Capital Hosting

In web hosting industry, the most common type of server used is Linux. But that doesn't mean you should follow the majority. It all depends on what you need, and how you want to design your website to serve your web audience.

In case you get confused, when you see the term "Windows hosting", it simply means hosting your website on a Windows platform, Windows server, or Windows operating system (OS). Same thing applies to Linux hosting.

Windows or Linux Hosting?

Windows server will serve you better if you use Microsoft's proprietary software such as Access, Visual Basic, MS SQL database, FrontPage and ASP.NET for building websites.

Of the few applications I just mentioned, ASP.NET is the most significant reason for many webmasters to switch over to Windows hosting. This scripting language allows you to create dynamic and highly interactive web contents with minimal coding, thus making the web pages easy to write and maintain.

In addition, as the source code is executed on the server before sending to the browser, the output is not affected by the type of browser the visitor is using.

On top of that, a Windows server can support software like PHP, Perl, MySQL that are common to Linux hosting, but a Linux server is not fully compatible with Microsoft's proprietary software. Meaning, you have more tools in hand to help you build a more flexible and versatile website with Windows hosting.

Despite the advantages of hosting on Windows platform, there are few facts you need to know before diving into Windows hosting.

Windows OS is more intended for a dedicated server hosting rather than for a shared or VPS hosting. In terms of hosting fee, Windows hosting may generally cost more due to the specific server (software) licensing fee that has to be paid to Microsoft for utilizing their operating system.

Because Windows OS runs more processes / services even at its idle state, you can expect more issues to occur and thus require more reboots to get any problematic processes / services back to normal again, which means that your website downtime could increase on a Windows platform.

Additionally, configuration changes in Windows typically require a reboot. Linux, in general, can still run without restarting the system most of the times during configuration updates. That's why many Linux users experience excellent website uptime - their websites could run for several months in consecution without failure.

Last but not least, in terms of security, Windows fanatics will tell you that Windows server is more secure while Linux supporters will say Linux server is more secure. It's kind of confusing if you want to use security as a deciding factor. Hence, I'd rather you focus on your wants and needs.

If you seek my quick opinion, I would say - take up Windows hosting if you need to build your websites with Windows-specific applications. Otherwise, choose Linux if website uptime is your prime concern.

Soon Chai invites you to get more info on the difference between linux and windows hosting so that you can make a sound decision on the type of server to use for your website hosting. Also, discover more helpful tips on what to look for in a web host to help you find a reliable web hosting company that runs your business websites at maximum uptime, loads your web pages fast, makes you more profits and keeps your operating costs down in the long run.