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Server?
 

At which point does one decide to make the investment to purchase a server instead of paying for web hosting?

I've always used web hosting, but the thoughts of wondering if faster upload and download time will increase traffic and overall owning every aspect of my business cross my mind from time to time.

Has anyone purchased a server? Pros, cons? :ranger:

I looked into this and the reason I never moved forward with it was my lack of technical expertise. Well... that and the cost.

Most companies that rent servers to you only manage certain things. Like, they WILL make sure that you server is physically working, and will replace any bad equipment as necessary. But if you decide to install a new program, and something goes wrong, then you need to pay an expert to fix it.

So, for me, the upside of having more freedom to do what I wanted did not outweigh the downside, which was my lack of expertise and the potential costs I might incur if I screwed something up.

I *DO* have several VPS's, but that is different.

I have some associates that own a rental business, and they have nothing but headaches from their server they have in their office. Of course, these are older people and don't know much about websites... they're extremely not trusting and purchased a server not wanting to have someone like hostgator jack up their rates... I think that's a tad silly... but they have issues with viruses all the time... These people also rent their server out to others.

You're basically renting server space when you pay for webhosting with hostgator, right?

I'm talking about buying a dell server and putting it at your office or home. I'm a smart guy, but my technical expertise only goes so far as well....

On the first point, YES. Plus, Hostgator has a lot of stuff built in and pre-configured making it much easier to manage.

As far as having one at home or in my office, that is WAY beyond the scope of my expertise. I would imagine any rented server or Hostgator would have a much faster internet connection than you could have at home.

Right... that's what I assumed as well. Won't you be limited to an extent on the amount of bandwidth during upload and download when paying for hosting? In other words, the end user may experience lag? So I thought using your own server would cut this down.... That's the only pro I can see to doing it.

Setting up your own sever takes a lot of skills and tweaks in order to perfect it to run 99.9% of the time and without lag. Its not easy as one would think, at least not easy to do it right. Renting your own dedicated server from a site like host gator would be better and unless your site starts getting ebay traffic then you'll be fine. But again a server is not necessary until your site has taken off and getting a couple hundred unique hits a day.

I have sites with a few hundred hits a day, and they are all just fine. I always try to optimize my sites by using pictures that have been reduced in size - you don't need a 10 megapixel 2MB picture to look good on the web. I use Hostgator.

Their rep told me if speed became an issue they have other plans I could upgrade to, but that 99% of websites don't require them. So far, he has been right. I've had no issues. But my sites are small. If you had 20,000 visitors per day, then I'm sure you would need something larger.

Yeah even at hundreds a day your fine, when it starts to get into a couple thousand a day is when you'll be wanting a server or if your hosting some sort of video site but most sites do not need a server.

When I start to get a couple thousand hits a day, I'll pay someone else to take care of it :)

What do you think the line is for geting your own server? 400 visitors? 1000? I suppose it depends on your content as well.

I would just say work with your web host. A virtual server could be a bridge when you are too small for your own server, but too large to be on one server with 500 other sites.

That also increases your costs GRADUALLY as your revenues also rise, rather than having a huge jump in costs.

I guess it's the same reason why I want to put in my own water heater than paying someone to do it.... agh, but you're right. I shall wait.

Less then 1000 visitors a day (and you're not running too much of a resource hog), you'll do fine on a shared host like HostGator.

When you're getting 1000-5000 unique visitors a day and again you're site isn't too much of a resource hog, then a VPS would be a good choice. Hostgator seems to have good deals on these too.. I just checked them out right now and I might have to upgrade from my several shared hosting accounts I have with them for a new VPS (virtual private server).. which would be cheaper too.

And if you're getting 5000+ unique visitors a day then it would be a good time to upgrade to an entry level dedicated server. They're not that difficult to manage. Use plesk and it will be easy as pie to do most things with you're server. You'll need to learn root and basic commands and what not but you can learn that over time.

Currently I have two dedicated servers and several shared hosting (business plan HostGator) accounts for my sites. I think you'll do fine with a business plan from hostgator. And stick to web hosting providers (who manage and take care of most things for you). The money you might save otherwise isn't worth it until you require dozens of servers for your business.

Only if you have:
1)High traffic
2)Much aps to run including cron jobs

Another alternative is to have VPS instead of dedicated.
They are from $5 per month.
You can see my hosting list with 100+ Unique US hosting providers.
Nick