What is Managed Hosting?

Managed hosting offers unique proactive tools for web site professionals. Whereas with shared hosting, individual web site owners team with a consortia of businesses to share a server; with managed hosting, e-business owners turn over operations and maintenance of cyber real estate to third party professionals.

Managed hosting costs more than shared hosting, since the service provides far more bells and whistles. However, for large firms or for web site entrepreneurs who don’t have the resources to deal with technical issues, managed hosting may ultimately be more fiscally responsible.

When you sign up for managed hosting, you get monitoring of server capacity and transfer rates. Instead of having to submit problems to an administrator, you rely on the managed host to survey and tackle issues as they arise. In addition, your managed host provides installation of firewall tools, antivirus technologies, and customized configurations per your web site operator’s request.

If you need to modify your relationship with your server or install new applications that require extra security or buffed up administration, your managed host should be able to provide these initiatives at no (or a small) additional cost. When you use shared hosting, on the other hand, these extra services can be either non-available or very costly.

Finally, managed hosts will provide updates for relevant applications as soon as they appear. In other words, you won’t have to scramble for appropriate patches, upgrades, and next generation software -- your managed host will take care of all of that for you, leaving you with “only” your responsibilities to your core competencies.

An alternative to managed hosting might be to hire an in-house technical associate to deal with application management, system configurations, and security issues. However, unless your in-house tech comes at a discount, it will probably be more cost-effective for you to outsource these tasks to your managed host.

Talk to small business owners in your industry about whether they use shared or managed hosting. Be pragmatic and budget out both your managed and shared hosting options. It’s possible to switch from one platform to the other, but doing so can be expensive, particularly once you’ve developed a steady stream of visitor traffic to your web site. Thus, either submit the numbers to a consultant for advice or run pilot programs to determine which hosting initiative you should choose.

Superpages Web Sites

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