Unix Vs Windows Hosting-Which One Is The Best?

This simple question is every day made by many web design newbie’s looking for the perfect hosting plan for them. It is the first thing you should decide if you’re planning to buy a web hosting plan. UNIX and Windows operating systems are the two main types of operating system platforms on which you may host your website. Each has its own set of unique features, advantages and disadvantages. The right question isn’t ?Which one is the best?? but ?Which one is the right choice for your needs??. In this article I will show you the advantages of each one and a short comparison between them. Before that, there’s something you must know, the operating system that you use on your desktop has nothing to do whit the one used by your web host to serve your webpage Many people think that if they use on their desktop a Windows operating system they have to use a windows hosting plan, that’s absolutely not true!! The same rule applies if you had developed your website with MS FrontPage, usually Unix systems have FrontPage Extensions installed.

Now let’s make a UNIX hosting overview:

Nowadays most of the web designers are choosing UNIX servers to host their websites. Everyday Windows is losing costumers to UNIX hosting and the web hosts are exploring this fact offering daily new promotions and UNIX plans. And why are the web designers choosing UNIX plans? First a short and very important advantage: the price, the web host companies usually use free editions of UNIX systems like Linux Red Hat, Linux Fedora Core or even FreeBSD operating system, this fact lower the final price for the costumer because the web hosts don’t have to pay for the server operating system. All the UNIX operating systems are under the GNU license, this means that anyone can access the source code and modify it, very important to optimize the server and resolve any problem or security issue, UNIX systems are the most flexible and stable. It’s easier to upgrade and expand. By default these servers are installed in text mode, the system uses fewer resources and dedicates all its power to the WebPages hosted. Supports Perl, CGI-BIN, PHP3, Shells, MySQL, PostgresSQL, MS FrontPage extensions and much much more.

Windows hosting overview:

Everyone knows Windows server operating systems family! It’s true that it is losing points to UNIX hosting, is true that is more expensive than a UNIX hosting plan but Windows still Windows!! And it supports some tools that UNIX cannot run. Only Windows plans support Scripting languages for dynamic content such as Active Server Pages (ASP) and ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, Active Perl and Visual C++. Only Windows hosting will run Microsoft specific applications such as MS SQL databases, MS Access Databases and IIS. (This is very important and if you’re planning to use any of those languages or applications in you website, you have to buy a Windows hosting plan!).

Now that you know the top features for each operating system, let’s compare them:

Performance:

In low-stress conditions Windows and UNIX servers have very similar performances but under high load UNIX is very superior to Windows.

Stability:

UNIX handles high server loads than Windows; UNIX systems rarely require a reboot, Windows constantly need them. UNIX can run stable much time than a Windows server and UNIX up-time is bigger.

Compatibility:

If you design and program a website under a UNIX server you can easily host it in a windows server, but the reverse is not always possible, Avoiding windows languages (ASP, ASP.NET, etc) and databases (Access and MS SQL) is the better choice.

Price:

Any server hosting a website require a operating system and licenses, Windows 2003 and applications like SQL Server costs a lot of money, on the other hand, UNIX, usually Linux, is free to download, use and operate. This make the difference between the price, UNIX hosting will always be cheaper than a windows one.

Conclusion:

Unix hosting is more stable, has better performances, is more compatible and cheaper than a windows hosting plan. I always recommend UNIX hosting. You will only need Windows hosting if you’re going to develop in ASP, .NET or VB.

Lu’s Carvalho is a professional web designer that decided with more 5 experienced web designers to start rating all the web hosts that our clients use. The result was a webpage http://www.besttopwebhost.com/ , a free web host directory, were you can find the top providers and plans reviews. If you have any question or comment, please contact me at mailto:luis@besttopwebhost.com.

