Here are 3 questions every business should ask itself about their website hosting…

Does your business depend on the Internet?

If your e-mail or website stopped working for an hour, or a day would you lose money as a result?

Is your website responsible for income of more than $50 monthly?

If you answered ‘YES’ to any of these questions, then let me ask you one more: Why would you pay $5 per month for a shared hosting account, sharing a web server with 100′s or 1000′s of other websites, doing who knows what when your business relies on your website being online?  You shouldn’t.

But you ask, who wants to spend 100′s of dollars on a dedicated server?  And who is going to run the server and keep it online and secure?  There IS an alternative, something in the middle between a cheap, unpredictable shared server and an expensive dedicated server and it’s called a VPS (Virtual Private Server).

Here you go…3 reasons why businesses should use a Virtual Private Server?

Reason 1) It’s dedicated resources for your hosting needs.  A vps is merely a dedicated server, chopped up into a few smaller virtual servers each allocated their own resources.  Instead of paying for a dedicated server with gigabytes of memory, tons of hard drive space and multiple multi-core processes, you get a dedicated slice of each, set aside for your use and your use only.  None of the other virtual private servers running on that hardware can affect yours.    We call it isolation from the acts of others.  When they act up, you keep running.

Reason 2) It’s affordable.  Our Flex VPS hosting plans, as an example, start at $50 monthly.  For a few dollars more, you can get a hosting control panel such as cPanel or Plesk and host multiple websites or keep it plain and run what applications you like, including but not limited to e-mail, ftp and video streaming servers.  You no longer have to spend $100′s of dollars monthly for a barely used dedicated server when all you need is some dedicated memory and disk space and mostly ISOLATION from other hosting clients sending out spam or running insecure applications.

Reason 3) It’s expandable.  With a VPS hosting plan, you can easily grow your virtual server resources with zero downtime.  You can start with the smallest size VPS you need, at a price you can afford.  When your hosting needs grow, seamlessly upgrade to the next level.  What if you outgrow the VPS plans?  We have an option for that.  Our Pure Dedicated Flex servers are actual VPS’s running within an entire hardware server which makes easy upgrades continuous throughout the life of your business needs.  Can it get any easier?

Who to use and what to look for?

There are numerous VPS hosting providers out there so if your shared host doesn’t offer it, you don’t have far to go.  Just make sure they provide dedicated memory (not small useless amounts) that will cover your needs and make sure they do not oversubscribe their services.  If you get non-dedicated memory on oversubscribed servers then you’re back in the same boat.  Other VPS’s on the server can take your memory when you may need it most.  Make sure you have full use of the resources you need and pay for.