Setting up a local network with Internet access and creating a corporate website opens up attractive horizons for a company to expand its audience of customers and business partners. However, before you can appreciate the many advantages of accessing the virtual space, you need to decide where to host your new online resource. Among the formats offered is virtual hosting, or VPS, as a dedicated server is often called, put at the disposal of a client of a hoster company. For a person who is not familiar with network technologies, both concepts are meaningless. Therefore, let’s try to consider these options and decide which one is optimal in each case.

Features and benefits of shared hosting

The hoster company has dozens of servers with high-capacity hard drives to host customer databases. Disk space or hosting services are provided to anyone who intends to launch a new online project. Many sites within the same server operate autonomously, but they are managed according to a common scheme using the same software.

The list of advantages of shared hosting includes:

• reasonable cost of the service available to all business entities without exception;
• no need for administration and maintenance on the part of the company that owns the portal – all work is taken care of by the hoster’s employees;
• a variety of tariffs with different amounts of memory for customer sites with the possibility of switching between tariff plans, which will allow the resource to develop without the risk of slowing down the speed of information processing;
• the opportunity to get a dedicated IP address, which will make the resource even more autonomous and allow you to keep the most accurate statistics of its visits in terms of time, geographical locations, and the composition of the user audience.

Difficulties with the use of hosting can be associated with:

• restrictions in the settings and management of the resource, which the hoster sets at its discretion, taking into account the capabilities of the server hardware;
• the risk of being blacklisted if at least one project on the server has a dubious reputation and is engaged in spamming;
• low computing power, which may not be enough to deploy all the options of the CMS used;
• a drop in the speed of processing requests and opening pages due to a possible sharp increase in the load on the server from “neighboring” resources.

Experts recommend shared hosting for online projects with up to 5,000 visitors per day, especially if the owner does not plan to constantly fill it with new information and does not set strict conditions for creating the “right” reputation for his site.

What are the advantages of a dedicated virtual server?

A dedicated server (alternatively called VPS) is based on the use of so-called cloud technologies, which once made a breakthrough in the issues of hosting and maintaining Internet projects. On one machine with high power and performance characteristics, virtual images of separate servers are created, each of which can host a large corporate website of a confidently developing enterprise. The continuous improvement of technologies for creating and managing virtual servers makes the service available to companies aimed at rapid and stable development. And its cost within the basic tariff can be less than 1000 rubles.

Experts name the main advantages of VPS:

• complete isolation from “neighboring” sites, which excludes their mutual negative impact;
• customer access to the software and a set of options for managing their resource;
• ease of working with the cloud server, which can be entrusted to your own system administrator or entrusted to the employees of the host company;
• the ability to create several domains in one cloud for different resources, for example, a corporate website, a retail online store, an advertising landing page, etc.

As for the restrictions on the choice and use of VPS, it is worth noting:

• relatively high cost of the service;
• an additional cost item for managing or maintaining the server – in-house sysadmin services or outsourcing will require significant expenses;
• the risk of experiencing software malfunctions, site access failures, and loss of information that will require the intervention of an experienced specialist.

The choice in favor of a VPS is considered optimal for large and visited resources, where it is important to ensure speed, access of visitors to all functions of the site and instant response to any incoming request.

Setting up a local network and Internet access: the benefits of turning to professionals

An attempt to choose the optimal website layout and set up a workable network for a layman usually ends in a waste of time, unnecessary expenses, and meters of damaged cable. To combine all the computers in the office into an effective logical control and management system in a short time, as well as to ensure the trouble-free operation of a corporate website, you should entrust the installation of the network and subscriber server maintenance to professionals with practical experience. It is within their competence:

• design and implement the optimal network configuration, taking into account the load and number of users;
• promptly resolve technical difficulties that arise;
• select, install, and configure the necessary software and anti-virus protection;
• provide the client with a turnkey high-speed network.

Professional support in creating websites and maintaining a local network is the best thing you can do to ensure its profitability and high throughput.