper planning, you will realize that the reseller web hosting will prove to be cheaper that shred web hosting on a large scale.
There are, however, two main drawbacks to reseller web hosting. The first is expense. While Hostgator offers shared web hosting for prices between $5 and $13 a month, their reseller packages vary between $25 and $100 a month, depending on size and traffic. Sure, some of this expense could be offset by reselling your unused web space to others, but that is never a sure thing. What if you have trouble finding customers? There is a good chance that in any given month, you will have some hosting space you are not using, but still paying for.
The second problem is that, as a web hosting subcontractor, you are now responsible for maintaining support to all the people you resold web hosting space to-except that you actually have very little power over such technical problems. Although you often have some limited administrative functionality, all you can do for serious technical problems like an internet outage is pass the information on to your web hosting provider. Once your customers realize you are essentially just a near-powerless middleman, they may lose confidence in you and switch to a different web hosting provider. It doesn’t take much to ruin your brand name, and once that happens, your monthly reseller web hosting costs will rise and you lose customers to offset those monthly costs.
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