Bharat SainiLast Updated on January 10, 2014 by Bharat Saini
Running a website can be a gargantuan task; perhaps not in the same way as, say, running a factory, but intense nonetheless. While bloggers get off relatively easily by often vying to not do any original programming, anyone who wants to host and build their own website has a lot more than programming to consider. For instance, the server on which your site is to be hosted will either need to be built from scratch or rented from a company. Then, you must choose the processor, the memory and, most importantly, the OS on which the site runs. These can all be difficult decisions constantly weighing the short-term savings of lower-end hardware against the long-term need for growth space and any respite you can find should be taken. One respite might be in the decision to invest in unmetered hosting, which not only means one less thing to weigh, but also an investment in a future of Internet success.
Why Unmetered Hosting?
The obvious first question, especially if you are a new start up or a content or media-based site, is why to pick unmetered hosting if you obviously don’t need it yet. With a good processor you can handle any unexpected surges, while not being unrealistic about your expected page requests in the first year or so. But, our Internet based economy does not move at the same speed as a brick-and-mortar business, and while if you open a privately-owned restaurant, the likelihood of immediate popularity is low, things simply move at a different pace online. With the ability to pay for advertising space, the effectiveness of viral marketing, along with a genuine surge of interest in quality things and good prices, and the ease of widespread attention via social networking, if your website has a decent product or interesting content, then it is possible you could become extremely popular within the course of days. Unmetered hosting gives you not only the buffer space you need to deal with potentially crippling surges, but also the confidence in your products and content to push for those surges in the first place.
Preparing for the Worst
In The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg urges his partner on how important it is for the success of their website that it never should go down. And, if that was a genuine concern, it genuinely paid off. Part of the reason for Facebook’s popularity is that it simply never goes down, and the one time it did for a couple of hours caused users to ignite in fury and spurn the website. Don’t let this happen to you! Prepare for the worst surges, the most page requests, and also any potential page-request attacks. Presuming that you will not need the bandwidth will either forestall potential popularity, or crash the website when that popularity arrives. Investing in unmetered hosting is more than taking a superfluous step or being gluttonous, it is literally an investment of confidence in your website. And, if you are making a website at all, that confidence must be there; all you have to do is show it.
