Looking to Refocus Your Team? Managed Hosting Can Help
Updated August 10, 2020
Budgets, budgets, budgets. Businesses of all sizes live and die by them. But, it’s small businesses that really have to walk the tightrope of skepticism of every single expense. There are some things that are non-negotiable in the modern, digital-focused economy. For example, every business needs a hosting solution. It’s incredibly difficult to gain any kind of meaningful traction without a website for your business. However, while having a website is a given, the hosting solution you ultimately choose isn’t. As you know, there are many options available to you when it comes to web hosting.
If your business is running lean and you need your team to be strategically focused, managed VPS hosting could be the solution you’re looking for. You’re probably thinking that sounds all well and good as a suggestion, but why? Isn’t that kind of hosting more expensive than a basic hosting plan that’s a few dollars a month?
This is a fair concern and one that many business owners have. If you’re just looking at the numbers side by side comparing monthly plans from different hosting providers, sure substantial differences can be found. But, it’s what’s being offered in those plans and how they affect your site’s performance along with the burden on your team that’s really important. Suddenly, the decision isn’t so clear. Paying a little bit more per month for a managed hosting solution could actually save you money in ways you may not have considered. It’s not just about the costs, either. Managed hosting can help you work more efficiently so that you can focus on what you do best: providing a quality product or service to your customers.
Don’t spend resources, both monetary and employee time, where you don’t have to. Here are some of the ways opting for a managed VPS hosting environment can help you reorganize and grow your business.
No Need to Hire More Staff
If your business is still in the early stages, you know how critical it is to keep your overhead costs as low as possible. One of the ways to do so is to assess how your team is using their time. We’re not talking about letting go of underperformers or anything like that. Rather, the idea is to use the team you currently have and to keep them focused on the jobs they’re already doing.
With simpler hosting solutions, you are given a login and that’s that. The server and hosting environment are now your responsibility. Are you experiencing downtime? Better figure out why. Has everything on the server been backed up recently? Someone on your team would need to be responsible for that. In fact, you would need someone just monitoring your site full time in order to deal with any issues ranging from the smallest thing to major concerns. Hiring a full time IT person just to make sure your site is functioning properly probably isn’t a cost you’re looking to take on. While managed hosting still leaves certain responsibilities up to you, basic issues like investigating the reason the site went down and getting it online again or a simple backup are taken care of.
Not needing to hire someone to monitor your site full time is worth the additional costs of managed hosting, which leads us to the next point.
Security and Expertise
You’ve decided that it would be too expensive to hire additional personnel just to monitor the site. So, what’s the alternative if not managed hosting? It means you or someone on your existing team needs to stay on top of security and performance issues. Do you have a background in managing servers? If not, this task can easily become overwhelming.
As with all things in life, it’s easier to leave things in the hands of the experts. You can consider managed hosting an investment in peace of mind, which is quite valuable. Instead of having to wear many different hats, you and your team can instead focus on their core competencies. That is, focusing on doing the job you’re already doing well. With managed hosting, you’re leaving the basic task of keeping a server running up to the professionals who do this for a living.
Additionally, with managed hosting, there are more security measures in place to protect your site. Being the responsible party for navigating a DDOS attack isn’t exactly an easy job and can become overwhelming. Managed hosting brings security through redundancy and constant monitoring. A lot of work goes into being able to maintain that 99.9% uptime guarantee. That’s work that would be cost prohibitive to do on your own.
Save Time and Money
Sure, time is money. But for the purposes of managed hosting, let’s separate the two. We’ve talked about the time aspect quite a bit. As a business owner, you simply don’t have the time to constantly check on your server and make changes to it. If you hire someone in-house to do it, yes, that person will require a salary. But, it can cost you time as well. You need to manage that person. There will be performance reviews and meetings. More employees mean more time spent on the management side of things rather than the execution.
The thing about being responsible for a server is that it’s time-consuming enough on a good day when things are working smoothly. If at anytime there is an actual crisis, you won’t have any choice but to put all of your energy into resolving the problem yourself. That’s not to say managed hosting is completely hands off. But, you will spend significantly less time worrying about the nuts and bolts of keeping your site going if you leave it in the hands of the professionals.
Scalability
The ability to have a business that scales as needs change is “http://info.leanbusinessplatform.com/what-is-scalability-and-why-is-it-important-for-your-startup” (This link is offline) important if the business is to remain successful. This is true for start-ups, especially. Managed hosting can help with scalability. As you grow in popularity and see more regular increases in traffic, you may see your bandwidth limit approaching. You may even start to be concerned about slowdown and site performance. Managed hosting offers solutions in a few ways. For one, you have customer service representatives you can contact if you know in advance traffic might unusually pick up (say you’re running a promotion) or if you’re noticing some performance issues. Secondly, if you know that you’ve outgrown your current hosting plan, you can easily have your plan changed to a higher tier. You can even get assistance migrating to a different solution entirely. Is it time to move on to a dedicated server? Piece of cake.
Conclusion
At KnownHost, we know how important your hosting solution is to your business. If refocusing your team while maintaining a high-performance website that keeps your customers happy is a priority for you, we’re here to help. With managed VPS hosting, you can have peace of mind knowing your server environment is being monitored and is working properly while you focus on running the day to day operations of your business. Contact us today. Our team of experts is here to answer any questions you have and to help you find a hosting solution that makes the most sense for your business needs.