VPS versus Reseller Hosting

Mentioned the 3-letter words, VPS, it carves a smile to certain people. Why? Because it resembles a dedicated server. This is particularly a cheerful news for those folks who wish to own a dedicated server but cannot afford to do so. Basically, as most of you would have known by now, VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. The physical server is separated into a few partition and these partitions are the VPS-es. It gives you the feeling of having a stand-alone server when you purchase the hosting spaces. You are isolated from your neighbours and barely know each other although under the same roof.What about reseller hosting? I’d define reseller hosting as an account in shared server environment. Simple as that, almost the same as shared hosting. But the difference between reseller hosting and shared hosting is that with reseller hosting, you can create multiple accounts of shared hosting. So, to choose VPS or reseller hosting? This is a big question for almost everyone because it’s kind of confusing as there are pros and cons to every decision that you make. Let’s just analyse some of the features of VPS and reseller hosting, hopefully will make your hosting decision not much of a headache.

VPS - A solution for dedicated server

VPS offers you the features of dedicated server but it’s more to a dedicated server being shared by a few other tenants. I know what you are thinking now. But bear in mind that I mentioned “a few” other tenants. Which means, it is not shared by as many other websites as a shared hosting in a physical server. A reliable hosting provider will have the maximum amount of tenants in a physical server to a certain degree so that the resources of the server can fully support the minimum resources allocated for every client.

The most precious feature of VPS would be the root access. Every client will be provided a root access, hence, you can install anything that you like from softwares to Operating System so long it has proper licenses.This means you have the ability to install software which your provider doesn’t even have or provide to its other existing shared hosting or reseller hosting clients. Those who long for a peace of mind, will be happy to have owned a VPS because with VPS you are isolated from other clients’ VPS-es and regardless of how heavy their traffic is, it won’t affect your website. In addition, everyone is provided with a certain amount of CPU usage , RAM usage and bandwidth usage. Although their traffic has drained the amount of bandwidth, it will be the bandwidth allocated to them and has got nothing to do with you although they are your neighbours in the same server.

The above features of VPS seem tempting but do remember that you have to do all the installation yourself. You need to know a bit of server maintenance knowledge and also software-related stuffs. Although you can always refer your problem to your hosting provider, I believe you will be charged with an amount of fees.

Reseller Hosting - Ease your life!

Does reseller hosting offer you a better solution? Well, it depends on people. If you are a person who wants freedom of this and that, you might not be able to survive under reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is good in the sense that it’s more organized as everything is setup for you by your hosting provider. You are given the WHM (Web Host Manager) and with WHM you can customize the hosting plans (webspace, bandwidth and etc.) for your resold accounts.

A resold account is just like any other shared hosting account, with a cPanel as its control panel under Linux platform. You can sell your resold accounts at your own price and some hosting providers offer the private label reseller plan(meaning you can have your own brand name, thus having your own nameservers). In other words, your resold clients will only know you as their hosting provider and won’t figure out you are reselling unless you tell them when they ask you. With reseller hosting, you are bound to what the hosting provider offers you, especially the softwares and applications. Hence, like I’ve mentioned in the first sentence, reseller hosting might not suit you if you want freedom.

However, it’s useful if clients do not mind what the hosting providers offer them particularly in terms of applications. Imagine you don’t have to get yourself in with all the fuss of installing and configuring this and that. All you do is via the control panel provided to you, then you can start reselling already. In my opinion, reseller hosting is never a bad option and would still be a competitive option towards VPS. It is indeed reliable and useful when you think of the user-friendliness it provides to those who are not so familiar with hosting related stuff.

In general, it is widely speculated that in near future, VPS might take over the role of Reseller Hosting, but truth is yet to be known. Let those hosting fans decide for themselves which one holds to be a better option.

About the Author

SY Ho is an Online Marketing Executive ofhttp://www.exabytes.com

ASP & .NET Web Hosting

ASP.NET web hosting is the latest technologies from Microsoft, which develops web applications significantly easier with far less code than with classic ASP, and ASP.NET pages work in all browsers. ASP.NET web hosting refers to web hosting companies who provide support for (ASP) Active Server Page. ASP.NET is built upon the .NET Framework. The ASP.NET web hosting framework has a set of web development technologies marketed by Microsoft. They are the common language runtime and the .NET Framework class library. ASP.NET web hosting lets you to create dynamic websites, web applications and XML Web services.

