Managed Hosting Defined

How to Choose a Managed Hosting Provider?

 Since there are no industry standards for server management, each provider tends to define Managed Hosting differently. Thus, price alone is a poor indicator of the quality of technical support, customer service and included services.

Before comparing prices, investigate both the tangible aspects of the offering: bandwidth, storage, server processing power, server fitness for intended use - and the intangible: provider credibility, infrastructure quality, network stability, speed of response to server or network failure.

Only when you know what is included in the Managed Hosting package and how reliable the provider is, will you be able to make a meaningful comparison of prices.

You’ll find that potential providers will perform more or less convincingly in these key areas:

    Updates and Upgrades - to the operating system and/or applications
    Administration - software installation and configuration, user management, database administration, reseller billing
    Monitoring – of the network, server hardware, specific ports or applications
    Security - firewall, security audits, vulnerability scans, antivirus updates, DDoS protection and mitigation, intrusion detection, security patching
    Digital Security - backup and restoration, disaster recovery
    Speed and Responsiveness - performance tuning, DNS hosting, load balancing, content delivery network
    Professional Services - web site marketing, SEO optimization, contact scripting, extending and customizing software