Which Server Platform to Host Your Website

There are normally several factors you have to consider when choosing a web hosting provider for your website. It is reasonable that you may not exhaustively weight up all the possible benefits and drawbacks for each factor. Most of the website owners tend to concentrate much on the cost. While this makes all the sense, you need to go beyond that to make sure that you don’t get ultimately inconvenienced as a result of bad choices. One of the most forgotten factors while choosing a web hosting plan is the type of hosting platform.

Basically, there are 2 main web hosting server operating system; Unix and Windows based platforms. Each of them has different benefits and disadvantages in terms of cost, applications, reliability, security, user friendliness as well as ease of maintenance. Although much of their differences are experienced by the server administrator, their operations do finally affect you as a website owner or webmaster in a big way. Let’s look at some of their differences:

Cost

Unix is an open source platform while on the other hand, Windows is proprietary. In other words, Unix is free while Windows is not. What does it mean? The cost of obtaining a server operating system and its extensions is normally finally passed on to the website owner. This means that Windows based hosting plans are likely going to be costly compared to Unix.

Applications

Open source applications normally come with more applications than Windows. They also have more flexibility in terms of compatibility to a pool of extensions. In most cases, your website will require add-on applications. Therefore, it goes without saying that you’ll require a platform that allows you to extend your website functionalities with the widest variety of third party applications.

Reliability

Although the speed of your website will fundamentally depend on the server hardware, the operating system plays a significant role. Most web administrators prefer Unix due to its nimbleness. However, when it comes to user friendliness, Windows admin front-end is easier to use for starters because of its graphical user interface.

It is important to always keep in mind that the reliability of your web hosting service will depend on the company providing the services. The only thing you can do is choose a suitable hosting package for your requirements. It is therefore recommended that you have sufficient knowledge on the company’s profile before hiring them.