Web Server

The Disadvantages of Setting up your Own Web Server

There’s all sorts of reasons why you might be thinking about setting up your own home web server to host your websites. Maybe you’ve looked around at the plans offered by leading hosting companies and decided you could probably save yourself a bit of time and hassle by going it alone, or it might just be that you enjoy getting stuck into configuring hardware and relish the challenge.

Web Server

Whatever the reason, before you begin, we’ve got some bad news for you. It’s not that we like to discourage anyone from going it alone or trying something new, rather, it’s just worth pointing out that setting up your own server isn’t quite as straightforward as it may seem at first, and the truth is, any of the web’s best hosting providers can take care of your websites better, and more cheaply, than you could alone.

Still thinking of taking the plunge? Why not take the time to read through the following disadvantages of setting up your own web server first.

More expensive than virtual hosting

You can take out a shared hosting plan for less than the price of a regular cup of coffee on a monthly basis. Whilst other options which do offer more resources and greater levels of control do ultimately cost more, their prices are dwarfed by the expense of buying your own server hardware and equipment. Add in specialist web server software like Apache, and you’re looking at a tidy sum.

And that’s before you even begin to total up the extra electricity costs that come with powering your server 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

When you total up just how much its going to cost you to run an efficient website server from home, you’ll find you could probably pay for even a top-end dedicated server from a hosting company many times over.

Less reliability from your broadband provider

Whilst hosting companies invest in dedicated resources to keep their websites online around the clock, for the most part, you’ll be relying on your home Internet connection which, as you’ll know yourself, isn’t guaranteed to function flawlessly at all times.

After all, how many times have you had to reset your router because the ‘net temporarily went down, or, worse, call up your ISP when you just couldn’t get it back up and running again. Whenever your home Internet goes down, your websites go with them, causing frustration for your visitors and perhaps even a loss of business for you.

Setting up is more complicated than you might think

If you already know what you’re doing and have experience in this area, then setting up may not present the same kind of challenge it does to less experience would-be server owners.

Even if you’re somewhat familiar with setting up hardware, you’ll find that properly installing and configuring your new server presents unique obstacles and ways of doing things that can be tricky to say the least.

If you’re not much a tech-head to begin with, the chances are that you’re really going to have a hard time getting everything working properly.

You may be violating your ISP’s Terms of Service

Not all broadband providers allow you to use a normal domestic Internet package to power a whole server.

To do that without getting into trouble, and even risking having your Internet cut off, you may need to upgrade to a premium business package, again adding to your total running costs and making the whole thing far more expensive than going with a reputable hosting company.