Why Managed Server Might Be The Right Choice For Your Business

Nowadays, having a website and online services is essential for any business. This means you need a reliable server to run your site and services. Hosting your server yourself can be challenging. Many companies instead choose managed server hosting.

With managed web hosting, a company runs your server for you and makes sure it is working smoothly. In this article, we will talk about why managed server hosting is becoming popular and how it can help your business.

What are Fully Managed Servers?

With fully managed server hosting, the hosting company takes care of a lot of the technical work of setting up and running the server. This includes:

- Installing updates to fix bugs and improve security

- Putting new software on the server when needed

- Moving your website from another server or host

With unmanaged hosting, you have to do all that work yourself. If you have IT people on staff who can handle it, unmanaged can work. But if you don't have an expert and don't want to learn it all, fully managed hosting is a good option.

A company providing managed hosting will take care of all the technical maintenance through its fully managed hosting service.

Here are some of the things taken care of in brief:

Setup & Configuration

Setting up a new server takes a lot of work. If you're starting from nothing or moving a website from another server, the new server needs the right setup before launching.

With an unmanaged server, you're starting from scratch. It's like getting a new computer with only the operating system. You can't do much until you install the apps you need, customize the settings, and download security updates. That can take many hours.

Server Maintenance & Updates

Your regular computer at home automatically installs updates to improve security and performance. But your web server needs that same kind of maintenance. While your home computer updates itself, web server updates must be installed manually. And those updates usually require some technical skills.

Security Hardening

You often hear news of companies getting hacked. Making sure your server avoids hacks is very important, especially if your website collects customer information.

Learning to secure a server is hard. Keeping up with the latest security threats can be a full-time job. With fully managed hosting, Hosting experts handle security for you. This helps protect your website and customers' data.

Managed Technical Support

Any hosting company provides basic technical support for managed and unmanaged servers. But with an unmanaged server, you're responsible for configuring and managing it yourself. So support won't help with issues caused by your configuration or software problems.

With a hosting provider’s fully managed plans, you get support on more issues. Their experienced staff can help fix common problems related to server configuration and software.

You also benefit from ongoing staff training. With an unmanaged server, you or your IT people need to invest time and money in staying current on technology.

With managed hosting, the provider handles the support team up-to-date.

Uptime Management

"Uptime" refers to the percentage of time a hosting company guarantees their server will be working for visitors to access your site. For example, 99.99% uptime means the server should not be down more than 0.01% of the time - or about 4.5 minutes per month.

The uptime guarantee only covers issues under the hosting company's control though. If you make a change that makes your site unavailable, that doesn't count against the guarantee. Having experienced technicians manage the server helps maximize uptime. Fully managed hosting from a reliable company can help ensure your site stays running for visitors.

Migration from Other Servers

Migrating a website from one server to another can mean downtime. This can cost you money if your site gets traffic or revenue. But with a reliable hosting provider migration time almost minimizes to zero. They make sure everything is set up right on the new server. When your site goes live there, visitors won't notice anything different beyond faster speeds. So if you're moving a site that's already up and running, managed migration can prevent losses from downtime. It will transition your site smoothly to the new server.

Save Time

Fully managed hosting costs more than unmanaged plans. But you save money in the long run.

Maintaining a server yourself takes lots of time. Every minute spent on that is time not spent on your real work. Even at minimum wage, just a few hours makes unmanaged hosting more expensive.

It's worth considering even if you have in-house IT staff. Their time is probably better spent on other technology needs.

Final Take Away

A fully managed server hosting provides significant benefits for many businesses and organizations. Though it costs more upfront than unmanaged hosting, the time and effort it saves make it worthwhile in the long run.

With managed hosting, the hosting provider handles technical configuration, security updates, software installs, and migrations which allows you to focus on your core business. Their staff have specialized expertise to maximize uptime and performance. And they provide more comprehensive support if issues arise.

For these reasons, many companies are switching to or launching new sites on fully managed hosting platforms. This convenient, hands-off approach to server management ultimately gives the best value for busy organizations in today's digital landscape. Considering the crucial need for a reliable online presence, managed hosting often proves to be the smart solution.