Owning and operating your own servers can be attractive. Why? The number one reason is cost. Once you pay off the servers needed for hosting, the only thing you’re paying for is colocation fees. But this is deceptive, and can cost you more than hosting over time.
If you decided to colocate your servers, you’ll pay for:
- Hardware
- Colocation
- Parts replacement (after 3 years on average but maybe sooner)
- Inhouse (time) or Outsourced Expertise
We are not saying that in all cases hosting is better than colocation. Because not all hosting is equal. A quality host will also provide extra hosting features like intrusion and firewall protection, backups and monitoring or support. From our experience there are 3 common tradeoffs:
#1 Reliability
Within the first few years you could pay off a server and even begin to realize the savings over Hosting. Hardware replacement is more than just buying and replacing, there’s risk involved with replacing old hardware. You’re risking reliability by choosing to buy and support your systems.
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This is something a hosting provider completely cares about for you. It doesn’t require your time, effort or thought. And most importantly doesn’t risk the ability to do day to day business.
Hosting with High Availability Is Better
If you use hosting already you may be at risk too. Make sure you’re hosting provider uses on virtualized systems with protection from hardware failure. The terms often used for this are:
- Cloud Servers
- High Availability
- Fail-Over Protection
Hosting without protection from the hardware failure is risky. Even the big name providers offering what they call “On Metal” virtualized hosting because it offers protection from hardware failure – people want that.
#2 Locked In
Once you’re invested into a colocated server you’re probably stuck with it for 3 years or longer.
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You can tweak the code and squeeze more performance out, but you’re probably not going to invest into new hardware or new ways to optimize how hardware works. There’s not much chance to shut it down and try something new.
As a hosting provider we are constantly purchasing new hardware. But when a small business purchases, they don’t have the finances to keep buying and trying new equipment, it’s a one chance shot.
#3 IT Support
Your datacenter may provide basic services like rebooting the server or minor admin work but it’s not common for them to provide full-range support. If something needs done on the OS or questions about your application stack need answered you’ll have to solve it. You may have to reach out to a 3rd party company for help.
In our conversations with customers. Expert consultants to help with performance tuning for example can easily cost $1500 per day to start.
There are good reasons to colocate, but from our experience it’s cost effective to engage with a provider that is focused on providing a combination of excellent hosting and support. You won’t find that with many large name cloud providers because they just focus on the infrastructure aspect.
We provide a full range of services, from Shared Hosting to VPS Hosting. If you’re interested in moving from colocation or a costly cloud provider we’re glad to do a free cost assessment as part of our consultation – schedule a consultation here.
Tags: Linux Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Windows Shared HostingCategories: Business Tips, Developers