Hosting with party X costs 9,95 euros per month.
Hosting with party Y costs from 39 euros per year.
Hosting and maintenance at Van Ons can easily cost more than 750 euros annually.
Hosting a website can be a very unclear service, because what exactly do you get for that seemingly arbitrary amount per month or per year? The difference in price between the numerous providers at home and abroad then feels unreasonable and unnecessary.
In this article we explain what hosting is and explain the difference in price. Click . to go directly to the tips about choosing between different types of hosting for your organization.
What exactly is 'hosting'?
A domain name, website (or webshop) and e-mail must have a place on a server. Servers are nothing but computers. Because your domain and website are there, visitors can visit them, the server handles the traffic.
It is up to the hosting provider to secure those servers as best as possible. read . what else you can do to protect your WordPress website as best as possible.
'Shared hosting'
Shared hosting means that multiple websites are on one server. That's like sharing your computer with multiple people and they all put their files on that computer. The server then has to handle the traffic from all those sites, so if there are busy sites among them, this can cause delays for your site. Shared hosting is therefore the cheapest form of hosting, but not recommended for professional organizations and people who depend on their webshop, for example.
Van Ons has been offering shared hosting for a few years. These are sites that have been created entirely by us, so that we can provide targeted assistance if something goes wrong. We also significantly limit the number of sites on one server compared to other providers. Tens instead of hundreds.
'Dedicated hosting'
At the start of a project, a decision is made based on budget and expected traffic. An online store must always be lightning fast. A television program can always count on a lot of internet traffic. In these cases, shared hosting is not recommended. A starting blog will be fine until there is more traffic.
In the case of a successful webshop or a TV program, 'dedicated hosting' is necessary. That is a private server, one or more computers for one site. This means that all capacity is for that one user and a lot of traffic can be processed. A private server costs more than a shared server.
We increasingly recommend dedicated hosting, depending on the expected traffic and how dependent an organization is on the website. Because in addition to website management, server maintenance is also required on its own server, Van Ons provides dedicated hosting including maintenance. The Van Ons project manager is then the point of contact, also in the event of emergencies. If desired, it is also possible to set up a 24-hour helpline.
Patriot Act
Servers are located at a hosting party in secure data centers. The geographical location of those centers can have an effect on the speed of your website: if you have a lot of traffic from the Netherlands, it is advisable to host the site in the Netherlands.
There is another important reason to actually host a (Dutch) website in the Netherlands: the Patriot Act. This is American legislation that gives unclear, but far-reaching powers to, for example, the FBI to request and study information on American servers. This may mean that if you take out hosting and the provider runs it (for example via the cloud) through American data centers, the information is visible to the American government. That is not always desirable.
You can read more about the Patriot Act here.
Always available with the right hosting
Shared or dedicated, the most important thing with hosting is the up-time. The servers must always be running! That up-time is often around 100%, or an average of 99% actually because a server always has a busy day (if you do it right! ;-).
Is the traffic going so fast or is there a technical glitch that makes a website slow or inaccessible? Then a quick response from the provider is nice, and a good backup plan!
The costs of hosting
Van Ons outsources the actual hosting (the place where the servers are located) to specialized partners and can always be involved in the management of the server and the website. Consider, for example, pre-testing updates to plugins and WordPress itself before they are implemented in a live environment. This is also possible with cheaper shared hosting.
The difference in price between shared and dedicated hosting is clear. In addition, maintenance of hardware and software, assistance provided in the event of failure and the capacity of the servers also influence the price tag. With higher costs you can expect more support and, for example, more professional solutions, such as a geographical spread of data centers and even backup if the fixed power grid fails.
How do I choose the right hosting?
A technical agency or a hosting provider itself can of course help you with this choice. First of all, it is important to know how much traffic you can expect and how much space is needed for your website or application to be placed on the server.
Do you expect peak times? Then look at dedicated web hosting or the highly scalable Elastic Beanstalk (more about that below).
Do you notice it in the turnover of your webshop if the site is highlighted for a few seconds? Look for professional dedicated hosting with extensive support.
Is your situation completely different? Feel free to call our head office, 020-3318177 🙂
For professionals: Amazon Elastic Beanstalk
Some customers cannot settle for 99% up-time; the site must be easily accessible, especially at peak times (just after a TV broadcast, for example). The 'Elastic Beanstalk' service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) makes it possible to automatically scale up (and down) when a server is in danger of overflowing. This gives infinite space to handle all the traffic.