While shopping for a new hosting plan may not be as exciting or fun as shopping for clothes or gadgets, it is still an important business decision.
Most small businesses start off with shared hosting; therefore, they aren’t familiar with hosting ‘management’ at all.
When their operations grow and they need more server power, they get to choose from a wide variety of options including semi-dedicated hosting, VPS hosting or dedicated servers.
When it finally comes down to making the choice—managed or unmanaged—many business owners let the steep difference in price be the deciding factor. Of course, this isn’t a practical approach.
To make the right decision, you first need to understand the differences between both the options and evaluate them according to your business needs.
Let our pros guide you through both the options and help you make an informed decision:
Managed Dedicated Hosting
If you choose to go for managed hosting services, you may have limited access to your server resources.
For example, you may not be given administrator privileges for Windows managed servers. Similarly, if you choose to go for Linux managed, you may not have root access.
Although it isn’t as bad as it sounds. You still have access to RDP/FTP and all necessary remote management tools. Moreover, there are experts looking after and configuring your server around the clock. If anything goes wrong, you can expect it to be fixed immediately. For most business owners, having a team of professionals managing their dedicated server and scaling it according to growing business needs is what they need to stay ahead of competition.
Unmanaged Dedicated Hosting
If you think you require complete administrative or root access, unmanaged hosting is the way to go. While you may have complete control and it does sound good, the authority comes with its own set of risks.
The host may replace failing components, maintain network and reboot servers, but they wouldn’t take care of any technical issues. There is no management or routine support. You are responsible for installing security patches, address complicated errors, and fix bugs. In fact, many hosts may not even provide web server software.
Of course, this comes with a catch. Unmanaged dedicated hosting comes for a cheaper price tag, as you do all the hard work.
Which Way To Go?
Your choice depends on a variety of different factors. Consider aspects like your experience with server management, the expected volume of traffic, and the nature of your business operations.
Business owners who have certified web server administrators onboard may be able to save big by going with unmanaged hosting. However, managed dedicated hosting still remains to be the popular choice among most companies.
If you are looking for managed dedicated servers, we can help. Our managed Netherlands dedicated server packages start as low as $47.99.
Get in touch with us right away and learn more about our services.