It’s best we start with what a hosting server is. Essentially your website needs to be uploaded to the internet for it to be viewable It is made up of thousands if not millions of giant computer farms (servers) that store and run all of the information that we call ‘the internet’.

Now there are multiple companies you can purchase a metaphorical slice of a server pie to host your website with, but depending on the quality of the server, distance from nodes (access points), and general internet speed they can support, the speed and reliability of each hosting company can differ drastically.

Here at Designpluz, we like to recommend using AWS (Amazon Web Services) as your hosting provider. They are extremely fast, drastically reduce your website’s downtime, and utilise what is known as ‘cloud hosting. “What is cloud hosting?” I hear you ask. Traditional dedicated hosting solutions store your website on a singular server, so if it crashes so too does your website. In contrast, cloud hosting stores your website across multiple servers, you can think of this as having 4 spare tyres on you at all times with a professional pit crew following behind you wherever you go. If one of the servers crash, the other ones pick up the slack to keep your website running.

While we do recommend AWS in most instances, there are times when dedicated hosting may better suit your needs. For example, dedicated hosting allows you to customise and configure your server for the amount of web traffic you are expecting. So if you are a smaller company that gets a low volume of website visitors, you can simply pay for the number of recourses you will need to accommodate for this, potentially saving you money. The issue with this is if you have overnight success with your website, your server won’t be able to handle the increased search traffic, resulting in the website crashing.

For the whole, AWS is objectively better than a traditional dedicated hosting server. It allows for near-infinite expandability, reduction of website crashing, generally higher website responsive rates and faster load times. Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise-size business, using AWS as your hosting server is taking one step to future-proofing your website, giving your business one less stress to think about when taking the next steps to grow an online presence.