ASP.NET web hosts execute on the server and generate markup such as HTML, WML, or XML that is sent to a browser. ASP.NET web hosting is now popularly available, and the Microsoft ASP.NET is the fastest growing Web development platform in the world today. The tools you need for your website are provided by the ASP.NET web hosting packages, including software development, content management and many more. There are many top web hosting service providers are available, who provide the ASP.NET support on their web servers and also help you to integrate server software with an existing back office management suite for a truthfully wide-ranging approach to e-commerce.

Some of the advantages ofASP.NET Web hosting are; Currently ASP.NET supports VB.NET, Java Script.Net and more. It helps the programmer to simply enter on the project as they are already attentive of more programming languages. The ASP.NET Framework offers a managed runtime environment, providing a virtual machine with JIT and a class library. ASP.NET mechanically recovers from any memory leaks and other errors, and makes your website available to the users at all times. This ASP.NET web hosting, the latest development tool is revolutionizing the web with its speed and scalability. As Software developed in ASP.NET is very fast as the ASP.NET assembled the code into binary language, the replies are very fast through the ASP.NET web hosting. ASP.NET allows the developer to develop powerful database driven applications. ASP.NET web hosting is for increased security and reliability.

ASP.NET web hosting is a major release that includes essential new features that defines a new level of functionality against which all Web development is designed. The ASP.NET web hosting service enable database functions on a web site and fits everyone looking for a powerful web hosting solution. ASP.NET web hosting endeavor to simplify developer’s conversion from Windows application development to web development by offering the ability to build pages composed of controls similar to a Windows user interface. ASP.NET web hosting is an object oriented and offers many tools for the programmers. ASP.NET web hosting enhances the confidence to the programmer to develop applications using an event-driven GUI paradigm, rather than in conventional web scripting environments like ASP and PHP.

Most of theASP.NET web hosting services uses the .NET Framework as an infrastructure. It is safer to host your ASP pages on a Windows 2000 server as they are more stable.? Most of the ASP components work with (IIS) Internet Information Services, which is specific to Windows. ASP.Net web hosting makes the hosting and development a pleasure to the website holders.

About the Author

Author ? Compare Web hosts.

Our aim is to offer peoplecheap hosting , dedicated servers, web hosting reviews, managed server, windows and Linux hosting, asp and cold fusion web hosting. Our network of comparison sites - www.CompareWebHosts.com, www.CompareWebResellers.com, www.CompareWebDesigners.com and www.WebHostIQ.com was designed to help web users find dedicat

Free ASP FTP Hosting

To understand the concept of Free ASP Hosting, we need to be clear about what the terms ASP and web hosting mean. Active server pages, or ASP as it is commonly known, is a server side language. This means that the code of the ASP, which is programmed in JScript or Visual BASIC Script, runs on the server when the page is requested and then the final result is sent to the browser. ASP was originally made by Microsoft for their IIS and Personal Web servers but now it is being used by Java-enabled Unix Servers like Apache.

Web hosting is a service which enables companies and individuals to showcase their websites on the computer servers, so that people connected to the Internet can access them whenever they require. These websites are available on the computer server 24/7, and this makes accessibility extremely convenient.

Search the net and you will come across innumerable companies offering both paid and Free ASP Hosting services. Paid services are beneficial for websites with commercial purposes that involve transactions such as credit-card processing. Individual websites, not involving very heavy traffic can opt for Free ASP Hosting.

Many companies provide Free ASP Hosting services. Though these companies do not charge directly for hosting your website, they would require you to place a banner advertising their company. Another point to be kept in mind is that you don’t really have the freedom of choosing the name of your website. This is because these companies generally allocate a name, which in most cases is an extension of the server address. So, if you want a unique name for your website, you will have to pay to register it. There are also companies who impose certain restrictions on the content, scripting language and also functions. So these are also factors that you need to take into consideration before deciding on whether you require paid or free web hosting.

Free FTP Hosting provides detailed information on FTP hosting, free FTP hosting, FTP server hosting, FTP site hosting and more. Free FTP Hosting is affiliated withDedicated Hosting Servers .

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