Choosing a Web site host
Best practice #4: Pick the type of hosting package
When contracting with a company to host your Web site, you need to make a decision early on: shared, dedicated, or colocated? Here are the differences and the trade-offs.
Shared hosting
A shared host is one where multiple customers and Web sites run on one server. Like a rented apartment, your site is one component of a larger structure. You'll have neighbors, some of whom may use up all your computing resources or bandwidth in the same way bad neighbors might use up all the hot water. The overall structure may lack some features that you want and may include others that you don't need.
A small business running a marketing-oriented Web site with basic functionality, such as static or dynamic HTML pages, JavaScript, contact forms, and minimal e-commerce transactions, can safely use a shared host to run its site. Shared hosts are usually well maintained by the provider, but you are potentially at risk of experiencing poor site performance, due to other customers being hosted on the same server.
It's not a great idea to store customer contact information on a shared host, but the security risks are pretty much the same as in those of a dedicated host or colocation; that is, your Web developers and administrators' processes and security measures are the risk factor. It's unlikely (but not unheard of) that another customer on your shared machine will access and
hack, or steal, some of your information. But if you have concerns about security, we suggest you talk with the hosting company or consider a dedicated server.
For most small-business Web sites, a shared host is the best practice.
Dedicated hosting
A dedicated host is a Web server that's owned and maintained by your hosting company, but one that you run day to day.
A small business that relies on its Web site for marketing and transactions, such as e-commerce, customer relationship management, or large downloads, should consider a dedicated server hosted at a large-scale provider. Ranging from about $50 per month to around $1,500 per month, dedicated hosting provides you with a rented high-end server that is managed by the hosting provider. One advantage to the dedicated server approach is that you can host any number of domains, whereas the shared platform usually has limits. There are also significant security and reliability gains with a dedicated host, as you are not sharing any kind of hardware resources. On the downside, you are required to maintain some of the Web server software and applications that you install, so you need some level of system administration skill in your company.
A managed dedicated host can be slightly more reliable than a shared host because you are not in competition for any resources. But you have to do the managing.
Colocation
If you want complete and utter control of your Web site and are willing to pay for it, colocation is for you. With colocation, you rent space at a data center where you install your own servers. You also pay for the connection to the Internet, generally based not on the maximum potential speed of the connection, but rather on the average of the total bits transferred per second, per month.
Colocation is best for purely Web-based businesses, especially those running their own high-proprietary Web software. It is overkill for most small-business applications.
| Type of Web host | Best for |
| Shared | Most small businesses |
| Dedicated | Highly secure or traffic-intensive online applications |
| Colocated | Specialized or proprietary online applications |
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Best practice #5: Choose a server platform
