Value Web Hosting [Spoiler: Managed is Best Value]

Searching for best value web hosting for your next project?

I’ve been in retail long enough to know that price isn’t everything. I’ve also been a consumer long enough to know that companies don’t determine value; people do.

Sure, companies determine the cost of their products and services, but the value is what justifies the cost.”

As a business owner, the decision between cost and quality often falls on your shoulders, and it’s not an easy one. If you are a smaller agency with limited resources, the temptation to trim expenses is powerful, and in some cases, necessary.

Shopping with price in mind is essential for a small business looking to endure and grow in a competitive landscape.

Business owners also know that you get that for which you pay. Nowhere is that more true than in web hosting. Time and again, agencies are finding out that cheaper doesn’t always mean better value.

If you are currently or have been looking for a hosting provider for your business, you’re likely familiar with the price tag associated with managed hosting services.

While managed hosting does cost more than self-managed or shared hosting, managed hosting is the better value.

Simply put: price does not equal value.

Here are 3 reasons why managed hosting is the best value for web hosting.

1. Guaranteed Reliable and Consistent Support

In our article, 5 Signs It’s Time to Find a New Web Hosting Provider, we discussed the need to be clear on the support your hosting provider offers. Also, you need to ensure that support is adequate for your business needs. The worst situation to find yourself in would be to have a real-time need for which your provider cannot assist you.

Your websites, applications, and other online business data are undoubtedly critical. More important than the support you receive is the certainty that your hosting environment is up and running 100% of the time. Even an uptime of 99% can be costly, depending on the services your business offers.

So, just what does that translate to for your virtual business or online presence? Let’s do some basic math.

There are 8,760 hours in a year. 1% of that number is 87.6. Based on this math, we can conclude that 99% uptime, while seemingly a large number, amounts to just over three and a half days that your hosting environment is unavailable.”

Your business cannot afford downtime that long and stay in business.

Managed hosting can provide you maximum uptime, and a guarantee for how they’ll make it right when things go wrong.

2. Expertise You Can Afford

Whether you are hosting apps and websites in-house or with a managed hosting provider, another essential factor is the cost of the support you receive. There are numerous costs associated with managing your environment in-house you must consider vs Fully Managed Dedicated Hosting.

There are infrastructure costs, operating costs, and variable costs to consider between managing your own server on-site vs hosting with a managed hosting provider.

Infrastructure Costs

Infrastructure costs refers to the physical hardware used to build out your hosting environment. You may choose to hire an IT firm to do this for you, or have an IT staff do this. No matter which direction you choose, you must weigh the upfront and ongoing costs.

Operating Costs

Operating costs are the ongoing costs of maintaining and overseeing the environment. Getting things in place is only the beginning. Efficiently keeping your setup running is going to prove most valuable, and is why managed hosting is the best value in web hosting.

Variable Costs

Variable costs are the hidden or indirect costs associated with your hosting environment. Planning is the best way to approach any purchase, but you cannot plan for everything. Actual planning builds the unforeseen circumstances into the budget as best as possible.

Hiring IT Expertise Isn’t Cheap

The explosive development in hosting and IT technology, tools, hardware, and software means earning the title of expert in the IT field is a full-time job, and certainly not one for which you have time.

An experienced professional (or a team of them, depending on your workload) to assist with site deployment, migration, maintenance, and monitoring is a valuable asset to your organization. But in-house IT teams don’t come cheap.

In essence, even a single IT expert will cost you an average of $65,000 (average base salary plus benefits and vacation pay) annually, and that’s assuming you have an office space sitting empty waiting for them. Shifting that cost to a managed solution that includes the majority of these services can mean enormous savings to your business.

And I’m not talking about paying for hosting with a separate cost for support. I’m referring to a managed provider like Liquid Web that offers assistance with no additional charge.

3. Flexibility, Scalability, and Agility

There’s a saying that when you stop growing, you start dying. Businesses expect to grow and deserve an environment that can grow with them.

That means you need to have a provider that is reliable, provides consistent support and affordable expertise, and has the capability to scale your environment to meet the demands of your business.”

What meets your needs now may not be what you will need in the next six months or more. If you are hosting in-house, this can be a variable cost for which you have to prepare. It can also extend beyond your resources, as you may need more office space or possibly different facilities to accommodate your growth.

When choosing your next value web hosting provider, you want to make sure they are not a “one-trick pony.” They may be suitable for entry solutions using VPS Hosting, but can they scale to a more sophisticated environment as your business grows?

Some more sophisticated solutions can include:

• Dedicated Hosting: Completely customizable, dedicated hardware that provides a high level of performance and security.
• VMware Private Cloud: The performance of dedicated hardware and the scalability of the cloud on NetApp SAN Storage, providing a robust environment for DevOps teams.
• Custom High Availability Solutions: Multiple nodes (dedicated servers) on a floating IP address, data replication, and failover. A truly redundant solution for maximum uptime.

All of these solutions are available at Liquid Web.

Managed hosting providers offer the capacity to scale beyond your current infrastructure with minimal downtime.

The reality is you and your clients have different needs. What will happen if you experience a spike in traffic? Do you want to keep bandaging yourself, or do you want a professional that can give your business the care it deserves?

You and your clients’ success depends on your infrastructure. Make sure your business is in the right hands.

Best Value Web Hosting Gets You More Than You Pay For

“You get what you pay for” is often the phrase used to compare the quality of services. It can mean the services are more expensive than you anticipated, or it could mean that you get more value for your money.

As the business owner, you need to gauge if the products and services for which you are paying provide the value required.

Ask the following questions to determine whether managed hosting is the best value in web hosting:

• Could you hire an entire team to build out your hosting infrastructure?
• Could you or your staff learn to maintain the environment and keep it running 24/7/365?
• Can you weather the cost and headaches of scaling your business and the underlying infrastructure?

It can cost you more, in the long run, to do all of these things on your own. And that is why managed hosting is the best value in web hosting.