You have a big decision ahead of you: should you choose hosted or self-hosted for your business? A self-hosted website is one of the most common routes for beginners and large companies, but many small business owners are realizing the benefits of a hosted solution. Even large corporations are starting to rethink the idea of having their own datacenter.
Here’s what you need to know.
What Is Hosting?
The basic idea of hosting is that there is “real estate” on which your website lives. You can own a domain name, but unless you also own the hosting platform, you have nowhere to put it. Hosting is the place where your website lives — you can either own or rent it.
Most people rent hosting space because it’s economical. Anything you see on the Internet is hosted somewhere. So, if you think about it, if you want to own your online store, it’ll need to be hosted somewhere. Hosting happens on a server. There are many ways to access a server.
You can lease hosting from a company. This means you rent space from a hosting provider. This is very common. You can ask an AS400 expert about the many different ways leased hosting works, because there are many different hosting plans that are built on this type of hosting arrangement.
You can also have a hosted platform. This is where you create your online store on a platform that has “built-in” hosting, like Shopify, for example. With a hosted solution, you don’t have to worry about any of the details concerning HTML, CSS, PHP, or any other coding language. You just type in your content, and most of these hosts allow easy “drag and drop” functionality of their design.
Hosting is a major element that’s responsible for your site’s loading time. The better the host, the better your load times. Statistics show that 50% of your users expect your site to load in under 2 seconds. If that doesn’t happen, they start to get antsy and leave.
Hosting is also an element that’s partially responsible when a website crashes due to high traffic loads. The most bandwidth available, the less likely a crash is to bring your site down.
Hosted Vs Self-Hosted
A hosted platform is when the host you’re using, hosts your store’s files on their own servers. Examples of this would be Shopify, Woocommerce, WordPress, Blogger, or other similar services. They usually have discounted deals with established hosting companies, and offer a highly customized version of that host’s environment.
They handle all compliance, backups, and maintenance as well as security.
They will also establish their own internal protocols and manage bandwidth, security elements, like PCI compliance, and other details that you would otherwise have to figure out on your own.
A self-hosted platform, on the other hand, offers you a platform but you have to decide where you want to host it. You can then research the best offers, and install the platform you want onto the server. You must handle the PCI compliance yourself, and offer safety elements to your users.
Platforms like this include:
- WooCommerce
- OpenCart
- Magento
Benefits Of Hosting vs Self-Hosting
Both hosted and self-hosted environments have their benefits. For one, hosted environments remove all or most of the technical challenges in getting your business up and running. The hosted option lowers the barrier to entry in that sense.
A self-hosted environment gives you maximum control over your site by allowing you full customization and integration with other services you may want to use on your site.
So, in the end, the choice is between convenience and control. Decide which is more important to you.
Luca Boyle has always been involved in the e-commerce world in 1 way or another. He has experience running his own online retail business, and has more recently become an e-commerce consultant, helping others succeed online.
