Choosing Colocation Website Hosting: The Advantages and Disadvantages
As most people would expect, a lot of upscale corporations have a top-of-the-line Internet infrastructure and are able to purchase their own servers and hire experts to operate a separate IT department. Small scale or even middle range businesses do not have that much of a resource to support a costly but important undertaking. What these companies do instead is turn to web hosts that offer them reasonable prices for their service. This is one of the advantages that these companies have over large corporations who most of the time, must keep their high profile intact by having their own IT department. Another advantage for smaller companies is that there are many types of Web hosting available to them, and one of these is Colocation web hosting.
With a colocation host, the website owner places his physical equipment or the server on a rack at the host’s location and both will share bandwidth. Colocation would seem a lot more expensive than a standard hosting type, but the bandwidth you will get is enough to compare it to what you’re getting when the full setup is found at your location. As mentioned earlier, you can set up your server and once that is done, you physically take it to the colocation host and install it there. One other option is lease the server from the provider. After the set up process is complete, you will be given an IP, the bandwidth and the power supply to operate the server. With a colocation hosting setup, you will also have access to the server to maintain, update, change or upgrade it.
However, like any other type of Web hosting, getting this type presents both a number of advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of colocation hosting include:
1. The cost of a colocation host bandwidth may be similar or even less than what an upgraded business plan for a DSL line. Both may cost between $150 and $200 monthly but with a colocation, there is a greater chance of getting higher bandwidth, especially if the facility is using a fractional or bonded T1 line.
2. The monthly fees you pay include power generation, both standard and backup. Having this service paid ensures you that the website and the data used to run it would be protected from possible outages, thus reducing your worries of your websites being down or inaccessible.
3. The company owns the server. Therefore, if the company thinks that it is not performing as much as it should be, it would be easy to change or upgrade it. The company doesn’t really have to go through a waiting process just for the provider to make the changes for them.
4. The company also owns the software. This fact reduces or completely removes wait time. You can easily decide on purchasing server software, install it and then you’re good to go.
5. Colocation hosting would keep the server up and running the whole time that you’re moving to a new location. Since the server is not situated in your own facility, you don’t have to worry about shelling out extra money worrying about yur website being down or inaccessible.
6. Since you are using your host’s facility, you get a guarantee that your server would be in a safe and secured storage facility.
7. If you don’t have an IT personnel, most colocation hosts include this service feature in their package for an additional cost. However, the convenience that this feature could provide you cannot be discounted, especially if your office is situated far from the provider’s location. Even if you are not present, you can be sure that someone supervises the maintenance and upkeep of your server. While it does pay a lot to know what benefits you will get from a colocation type of web hosting, it does help to know the disadvantages in case you decide on getting the services of these providers. This would prepare you and be able to deal with them. To cite some of the more important disadvantages:
1. Not too many Web hosts offer this type of service. There is a big chance where you will get one that is far off from your office, so monitoring your property may not be that easy, especially If the host does not offer support services or you do not have your own IT expert to go there on a regular basis.
2. Colocation is a lot more expensive than the most common type of Web hosting, which is shared hosting. You would have to, most of the time, buy your own server, have your own licensed server software and spend for an upgrade of the hardware or the software.
3. Access to the server may be very taxing and costly. Since the server is not physically located in your area, there may be a lot more miscellaneous costs that you would have to deal with regularly. Aside from this, time and effort, although not put to waste, maybe allotted to supervising the server. And, if you or someone would have to do that everyday, it would not be easy.
4. If there is a need to move to a new location and you decide to leave the server in the hands of your provider, you would have to pay extra for someone to supervise the transfer process and the server. This is often termed add-on maintenance services which require additional fees.
5. One of the factors that determine your monthly bill on a colocation hosting service is the amount of data transferrs in the server. Since it would be hard to predict the traffic that your website would receive, then there would be times that you will pay higher bills than what you paid in the last month.
Both a colocation hosting account’s advantages and disadvantages are in a way related and thus, very contradicting. However, these were presented for you to weigh in and extract certain advantages from its related disadvantages. If and when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, then you have a more informed buying decision. Anyway, knowing the disadvantages of colocation hosting can prepare you properly in terms of using this type of Web hosting account.