Web Hosting

I Know I Need It, But What Exactly Is Web Hosting?

Imagine that you live in a city called the Internet. Now think of your website as a portable house and computer servers as neighborhoods where you can put your house. Each neighborhood is different (some are safer than others; some are bigger than others; some are cheaper than others). You want to rent space in a neighborhood that is best suited to your needs.

When you rent a space on a server, you’re setting up house on the Internet. You can be reached by a unique address (your website address), which is based on the server’s address (your neighborhood, or IP address). Now, your website is “on the map” and accessible to everyone online.

You live in your house (it’s your site), but your house lives in a neighborhood (on a server) where it co-exists with other neighbors. The web hosting company functions like the Home Owners Association, providing security, accessibility and other amenities to the sites that live there.

Does It Matter Where I Host My Website?

Just like neighborhoods, not all web hosting companies are the same—responsiveness and the quality of the customer service can vary considerably.

Web hosting companies are responsible for keeping your site active and accessible online 24/7. They are also responsible for maintenance and security, i.e. preventing hackers from entering and tampering with your website.

Additionally, a good hosting company should have an uninterrupted power supply. This means that if there is a power outage, the hosting company will have a generator on standby to ensure that your website doesn’t go down.

Web hosts should also provide large bandwidth that allows multiple visitors to your site at one time. For example, if Oprah mentions your website on her show and you get 15 million hits overnight, your web hosting company should be able to adapt their system to make sure that your website can handle all the traffic (sometimes at an additional cost, but their system should be robust enough to prevent your website from crashing).

What are the Benefits of Web Hosting with NeoNexus?

NeoNexus has formed a partnership with Rackspace® Hosting www.rackspace.com to provide you with a hosting infrastructure that is designed and built to meet our high expectations and yours. Secure and scalable, it comes with Rackspace 100% network uptime guarantee and 24x7x365 expert customer and technology support.

Rackspace (similar to a neighborhood developer) offers superior service in the areas that really count:

• Tech Support is based in USA, so there are no language barriers when trying to trouble shoot
• Response time is the fastest in the industry. For example, NeoNexus once called at 4:30 am on a Sunday morning, and reached a tech within 60 seconds.
• Servers are backed up every night (most hosting companies do this)
• Domains (files and databases) can be restored in 1-2 hours (most companies take days to conduct a restore)
• Assistance is available for diagnosing security issues (most hosting companies do not provide adequate support in this area)

These services enable NeoNexus to better serve you, ensuring that your site is always safe, secure, accessible, and available for as much traffic as we can drive to it (see our SEO page).

How Much Does Web Hosting with NeoNexus Cost?

Our standard website hosting pricing is:

• $19.95 for Basic Websites

• $29.95 for Realtor Websites that use MLS

• $39.95 for eCommerce Websites where NeoNexus handles credit card transactions

We also can provide custom solutions that involve multi-server environments, dedicated firewalls, and more sophisticated configurations.

For detailed information about what we include in each package, just contact us. To read testimonials from our clients, click here.

Why Shouldn’t I Just Use One of the Cheaper (Big) Hosting Sites?

Companies like GoDaddy.com primarily sell cookie-cutter hosting, which means that each customer’s website lives on a single piece of hardware with thousands of other customers. It’s like living in a huge neighborhood where every cookie-cutter house is exactly the same. Although cost-effective (housing is cheaper), the Home Owners Association (GoDaddy) prohibits you from adding certain features or making changes that the managed environment does not allow. In other words, if you want to renovate or put an addition on your house (site), it may not be possible. You’ll have to move to a different neighborhood (host).

NeoNexus provides dedicated hosting, meaning that we have our own computer servers (neighborhoods) via Rackspace. Since NeoNexus owns the entire neighborhood (which is considerably smaller than a GoDaddy-type neighborhood), we are able to allow greater flexibility to our residents. NeoNexus can configure each website domain with options that are customized to your needs. This is important for many applications. To use our housing analogy, we’ll help you renovate or decorate however and whenever you want!

Rackspace Offerings

• Managed Hosting – Includes Managed™ and Intensive® dedicated support offerings allowing your customers to tailor a hosting environment that is optimized and calibrated to their needs.  Managed Colocation bridges the gap between the complete flexibility your customers receive with do-it-yourself hosting and the convenience of a Managed Hosting solution.
• Private Cloud Hosting – Built on dedicated, branded servers running VMware, these environments are protected to give you the flexibility needed from public Cloud with higher measures of security for your customers.
• The Rackspace Cloud™ – Includes Cloud Sites™, a load-and-go platform, that scales with a customer’s traffic; Cloud Files™, unlimited online storage for media, and Cloud Servers™, custom servers on-demand.
• Rackspace Email & Apps – Includes a budget-friendly email hosting choice or managed Microsoft Exchange email.

FAST FACTS ABOUT RACKSPACE: 

• Founded in 1998 – Over 10 years of hosting expertise
• Listed on the New York Stock Exchange (RAX) in 2008
• Headquarters: San Antonio, Texas
• Global Offices: Hong Kong, London, Amsterdam, Austin, TX and Blacksburg, VA
• Nine (9) Worldwide Data Centers: Hong Kong, China (1); London, UK (3); San Antonio, TX (2); Dallas, TX (1); Herndon, VA (1); and Ashburn, VA
• Over 70,000 customers and over 2,600 employees
• Net income positive since February 2001
• Industry-leading Service Level Agreements
• A Leader in the Gartner North American Web Hosting Magic Quadrant since 2004

Here’s an Overview of the Technical Stuff You Don’t Need To Know or Worry About (But You’ll Be Glad That We Do!)

Of course, there’s more to web hosting than the simple housing analogy we make above.  The specifications of the server itself, the type of operating system used, and other considerations are all important for sites that require a high level of performance.

NeoNexus supports both Linux and Windows hosting.  We prefer Linux due to the lower cost for our customers, but we can support both server operating systems.

Most companies show you packages of bandwidth, hard drive size, number of databases, and other technical specifications.  Our introductory packages listed above contain “enough” for small to medium size customers.  We start you at that level, and only upgrade when necessary (80% of our customers don’t need to upgrade). 

Complex business sites call for database support and application development platforms such as PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, and ASP.NET.  These platforms allow us to write or install scripts for applications like interactive functions, forms, bulletin boards, guest books, content managements systems, etc.

We can provide an interface or control panel for managing your part of the Web server.  If you are a power user, we offer this at no additional charge, but 95% of our customers let us handle it for them.   

Interested in Our Web Hosting Service?

If you want more information about our web hosting service, or if you have questions about a hosting feature not mentioned here, please contact us. To read testimonials from our hosting clients, click here.

Take a dedicated server with flexibility for your hosting needs. Add superior customer service and a rapid response time. Combine them with an affordable, robust, efficient, and secure hosting environment, and you get the NeoNexus X Factor: a desirable neighborhood where you’ll want your site to live.

NeoNexus Corporation offers reliable, secure, trusted website hosting and email solutions.