Hi there Would you recommend to hire a server or buy one for yourself? How does it all work? I've seen some heavy prices on dedicated servers and trying to get my head around it. I would to invest into one manage my own hosting for my clients. Any tips or suggestions? Many thanks in advance CHEERS
Buying yourself and colo a server in DC will be economical only if you are living near by the DC and you need a very big servers to hosted. Else leasing/hiring is the best way to go.
I suggest you to buy a managed dedicated server if you are not familiar with managing server. Managed servers are very easy. You don't need to do anything.
He didn't ask about managed or unmanaged, he's just wondering if it's better to buy the hardware himself and use collocation in a datacenter OR to rent a server on a monthly rent. The bad thing with buying your own server and collocation is that the initial investment is pretty big (for a good server), and if your hardware fails it won't be replaced by the datacenter... as opposed to renting where if you have a hardware malfunction the datacenter will replace it for free (most of them do this anyway). I say you should start off with renting, so the initial investment won't be overwhelming...
Cool! Thanks guys. Did you mean buy a server and then run it at home? If so, do you have to keep that server on running 24/7? Or did you mean buy it off someone else who will run it for you?
Sending emails from your home server ip will not be liked by mail ISP. Make sure you read those terms before you continue. I would never recommend hosting a website on a server from home unless its a personnel website and doesn't need any mission critical application. If you are serious about your website datacenter colo or leasing a way to go.
Have you thought about VPS (Virtual Private Servers)? These are usually much cheaper than dedicated, and obviously co-location. I will depend very much on what you're trying to achieve, amount of traffic, applications required, load, usage etc. But if you're worried about costs then it may be worth taking a look at.
Thanks! Well I wanted to use this to host all my client's websites, so pretty much offering a hosting and domain registration for new clients as well. I have gathered here that renting a server is my best option. I forgot to mention I am using a reseller account for hosting, which is why I wanted to host those sites myself.
If you have your own server and then just locate it in the diameter that is colocation. I think that is not a problem for you at all to do some research to find out the diffrence between dedicated server and colocation.
if you have full knowledge of server than best way to buy new server and setup in office else hire one server .
It really depends. If you buy the server yourself, you would need to do what is called 'co-location' in a data center. You would be responsible for supporting the hardware so if you had a drive fail for example you would be on the hook for replacing it, on site. You could always pay your host, but be prepared to shell out atleast $150/hour. With a dedicated server you pay for the use, and the hosting company supports the hardware so if something fails like a drive, they will have an SLA on replacing it. (any hosting company worth their salt would) Usually a company will also have a 4-12 hour response window from Dell or HP technicians depending on the type of server hardware. Let me know if any further questions!
It's better to hire because that way you won't own the server. You can choose to move whenever you want to without having to worry about taking the server along with you and the associated costs.
the problem with owning your own hardware is that in case something happens you will have to replace the hardware yourself. I think its quite time consuming.
I think if you are talking about dedicated severs it is all about hiring it. When you have your own server and would like to locate that in the datacenter that is called colocation
if you do not need a big server, I have seen some for less than the cost of co-locating a server. But when you get in to larger hard drives, lots of memory, etc, co-locating seems like a better option, for one, if you buy your own server, you are not paying those fees they charge each month for the extra memory or hard drives, or the RAID controlers, etc. Sorry, i find it rediculous to pay $40 extra a month for a few extra GB of memory. But I have seen co-location cost 200 plus for a rack mounted server, and as low as $50.00. So do your research, see what data centers are around you, or in the area you want your servers to be, check on the cost of co-location, and buying a server vs renting one from the DC. For tax reasons, it is better to rent, you can then deduct the complete amount for the server from your taxes, if you buy it, you have to depreciate it out. i am working on a plan to start a hosting company as well, and I figure when i out grow a reseller account, I will do a little of both renting and co-locating. renting my smaller servers, like DNS and backup servers, in differen DC's from my webservers. And co-locating my webservers. Michael
Thanks guys, I have a slight problem with getting my clients to pay on time for using my hosting. Hey Michael, that is something similar I want to do but unsure how to lol?? Is there a way to have my clients pay online like credit cards, without having me to invoice? I want my clients to pay online, and if they fail to do so, then somehow I freeze their accounts until they have paid online e.g. their website won't until payment is made? Thanks
Welcome to the worlds recession! It's a problem everyone has from time-to-time - or constantly. What you do to remedy it depends upon your goal but you need your income to keep your own business running. There's plenty of billing systems around such as WHMCS that will help you do that. Since these systems integrate with many payment gateways you will have a choice of who you work with. Paypal and Google are relatively easy to set-up and get started with, while with other gateways you will have a lot more work to do to get set up with them. Irrespective of who you choose as your processor, good billing systems will make it easy to start accepting payments online. There's no one-size fit's all answer to this. We tend to provide more leeway for payments with long-term customers, high-value customers, or customers who contact us when they receive our invoice and let us know they might be a little late in paying due to unforeseen circumstances. We send our invoice out 28 days before they are due. All our invoices have a "Payment Due Date" on them that is large and bold. Some larger companies have billing cycles that can't accomodate our standard payment terms, and what we do with them is just send invoices out much earlier (6 weeks before they are due or 8 weeks before they are due). With small monetary value hosting accounts we tend to be much stricter. If the payment isn't received on time they get a reminder on the day it is due. They get another 2 days later, and on the 5th day we send another reminder and suspend access to the control panel and FTP accounts. 2 days later if they still haven't paid or got in touch, we shut down their sites. Longer term customers tend to get a personal phone call or email from us asking them if there's a problem and to get in touch to discuss it with us. We have more sympathy for those who contact us early if they have a problem, but once we have to start chasing them then our patience gets shorter and shorter the longer it goes on. Higher-value customers (spending more than $5000 per year) have a similar pattern, but we are more reluctant to suspend access. If we can't get in touch with them after 7 days we usually make a couple of phone calls. If we can't get them, or no-one talks to us, then we will suspend them. High-value customers (spending more than $30,000 per year) are all dealt with personally. They tend to be good payers anyway because of the value of their sites and they know we can suspend them. Relationships with these customers is more personal and more flexible but they are very rarely late payers. Only you can decide how to deal with this. Sometimes you need to be tough and sometimes you need to be more flexible, but you musn't let anyone walk over you. If you can justify the prices you charge and the service you provide most people will happily pay you. Don't be taken advantage of - you need to get your money in - but use your best judgement and be prepared to lose customers if they are consistently very late payers.
Thanks heaps Ron, that was very helpful. I have a lot to work on now, which is good. One of my friends is a client, and it's been 2 months over the due date lol. The main issue is the time, and effort to send invoices, emails, and phones calls. That WHMCS looks pretty good, I need a bit more time to over it, and see how this ties in. That's exactly what I want to do. Can this be achieved using a reseller account? I have been with a few hosting companies, and I like how they user their billing system online, and suspend access to the the clients Control Panel, etc. CHEERS