How Does Managed Hosting Simplify Your Website Maintenance?
If you own a business and are thinking of taking the business online, you must have noticed different types of hosting options. Shared, Cloud, Virtual Private Servers or VPS — terms like this will pop up everywhere.
However, hosting can also be classified on another plane — Managed and Unmanaged Hosting. Unmanaged Hosting, as the name might suggest, is not managed by the hosting provider in any way. In essence, you just get some digital space to host your website.
Managed Hosting, on the other hand, comes with a few benefits. Before discussing those, it’s important to note that if you know the technical ins and outs of hosting, Managed Hosting may not be a necessity. Having dedicated tech personnel in-house might eliminate the need for a Managed Hosting plan too. But, if your area of expertise isn’t hosting and you want to concentrate on growing your business rather than maintaining your website, Managed Hosting deserves serious consideration.
Managed Hosting is relatively expensive because of the inherent advantages it offers. To understand these advantages, you need to know some of the relevant problems that you might face when you own a website. Websites, like machines, need some regular maintenance. If you fail to do this, you’ll have problems with your backups, server uptimes, database management.
So, what is Managed Hosting, and how does it solve these problems?
Managed Hosting is a type of hosting plan that companies offer wherein they take care of all the issues that are, in any way, related to the server. In essence, they ‘manage’ the server instead of you.
Having a Managed Hosting plan can help you simplify your website maintenance in many ways. A few are listed below:
Server Monitoring And Security:
Having your website ‘up’ all the time is of crucial importance. If your website is down, you might lose potential customers or even existing ones. However, keeping your website up requires constant monitoring of some services. Irregularities and potential issues have to be recognised and dealt with. While this is possible for you to do with basic tech knowledge, managed web hosting will ensure that professional system admins tend to your website continuously.
Potential issues may range from a simple virus scan to configuring the firewall software. Security is a priority. System admins and engineers will do this and much more. For example, apart from running virus scans and configuring the firewall software, they will also run security audits, conduct OS updates, and filter spam periodically.
Given that they are professionals who are trained to do this, your system admins and engineers can also detect vulnerabilities quicker than you. They are also equipped with better, advanced tools and experience to deal with these issues.
Database Management:
When you own a website, it’s not just the OS of the server that you’ll have to manage. You will also have to manage database services. Databases allow you to store and organise data across many parameters. It can be accessed and managed through the internet. This means that among other things, you’ll have to plan and allocate for the requirements of the database too, including disk space, memory, etc.
If your website is managed, you’ll have dedicated database administrators doing all of this for you. Apart from doing the tasks mentioned above, they will also take care of any database related issue or problem.
Data Backups:
Uncorrupt, up-to-date, and fail-safe backups are a basic requirement for any business that deals with data. Losing valuable data or worse, losing complete control over it can cause serious problems to your business.
With Managed Hosting, professionals will ensure that your data is backed up periodically and thoroughly. Professionals also have a solid data recovery (DR) strategy if any data is indeed lost. Many Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting service providers offer weekly backups and use additional backup tools like CodeGuard at the server level to ensure there is no data loss.
If you were to go unmanaged, the onus of backing up all the data, ensuring their safety and privacy would fall in your hands. If you aren’t trained in data management, backups can be a bit difficult to handle. Professionals are well-trained to identify gaps and implement appropriate solutions. They know the intricacies of server and data management and employ appropriate strategies to ensure the data is well backed up.
Reduces Operational Cost:
As mentioned earlier, managed web hosting is more expensive than Unmanaged Hosting. But rest assured, you’re not losing money from investing in Managed Hosting. If you don’t have the required expertise to maintain your website, you might need to hire third-party expertise, and that isn’t cheap. You might, at various points, have to hire system admins, database admins, backup experts for regular maintenance of your website.
The cost of hiring these people will add up and increase your operating cost. It’s much cheaper to simply find a reliable web hosting company and purchase one of their Managed Hosting plans.
Efficient Time Management:
Now, this might seem silly, but it’s a real factor. If you’re a one-man team or a small business, and you don’t have enough expertise, you will spend a lot of time tending to basic maintenance of your website — and you may not get it right.
As discussed earlier, many things need to be regularly tended to, and this takes time. Instead of focusing on growing your business and adding customers, you’ll constantly be trying to keep your website safe and operational. You’re losing out on potential business growth.
Managed Hosting, more than anything, simply lets you devote time to your business instead of worrying about the nitty-gritty of maintaining your website. Your web hosting company takes care of your website so that you can take care of your customers.
Conclusion
Managed Hosting is about making life easier for you. However, it isn’t for everyone. If you know the tech that powers your website, you can take care of these things on your own and shelling out for a Managed Hosting plan might not make any sense.
However, if this isn’t your area of expertise, having a Managed Hosting plan makes a lot of sense. There are both technical and economic benefits to having one. And of course, it’ll give you more time to devote to growing your business.
