Choosing the right web hosting company is an important decision. Often, it also the most neglected aspect of the digital economy as companies and individuals are eager to publish their website but not so keen to read the small print of a hosting contract.
But it is an aspect that companies ignore at their peril as server problems lead directly to a loss of income.
Doug Kaye, one of the very few authoritative authors on this subject writes:
"Unlike other decisions one has to make in the course of getting and keeping a business online, the selection of a hosting or management vendor is very high risk. In particular, the cost of making the wrong decision can be great. For many new-economy businesses, their web sites are their business. If the site is down, so are they”
Kaye recommends the following means for accurately working out loses due to a server outrage. His formula reads:
Revenue loss = annual revenues x length of outrage (in hours) x 0.014 x multiplier.
The 0.014 is an hourly percentage of the total number of hours in the year, 8,769. The multiplier is a figure between 0.028% and 0.14% and is dependent on the level of loss of customer goodwill and cascading losses.
For instance, if a company with $1m annual revenues has a website downtime of 3 hours in the run up to Christmas, then the significant knock-on effects could cost them $2,940.
Every hosting company will give you an uptime figure, which is the business is called "The Nines" due to the calculation system.
A company may declare a 98% uptime but this means 3 hours and 22 minutes without a functioning website per week. The server needs to ideally have an uptime of 99.9% or more and this must be written as a guarantee in the contract. This will mean that the most the website is down in the course of a whole week is 10 minutes and 5 seconds.
For your information, "The Nines" and actual time figures are:
| Uptime % level | Downtime per year | Downtime per week |
|---|---|---|
| 98.0000% | 7.3 days | 3h, 22m |
| 99.0000% | 3.65 days | 1h, 41m |
| 99.9000% | 8h, 45m | 10m, 5s |
| 99.9900% | 52.5m | 1m |
| 99.9990% | 5.25m | 6s |
| 99.9999% | 31.5s | 0.6s |
Shared, virtual and dedicated hosting
When it comes to the different categories of web hosting there are three types: shared, virtual and dedicated.
In order to highlight the benefits of any of these three services lets create a hypothetical company.
You are a relatively small business that has just relaunched its online ecommerce site. You have 3000 live registered customers and a further 3000 that are not registered. The site is visited 200 times per hour.
As you are spending money on a redesign you are also investing in site promotion and expect a steady increase in customers over the next couple of years.
There is the possibility that you can own your own hardware and have complete control over the hosting yourself, but the expertise needed for this endeavour means that the vast majority of online businesses are happy to go down the outsourcing route.
Shared servers: This is how most of the worlds websites are hosted. They are cheap because dozens if not hundreds of websites share the same harddrive resources. They are best suited for small websites as they tend to only be able to offer limited resources such as disk space, bandwidth and memory. The advantages of a shared server is the cost, while the disadvantages are that you are competing with hundreds of other websites for limited resources. If you have a traffic spike it is likely that your website will grind to a halt.
Virtual servers: Virtual server packages come from partitioned servers. Because they share the same hardware, maintenance costs can be distributed across a number of customers. Due to multiple clients running on a single server there are RAM and disk space limitations but they are typically far more generous then that found on a shared server. Because virtual servers have their own independent operating system this allows the user root access which is indispensable when it comes to fine tuning a website for speed and reliability.
Dedicated servers: This allows you to rent a whole server and not be obliged to share it with anybody else. This is reflected in the cost of most commercial packages. Due to unshared resources this option is best for the large sites that have considerable numbers of visitors.
Managed servers: Your website will be using technology that needs performance and security updates on a regular basis. Your can hire virtual and dedicated server space and take on the responsibility of this yourself but you will need to dedicate trained members of staff to undertake these technical responsibilities. The alternative is to pay for managed servers.
Leading hosting company modVPS promises:
"ModVPS will monitor your VPS around the clock 24 hours a day 365 days a year. If we find any service including http (Apache), mySQL, DNS, SMTP, IMAP, POP failed we'll login to your VPS and restart it as necessary and if required reboot your VPS to get it back up and running without you having to worry about your VPS being offline at 3am.”
Can you provide staff that will keep look after the site 24 hours a day 365 days a year? If the answer is no then a managed server is your only option.
Another aspect of hosting is that it is probably best looking to rent server space in the dominion where your business is conducted. Author and frontend engineer Steve Souders states that large geographic distances between the server and the user could lead to a 20% difference in page load times, which is why the largest companies distribute their website using a Content Delivery Network.
Recent statistics have revealed that 52% of online shoppers stated that quick page loading is important to their site loyalty and over half of all shoppers expecting a page load time of 2 seconds or less - a drop from 8 seconds in 1999.
Admittedly, server reliability is only one factor in page load times but it is still an aspect that needs attention.
Getting back to our ecommerce example. For this moderately sized online business, it would seem that the best option here is a managed virtual server. It gives the flexibility for growth and bandwidth spikes and is extremely cost effective.
When you sign up with a web hosting company they will present to you their Service Level Agreement (SLA). Read this thoroughly and ask the company questions about any or all of it.
It should be noted that when it comes to getting the most out of a SLA it may be worth using the services of one of the many internet law firms in existence. However, the following questions should help you in judging the worth of a web hosting package:
- It should be clear on their website but make sure you clarify what their disk space, monthly transfer and guaranteed memory (RAM) is.
- Do they have 24 hour, 7 days a week support?
- How long will it take them to respond to technical support requests? A few minutes, ideal; a few hours, okay for shared but not for dedicated; a day or more, go elsewhere.
- Is it easy to upgrade the RAM or harddrive size if the site outgrows its current virtual server?
- What is the guaranteed uptime level of the server?
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