Web Site Hosting: In-House or Outsource? By Alexis Gutzman
September 17, 1999
If you have to ask, then it probably makes more sense for you to hire a Web hosting service. For starters, you should determine what kinds of resources, both in terms of capital and manpower, do you have available today, and where do you need to put your corporate energy to meet your strategic goals?
Co-Locating
About half way between hosting your own Web server and hosting your site on an ISP is co-locating your server with a Web hosting company. You purchase and install the server to your satisfaction, then you physically locate it on the site of the Web hosting company. You get to take advantage of the network connections that the Web hosting company has without having any special lines pulled. If you need to make changes on your server, you either dial into your server (or connect via the network, depending on how secure you want things) and make the changes, hire the hosting company to make the changes (paying an hourly rate), or drive over and make the changes. This used to be the only way to have administrative control over your Web site. Today, contracting with a Web hosting company that gives you administrative control over your domain is probably a better deal. With co-locating, if your hardware fails, you have a problem. With outsourcing hosting, if the hardware your site is on fails, they should have hot spares and backups ready to get you up with a minimum of downtime, and no additional cost to you.
Outsourcing your Web hosting is one of the easiest decisions you can make when running an e-business. The slight downside of outsourcing is that you lose some flexibility. You will be locked into the system, software, and procedures of the hosting company. However, this needn't be as restrictive as it used to be, even a year ago. Today, you can find hosting companies that host on any platform. Many of the larger Web hosting providers host on a variety of platforms, so you can have your own software (e.g., your database running on NT, and your Web server running on Solaris) running on more than one platform.
You'll also find hosting companies that give you administrative authority over your entire domain, including the ability to add and remove ODBC entries (database references), create and modify directories, and create users and restrict permissions without involving the network administrator. If you compared Web hosting companies as recently as 18 months ago, you would have found that most required you to request them to perform these tasks. You also would be charged for each ODBC entry created, and for each user. This ultimately created antagonistic relationships between users and their providers. Those days are gone! If a Web hosting company doesn't provide you with administrative access to create your own users, move on.
The upside of outsourcing your Web hosting is that you can count on greater uptime, more reliable network access, and cost savings right from the beginning. Obsolete hardware is not your problem. When yet another security hole is discovered in IIS, you can still sleep well knowing that the network administrators are solving it for you. Many Web hosting companies will also include access to the ColdFusion server and other great tools, such as WebTrends for site analysis, at no additional cost.
The real question for you isn't "Should I outsource my Web hosting?" But "To Whom?" Windows NT Magazine did a review of NT Web Hosting companies in its September issue. If you're looking for NT hosting, start there. Another good palce to look is at internet.com's ISP Resources Channel.
Whichever platform you're looking for, here are some features you'll want to compare:
Server Platform (both for Web server and for databases
Disk space allocation
Bandwidth limits
How you're charged if you exceed either disk space or bandwidth (is there a penalty per GB or are you just upgraded to the next higest service package?)
Limits on e-mail accounts and types of e-mail access (POP3, IMAP4, Web, etc)
Network connectivity (T1s or T3s, how many, redundant providers)
Tech support hours (and toll-free support number)
Guaranteed uptime (at least 99.9-something percent)
Monthly rates
Setup fees
Tools available to administer your site, such as adding new users, changing user permissions, adding directories, modifying directory permissions by user, adding ODBC entries, installing software, etc.
Add-on software such as ColdFusion Server, WebTrends, etc.
Hourly rate if you need a network administrator for something outside what the contract includes
Backup schedule, procedures, and guarantee
Referrals from other clients
Little Guys: If your site is small, then spend your precious time building it, not installing service packs on your Web server. Many hosting services will charge you less than $50/month. There may be bandwidth limits (limits on how many bytes of data you can serve to visitors in a month), but this is one of the things you can negotiate and certainly something you can calculate based on your current and anticipated traffic, and the size of your site. There are worse problems you could have than having too much traffic on your site and having to upgrade to the next highest package.
-Alexis D. Gutzman
E-commerce Technology Author and Consultant
Author, The HTML 4 Bible, ColdFusion for Dummies
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