Typically, a person doesn’t look at their printer and say, “What have you done for me lately?” People don’t think of their hardware as actively participating in their business; rather, they see business investments like that as constantly depreciating, slowly decreasing in value until they’re virtually worthless and need to be replaced. Your web server, however, can be a much more dynamic part of your business model. It can take an active role in fostering your business and more importantly, with the right tools, can actually take stress and anxiety off of your shoulders and allow you to focus on the business, which is exactly where your mind should be. Using a managed server can make your website the easiest part of your business.
A managed server is exactly that; rather than having your website hosting on a server that you manage and administrate yourself, you can choose to host it with a server, which includes a team of professionally trained IT administrators that are exceptionally experienced in dealing with your exact server. They deal with the everyday headaches and hiccups that are part and parcel with a website, including maintaining security protocols, updating security and software as needed, and monitoring your site to prevent crashing and user issues on the front end. Basically, they take care of everything that someone who isn’t a trained IT professional finds difficult and stressful to deal with, and they do it without requiring you to hire them as an employee. This means that you don’t have to pay out an additional salary and can instead have the benefits of an IT professional at a fraction of the cost.
Managed server packages do, of course, also include everything that the typical, self managed options offer. You will get full hosting services, including a preset level or range of both bandwidth and disk space storage, reboots, and replacement of failed and faulty hardware should anything go wrong, in addition to dedicated server hosting should you need it. Managed services take the ball and run with it, offering you the basic package and then so much more on top of it.
One of the most invaluable services that a managed server will offer you is unlimited, constantly available support. Most server companies will make their customer support available to you twenty four hours a day and seven days a week without fail, so that your internet presence is always represented and you get what you’re paying for: the peace of mind to not stress about your website. They will instantly reboot you in the event of a system issue or failure, and they will set your website up within two hours, which is a much better rate than self managed will provide you with. Depending on the service, they can also offer you extras like a Fantastico automatic script installer (and if you don’t know what that is, you should definitely sign up for the service), cPanel control panel, and rescue mode to ensure that your website is always at its best.
You have a business, and it’s the business that you should be running, not wasting your valuable time on website issues that take you too long to understand and even longer to fix. The best thing that a managed server can do for you is remove that stress and competition for your time, and allow you to get back to doing what you do best. Don’t allow your attention to be frayed by small problems; let a trained professional take care of it without paying the salary of an IT staffer.
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