Why Small Businesses Should Not Host Web Services Locally

Why should a small business host their Internet services with a company like WebHostingBuzz?  The answers are quite simple, but often go without notice:

• It can easily cost more to maintain your own web server than hosting off-site
• Companies like WHB have a dedicated data center under their control
• Staff is on-site to manage the equipment 24/7
• Data Centers have redundant power, cooling, and Internet Connections
• Security and integrity of data

Small Businesses Get Caught in a Trap

I often see technology situations in small businesses that are less than ideal.  I have seen an active server – without Anti-Virus – being used as a workstation by a receptionist.  Other times, I’ve seen servers that use public IP addresses and are not behind a firewall (hardware or software).  There  is simply no excuse for these oversights, but it happens frequently to small businesses.

The reason for this can often be the greed of corporate consulting companies who try to convince a small business owner to buy some “latest and greatest” “must have” product or service that is a magic solution to all a business’s problems.  Even though it is sometimes nice to have a magic solution, getting charged $150 per hour (or more) when something breaks is not so nice.

Rarely do you find a small business (defined, for the purposes of this article, as a company with 15 or fewer employees) that staffs a full time IT employee dedicated to maintaining hardware, software, licenses, and network performance.  In most cases, there is a catch-all person who happens to know how to accomplish simple tasks with technology, but may not be trained to handle a business network  environment.  Because of this, IT consultants are often hired to come in and implement a solution.  The problem is that these consultants are often too interested in their own profits and not the actual needs of the customer.  

The worst instance of this is when an IT consultant convinces a small business to run web and email services on their own local networks – often times, without a full time IT employee who can maintain or even understand the system.

Problems that can Result from Hosting Web Services Locally:

• Small Business ISPs (Cable and DSL providers) tend to be unstable
• Security is easily compromised because of a lack of security updates
• If an incident did occur, who would fix it?  How much would it cost?
• If an incident did occur, would the small business even know it?

A Real World Example

One of my customers has about ten employees between two offices in different states.  A consultant came in and installed a very nice dual-core Xeon server with Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2007 so the company could “run their own email.” 

Problem #1:  The consultant did not set up the Exchange Server properly.

It is always important to get the initial installation done properly, and in this case (quite possibly intentionally), the consultant messed up on some key areas.  This included the SSL certificate install, the Web Access setup, and a few other things that were misconfigured.

Problem #2: The ISP is Irresponsible

Over a period of 6 months, the ISP “accidentally” changed the static IP address used by the local network over three times.  When the change went into effect, it immediately took down all email services.  Upon identifying the problem and notifying the Business Services department of the ISP, their reply was “Opps.  Looks like someone reset it this morning.”  The definition of static is something that does not change.  Why would the ISP change the static IP address not once, but three times?

The othe problem arising from the ISP changing the IP address has to do with DNS.  When you send email to someone@nowhere.com, the sending program looks up the IP address associated with a particular Mail Exchange (MX) record in a DNS server.  When this record has to be changed, it can take up to 48 hours to fully propogate the change to all the DNS servers on the Internet.  What happens during that 48 hour period?  The mail is directed to the wrong location, and you are unable to receive email from the outside.

This ended up wrecking about two days worth of productivity each time the IP address was changed because email services were down.  Clients would send emails and then call a day later wondering why they were not responded to.  It certainly did not look good for the business.

Problem #3: Management

Anyone who walks in to a similar situation as a contractor is often between a rock and a hard place.  You never know how the system was set up, whether there were intentional mistakes made so there would be steady business for that consultant in the future, or any number of other issues.  How exactly do you manage something that you did not set up or recommend?

The Solution: Small Businesses should Host Internet Services Off-Site

To avoid similar problems, all a small business needs to do is host their content and email off-site. It is far better to use a reputable company whose focus is on having your as a customer than to use a consultant who may only be interested in your money when something breaks.

WebHostingBuzz offers business-class web services for as low as $35 per month, which includes support and management (not to mention, 99.9% up-time guarantee)  You can let us worry about keeping the email and website operational while you focus on running your business.