When it comes to hosting for a business, you don’t want to use just anyone. There are many critical factors to consider including security, stability, uptime, scalability, and more. Because of this, many businesses gravitate towards big, established brands for hosting and management such as Amazon’s AWS or Microsoft’s Azure. 

Companies like these can likely provide well beyond your technical needs. That’s not to say they’re all the exact same. Azure caters to Microsoft products, allowing large companies to move their Windows-based infrastructure online more easily. Meanwhile, AWS boasts their general flexibility and universal capabilities. 

Each brand has its unique strengths. When it comes to weaknesses, however, there are some overlapping issues that basically any large-scale hosting company deals with. 

Overwhelming Options 

Right from the start, many businesses are overwhelmed with the variety of packages and services offered by large hosting companies. AWS, for example, greets you with an entire library of services and products to choose from. Simply trying to find basic website hosting proves to be difficult and confusing. 

Unclear Pricing Structures

Equally confusing are the pricing structures. Many companies try to sign you up on free trials or temporary discount pricing, only for you to discover the true inflated price months down the road. 

These companies also tend to work off a pay-per-use model. In other words, the more data you process and store, the more your hosting costs. While it sounds nice in theory, as you only pay for what you use, it can make it very difficult to predict your monthly costs as prices fluctuate.  

It also leaves you severely exposed to DDoS attacks.

DDoS attacks infect a large number of devices with malware, and then use them to unleash a coordinated flood of traffic on an unsuspecting network. In addition to slowing down and (likely) crashing your systems, it results in a massage spike of data use.

The average size of a DDoS attack is 2.5 gigabits per second. If you’re being charged per data used, you’ll be left with a very large hosting bill following a DDoS attack.

Advanced Knowledge 

Once you’ve figured out what your business needs, the real difficultly begins. Within any given service, there are countless add-ons, tools, settings, and more. While this provides a lot of flexibility and customization, it requires a lot of work and understanding. The deeper your needs go, the deeper your understanding needs to be. 

Each platform is different, which means you either need to hire someone who is experienced on the particular platform, or you’ll need to invest in training a current employee. The question is, do you want someone learning a new platform as they’re managing your IT needs? 

Support Problems 

Platforms like AWS and Azure do offer their own technical support, should you require it. In fact, they often provide a certain amount of free support when you sign up. However, those hours can quickly be eaten up during the onboarding. After that, you’ll pay for support. 

Things can get very expensive very quickly.   

A better solution is generally to find a third party to help manage and maintain your hosting needs. This can provide more affordable support, but it also adds complexity to your hosting management and expenses. 

A Simpler, Yet Powerful Hosting Solution 

At Expedient Technology Services, we provide straightforward, yet diverse hosting solutions for businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a start-up or an enterprise, we have the capabilities to meet your specific needs.  

We operate under flat rate costs, so you know exactly what you’ll pay every month. We can even bundle in support hours so that you get professional assistance when you need it. As your company grows, we can easily scale our services with you. 

While our initial costs may seem higher, they’re generally cheaper in the long run. Best of all, they’re much less stressful to understand and manage. After all, ETS exists to provide Stress Free IT®. For hosting, computer services, and technical support in Dayton, Ohio and beyond, contact ETS today.