Bringing your web hosting in-house is a decision that every successful e-commerce business will have to consider at a certain point.
While there are a huge number of cloud hosting services, last year’s Cloudflare incident led to a large number of businesses experiencing unplanned downtime.
There’s no doubt that having your own in-house web hosting can allow for crucial control over data and uptime. However, ecommerce in particular can scale both up and down fairly quickly – especially for companies that sell seasonal products.
There are also alternative options, such as dedicated servers which may serve as a ‘best of both worlds’ style solution.
So with all of that in mind, let’s look at the benefits, drawbacks and considerations that e-commerce businesses will have to make.
The Benefits of In-House Servers
The benefits of hosting your e-commerce website are fairly straightforward.
First of all, you can fully control website access and manually put blocks in place to fend off scrapers and unauthorized crawlers.
You can also improve site performance on your terms – if your website is not as fast as you’d like it to be, you control the hardware. In a competitive e-commerce niche, a half-second of load time can make a huge difference.
Some cloud services will contractually tie you in with certain software services that come alongside your hosting. When you manage your own hosting, you can pick your own software for things such as cybersecurity and operating systems.
One more benefit is the ability to be reactive when systems become overwhelmed – you are not beholden to a queue of tickets or slow hosting maintenance teams.
If something goes down and it’s at a critical time, such as a sale, you have the access to identify and amend the problem.
The Drawbacks
Ultimately, the drawbacks are all related to the same key factor: cost.
Buying servers and memory storage can be incredibly expensive, and you also need to consider the cost of maintaining them.
From the skilled employees, you will need to manage both the software and hardware to the energy cost of running servers, it is incredibly resource and money-intensive.
Consider Future Scaling
You need to factor in the fact that your business may scale quickly, and in-house hosting will only be as reactive as your budget allows.
You may be better off sticking to web hosting if you are still in a period of significant growth and expect to maintain an upward trajectory.
Operations that are stabilizing and growing at a more measured rate may want to consider in-house hosting to take better control of their data. Businesses that are already hosting in-house may be able to save money by going refurbished for key equipment, like Dell Rack servers from certified retailers.
Dedicated Servers
We’ve previously covered the benefits of dedicated servers, which allow you to have your own servers in an external data center.
This can be a best-of-both-worlds solution, providing you with your own hosting – albeit managed offsite – without the additional direct costs of running and maintenance.
Again, if you want complete control and maintenance of your hosting, in-house may be a better option, but this is a great solution for growing ecomm operations.
Be Sure To Consult Peers
Finally, while every business is different, you will oftentimes find that different e-commerce niches are more likely to favor different solutions.
For example, there are retail spaces like the sale of rare drinks that have a lot of scraping-related troubles, and e-commerce operations in the personalized product space need to provide additional security to customers.
Be sure to find an Ecommerce Network near you to discuss what would best suit your business with peers in the same or similar spaces.
