Scaling the hosting for your infrastructure is a very important thing. When you begin your new business you will most likely have a new site designed. This brand new site does not receive much traffic and your hosting requirements are very minimal. Your web designer would probably suggest a “Shared Hosting” account for your new site.

Shared hosting is an entry level hosting package that normally comes with all you need to get you online and receiving emails. Shared hosting is one of the simplest ways to host a site as you do not have to worry about managing a server, you are simply provided with some allocated space where you can upload your site to and you will also normally receive login details to a control panel where you can add email accounts and perform basic maintenance on your site.

Shared Hosting is Cheap!

The great thing about shared hosting is that is a relatively cheap way of entering the market. During your first few months of your business money would be tight and any place you can save money you should. A typical shared hosting package would start at around $10/month and would give you enough space to host your site. There a few main things you will need for your new site. Disk space (to place your site and store your emails), Bandwidth (this is the traffic on your site and includes all files “downloaded and uploaded to your site) and email(how many accounts do I get). These are the three main items you need to compare when purchasing a shared hosting package. They can vary quite considerably some companies will provide large amounts of storage and bandwidth say if for instance their servers are not in Australia. US Based shared hosting accounts will receive much higher allowances however hosting in the US may slow down your site as each time a visitor in australia needs to access something on your site they have to download the item from the US. This can take sometime. It is much better to try and find a host that has servers in Australia.

How do I know when shared hosting is not enough?

What will happen as time goes on is that your needs will change. Your business will boom and suddenly your requirements are much larger than when you first started. You may be selling online now, you may have recorded some great videos and you have them playing on your site for your customers to see or maybe you are wanting to redesign your site and use large images to showcase your products in all their glory. Well all these types of scenarios are going to need you to increase your hosting infrastructure. This type of Rich media content has specific requirements to function correctly.  The next logical step up from shared hosting is a VPS or Virtual Private server.

A Virtual Private Server provides much greater flexibility and power to host your site. No longer are you sharing all the servers resources, with a VPS you have dedicated resources to your site. This enables you to incorporate all the rich media you wanted on your site.  It gives you the ability to have a shopping cart and sell online.

So if you have noticed that your site is not performing as it should be and you are still on that same shared hosting package that you purchased when you first opened your business it might be time to spend a few hours accessing what is available to supercharge your site and give your visitors the experience that makes you stand out from the crowd.