Managed or Unmanaged Hosting?

When you are looking around for website hosting packages, one of the considerations that you will need to make is whether or not you need fully-managed hosting. Many web hosting companies offer attractive prices on unmanaged hosting, but sometimes there can be pitfalls for the unwary webmaster which can be avoided by going through a series of checkpoints.

The first thing to ascertain is what is meant by unmanaged and managed hosting provisions. Unmanaged hosting usually means that a website is hosted on a server or servers in a geographically remote data centre. The physical infrastructure (the computers, racks, cooling equipment etc.) will be owned or leased by the hosting provider and the individual webmaster hires or leases space on servers. All maintenance, patches and updates are carried out by the webmaster: short of physical responsibility, the webmaster oversees all aspects of the web server.

A managed server’s physical setup is remarkably similar to the unmanaged scenario, with the exception that the web hosting company are fully responsible for ensuring that the servers are correctly run, maintained and overseen. Security patches are applied by the web hosting provider as are all other aspects of day to day maintenance.

The main criteria in choosing between unmanaged and managed hosting is what can be done if the web server goes down. The first consideration is to ascertain whether or not it really matters in the long run if the web service is interrupted for a significant length of time. A significant length of time should be viewed as a couple of days; so, will it matter if there is no website for two days?

Do you have the necessary skills to maintain a website? Are there the skills required available inside your company such that if your website goes down, it can be brought back up using the existing skill base within the company, rather than having to draw on (and pay for) external contractors. If the answer is no, then you should be considering a managed solution.

Another consideration should be, do you have (if it is deemed necessary) technical backup to restore the site should it go down during off-peak hours? If a few hours’ downtime is critical to your company, then you should be in a position in which you can provide technical backup right around the clock. Provision of such a backup facility is expensive, although of course, it may be an expense that you can bear, considering the associated costs of unplanned downtime. If on the other hand, you cannot provide round the clock support and your website is critical to your business, it might be better to go for a managed hosting solution.

In conclusion, unmanaged hosting solutions are considerably cheaper than managed solutions in the main. However, if you rely on your website being up and running and do not have the in-house capability to provide around the clock support, you are better off choosing a fully-managed package.