Hosting

At Stiff Design we don't believe in offering our clients the same hosting packages in a 'one size fits all service'.

In our experience every website has different resource requirements and these need to be identified before a suitable host server can be sought.

Our approach is to identify the business components of new projects at an early stage of discussions. When we fully understand the business components of the project we evaluate the technical underpinning and the server environment required to fulfilling the project aims.

We provide hosting for clients on dedicated webspace that we hold, if our clients require a scalable business platform with grater flexibility to configure the server environment then as part of our development package we also source the hosting.

Hosting specifications can be a confusing subject for none technical people but essentially there are 3 main types of hosting platforms:

1. Shared Hosting
2. Virtual Private Server (VPS)
3. Dedicated Server

Hosting platforms are can be offered on a Microsoft Windows platform or based on Unix Open Source platform, Unix-like computer operating system include Linux and Solaris.

Shared hosting or virtual hosting is where many websites reside on one web server. This is generally the most economical option for hosting as many clients share the overall cost of server maintenance. The hosting service does have the advantage of built-in system monitoring, technical support and administration. The disadvantages are that the server is not generally customisable towards individual website requirements along with the fact that there is a greater level of contention for resources.

Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a hosting environment that has the characteristics of both shared hosting and dedicated hosting. The Virtual Private Server resides on its own partition and runs its own operating system in a secure and private environment and is wholly independent form neighbouring partitions. A Virtual Private Server gives you the same level of root access as a dedicated server whilst sharing the cost of the hardware, so you are virtually running your own server but at a fraction of the cost.

Dedicated Server, or managed hosting is where the client leases an entire server. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as operators have full control over the server. Server support can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. There is a wide choice of server configurations and operating systems along with the amount of resources that can be included, so that these exactly match the organisations needs.

For further information please contact us directly or send us a message