Introduction
When you’re running a business online (or supplementing your offline enterprise via website), you have two hosting options: self-hosted and outsourced. The outsourced version is further sub-divided into cloud and VPS. The differences are in ‘physicality’ and storage.
- With VPS, you get your own dedicated segment of a larger server, but on a cost-share basis. You still perform many server tasks yourself, including back-up and maintenance.
- Cloud hosting – on the other hand – is more about the network. You log in/out at will and leave the technicalities to your host. You don’t have direct access to the server itself.
Self-service vs à la carte
In this sense, we’re not comparing VPS to cloud. We’re comparing the two services combined (i.e. outsourced hosting) vs buying your own personal server. Which brings us to the first advantage of outsourcing – initial cost. When you’re ‘renting’ space on a VPS, you pay per month. The same goes for cloud hosting, which levies a monthly subscription. In both cases, you can opt to pay for the whole year, which usually gets you a discount of one or two months. Point is, you can pay bit by bit, even if the costs pile up over time. With your own server, you have to pay it off in one go, and that often costs thousands of dollars. Plus, there’s a set-up cost for the techies that will initially configure your server.
Redundancy rates
In the non-computing world, redundancy is a bad thing. It means you’re getting fired, or using unnecessary words in your writing. But in the internet space, redundancy is an essential back-up plan. It means if one server goes down, data automatically pings connected servers, allowing customers to have maximal uptime. A good redundancy system has multiple back-up servers, often in different geographical regions. Obviously, you can’t get this on a self-hosted server, because it’s in your physical space and is therefore susceptible to theft, weather, power surges, and more. Cloud and VPS are deliberately designed with redundancy in mind. For affordable, locally hosted cloud and VPS servers, call Cloud.co.za today.
