Running your own website can be a form of a business in itself these days, especially in certain niches. And yet, it’s not as straightforward as it ideally should be in some aspects, and there are still various barriers that you’ll have to overcome before you see good results. On the bright side, your range of options is also quite expansive these days, and you have plenty of different deals to pick from for every aspect of your hosting.
One of the biggest considerations you’ll need to make is whether you’re going to host your site yourself, or use an external provider. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and it’s a good idea to be familiar with the implications behind each choice.
Current and Future Scale Considerations
The scale of your website is going to be a very important factor in this decision. Obviously, a small site will be easy to host because it won’t be such a drain on your resources. At the same time, you might be incurring some significant overhead costs by running a smaller site like that, especially if you’re not doing anything else with the same machine. A professional hosting provider will also be able to offer you a service that scales up easily, so that you won’t have to worry about that aspect of your operations yourself.
Expenses
There are various costs attached to running a website that are not immediately obvious. Power is one of the big ones – check out the business utility rates in your area to get an idea of how much it would cost you to run one or more machines 24/7, especially more powerful ones like the kind you would need to host a website on. In the end, it might turn out that paying the monthly fee for a professional hosting provider may be a much more optimal choice in terms of expenses.
Security
Last but not least, consider the nature of the materials you’re hosting on that website, and how sensitive they are to your overall operations. In most cases, you’ll likely be fine hosting that site on an external provider. But there are some situations where this is simply not appropriate, and you’ll have to look into your own solution in those cases. Even if it means incurring some extra costs, it’s much better than having to deal with the fallout after a data breach. And in some cases, that fallout may be enough to bring down your whole company.
The way you’re running your company’s website(s) might not seem like a big consideration right now, but it’s actually a very important one to make early on. There are various issues of cost and other similar points attached to this decision, and you’re going to want to go over it carefully in your head to ensure that you’re going in the right direction. Talk to some specialists to confirm your hunches too, because you’ll need to have as much reassurance as you can that you’re doing things the right way.