Simple Guide to Choosing the Right Hosting Plan

If you’re a start-up attempting to launch your business, there will no doubt be a lot on you plate to prepare and consider. Even if you are already established and are in a position to further grow your business online, how do you go about deciding what type of hosting is going to be best suited?

No matter what type of company or organisation you run or work for, having an online presence is vital in this day and age, and for those who don’t have the IT expertise, it can be costly or tricky to know which option to choose.

At CWCS, we want to making hosting as seamless as possible for the businesses we work with. Take a look at our guide to what options are available…

Web Hosting

For businesses who are just starting out and have simple requirements, shared hosting platforms tend to be the go-to-option as they are simple to get started with and very cost effective.

Shared hosting is ideal for brochure sites, blog sites, test sites, and for companies who are just looking for an entry-level web presence. With this type of hosting, you are sharing the resources of the server with other sites so there could potentially be 100’s of other sites sharing the same pool of resource and storage. That’s why shared hosting isn’t a viable option for e-commerce sites as a surge in traffic could affect the performance of your site.

Your website should demonstrate who you are and be easy to use, without draining much-needed resources with expensive and unnecessary charges. You’ll need to consider bandwidth, SSL certificates, subdomains and webspace in order to choose the right hosting plan.

Once you start to grow and gain more visitors, then it’s time to look at more advanced hosting options.

VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Servers are a great option for businesses who have outgrown shared hosting and want to have dedicated resources at an affordable cost. It’s essentially a step between shared hosting and having your own dedicated or cloud server. This removes the potential negative impacts of other businesses impacting your website.

With a VPS you have more control and flexibility, for example, to make installations. VPS hosting is available in Linux and Windows and hosting control panels such as Plesk and cPanel can be installed. This allows you to manage your website and emails, and allows certain server configurations to meet your needs.

When it comes to VPS, there are various plans available so you’ll need to consider how many CPU’s (compute power) you need, how many GB’s of RAM and SSD storage is required, as well as your data transfers per month.

Colocation

A lot of businesses can be frustrated by the logistical nightmares of hosting their data, either struggling to create the best environment to keep it secure, not having the high speed internet connection to meet the demands, or the fact that the servers are not in an optimal environment to get the best performance of the servers. Why not remove the need for your office to fulfil data hosting, allowing you to focus on your business?

Colocation allows you to move your severs into the safe environment of a securely managed data centre whist still retaining complete control over your servers. You can benefit from the data centres round the clock support, security, HVAC, fire protection and also the expertise of the DC’s onsite employees.

Colocation means that you rent rack space but you still retain control and are responsible for software, storage and backups. For businesses who have the technical expertise and simply want to move their equipment to a more secure environment, this is a fantastic option. However, for a start-up, it’s not as practical as you will have a larger upfront cost and will be required to still manage the servers yourself.

Dedicated Servers

Managed Dedicated Server hosting plans provide you complete control and unrivalled performance levels so you can focus your time and efforts on what you do best.

Linux server hosting plans tend to be the most popular choice as they are available in many flavours including the latest CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian and Red Hat Enterprise, and hosting control panels such as Plesk and cPanel. This lets you customise a server to your precise business needs.

Although a more expensive option, with a dedicated server you will have higher levels or resource, unlimited bandwidth, more cores and threads and also more RAM. Having a dedicated server also gives you root access allowing you complete control.

Public Cloud

Businesses will often move over to a cloud hosting platform when they have been having hardware failures and frustrations which are impacting on their business.

Although the name can appear off-putting, public cloud hosting is actually one of the most secure and effective ways to host online. With no single-point-of-failure within the infrastructure, you don’t have to worry about downtime. Public cloud is secure, scalable and allows for high-performance. With managed public cloud hosting, you can rest assured your service would never be impacted by hardware failure again.

Not only do you get a fully redundant platform but you also benefit from enterprise-grade hardware, reliable network speeds, as well as having the flexibility to choose what operating system and control panel to use. – Read more

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Cloud Security Best Practices

Once an individual or organization makes the decision to use a cloud service provider, the question of how to keep your data safe may come to mind. After all, when files containing sensitive information are being loaded to the internet, it’s important to make sure this content is only accessed by authorized users. With that in mind, below are several cloud security best practices that should be considered to keep your data protected.

Find a Provider You Can Trust

When it comes to cloud based cyber security, you really can’t be too careful when selecting your cloud service provider (CSP). Look at things like security measures offered, standards compliance capabilities, service level, and manageability. Also ask questions such as how much time will you have to spend, and if you will share responsibility for the implementation of your cloud based cyber security? Whoever you choose as your CSP, make sure to read your contracts thoroughly so you have a thorough understanding of expectations and deliverability.

Train Personnel in Security Protocols

The key reason for including this step in our cloud security best practices is that the safety of your cloud storage begins with the people who will be using it. For example, if you require your users to log out at the end of every work day, leaving the system logged in could result in unauthorized users gaining access to something they are not supposed to see.

Don’t Give Everyone Access

You likely know that not everyone needs administrative access. However, you also don’t need to give everyone access to all system files. Compartmentalizing could be a simple way of reducing risks in your cloud based cyber security. – Read more

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5 myths of switching from on-premises PBX to cloud

Work in a post-pandemic world will change in unprecedented ways. Several major companies have already begun to adopt permanent work-from-anywhere models. And many are looking at hybrid approaches—where employees split their time between the office and home.

So how do companies support the new norm? For starters, a fundamental shift in technology might be in order. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, businesses discovered that their on-premises systems couldn’t support an increasingly remote workforce. Many of them turned to digital transformation and the cloud instead.

Despite the shift, though, many leaders still might be on the fence. They might have concerns about security, costs, and other factors. But in the post-pandemic workplace, switching to the cloud isn’t just a luxury—it’s become a must.

That being said, let’s address some of the top myths behind switching from on-premises PBX to the cloud.

Myth #1: On-premises solutions are more stable than cloud solutions

Myth: 

You might think maintaining connectivity and service is easier when your infrastructure is located in the same building as you. After all, you can easily access your system for troubleshooting and repairs.

However, with on-premises systems, you’re entirely at the mercy of whatever is happening locally—meaning a power outage or weather event can knock out service entirely. At the same time, you won’t know there’s a problem with your system or equipment until the lines go down. 

Reality: 

Cloud solutions are housed in multiple geographically distributed data centers. If one location is affected—whether by an unexpected event or even high levels of usage—traffic is routed through another data center, with no service interruptions to your users.

The best providers proactively monitor their networks 24/7 so they can detect, diagnose and address issues as quickly as possible, often preventing service disruptions before they happen. 

Furthermore, most enterprise cloud communications providers stand behind their obligation to provide reliable service via a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that guarantees a minimum percentage of uptime, or maximum downtime. To ensure maximum service with the fewest interruptions, look for a provider that guarantees the “five 9s”—or 99.999% uptime. – Read more

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