I'm currently using a dedicated server at another hosting company. I am happy with their service and support but am tired of paying the several hundred dollars per month out of my pocket for the dedicated server. They really don't want to allow me to go back to shared hosting. I don't know if that is a marketing ploy to keep me paying for the dedicated server or because they don't want to handle the traffic demands on a shared account. Neither web site nor database disk space is a problem. The problem is the 20k or so unique visitors per day. My question is do you believe that your (max) shared plan would accommodate that kind of traffic or should I stick with the dedicated server? Thanks
Really this is difficult to say. It all depends on what your web application is doing. The issue is less to do with the number of visitors but the amount of bandwidth your site will consume within a given month. For our Max plan we give 100 GB of bandwidth and at the start of the new month it resets back to zero. Probably the best thing to do is to look at our Max plan again and check with what you are using on your current hosting provider. If the disk usage, bandwidth usage, and SQL space usage falls in line with our plan then we should be able to accomodate you. http://Winhost.com/windows-hosting-plans.aspx Also you do have to consider that we are in a shared hosting environment. So some features such as remote desktop connection to our server, and any SQL functions that will require SA (systems administrator) rights will not be supported on our shared hosting environment. If you do needs these special/higher privilages then I'm afraid a dedicated server is what you will need.
RDC and SA database permissions are not a problem. In a fully managed environment I have no need for them. I'll check on usage statistics you mentioned. Thank you,
Hi Ray, So I understand that remote desktop is not possible with the Max plan, since we're all on shared servers. What I want to do is to be able to access the folders on my website through internet explorer, to do some folder organization. Right now, that is not as efficient with my FTP program (WS_FTP Pro) If I get the IIS working, can I do that with IIS? Sol
Sol, I'm afraid what you are asking for will severely compromise the security of the server. What you are asking is remote desktop access. If we allow that, everyone will be able or have the potential to access other root accounts that is not there. I'm afraid at this time the FTP protocol is the only way to connect to our server. But do we really want to have that type of access to the server? Meaning going into it (provided that some how get it secured) and doing some changes directly on the production server. Typically you would want to make the changes on the test or development computer and push it to the production server. Albeit it makes a lot of things easier by being able to go to the server directly and making the changes, but if the changes are wrong then the people browsing your site will get affected. FTP does have some capabilities which will allow you to access the code directly and input code updates, but as to moving files and folders around, well its better to make those changes on ones computer and then uploading it to the server.
Hi Ray, I don't really need remote access. I understand the security threat for the shared servers. I had some weird FTP thing happen, and I doubled up some folders, and others were empty. i wish i could have just gone onto the server and moved them, but it wasn't too tough to delete and re-upload. Thanks. Sol