Small businesses - Hosted from home? [Archive]

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Naturally-You-Therapies

28th October 2005, 22:29

Just a quick question aimed at the smaller business people here.
Please don't cloud the results if you promote web hosting etc :) I'm not interested.
My girlfriends site is at the moment run from home. We don't get too much traffic, something we are hoping to improve with the help available here. I'm looking for people who host their sites from home and any tools they may use. For example I use www.siteuptime.com to monitor our site every half hour to check its up and running ( I get an email to my blackberry if its not). I also use www.statcounter.com to monitor site usage and track user behaviour. Both tools are free for the basic package which is fine for us.
Anyone else small enough to host from home and do you have any other tools or advice which may be useful?

If you pay for hosting, could you give a rough idea of how much?

TWD-Tony

29th October 2005, 07:52

Jayne

29th October 2005, 08:37

Hi,

I use a hosting company, I pay about £50 per year, it's cheaper to pay for a full year. It depends how big the business gets to how much you will have to pay.

I wouldn't host myself, I like the knowledge a professional is looking after me :D Plus I wouldn't have a clue how to anyway.

Jayne

Naturally-You-Therapies

29th October 2005, 08:51

I'm in the hosting business but i'm not going to try and sell you anythng!

I am just curious what software you are running to host your website? Do you have a Linux box, windows server or one of the various windows packages running that include apache? Do you have a static IP address or are you using a dynamc DNS service?

Running a small website from home is perfectly do-able... and fine for a small website - the only word of warning I will give you is that you are probably breaking your ISP's terms & conditions, most ISP's are wise to what is going on but for small HTML website's with very low taffic they will turn a blind eye... If your website got busier or started to use lots of upstream bandwidth then they may terminate your contract.

Good luck!
I'm no IT expert but I know enough!
I've got a Smoothwall Linux firewall which runs a dynamic dns service. Behind the Smoothwall on a DMZ sits a Clark Connect server which uses Apache.
Hopefully the business will take off and I will then transfer it to a hosted service. At the moment the traffic is low, very low :(

I just wondered how many other people do what I do. :)

MinuWeb

29th October 2005, 09:43

Agan I am in the hosting biz, so won't vote but merely comment :D

As Tony mentioned above one point to consider when running sites from a home box is that it is aginst the AUP of most ISP's to do so on a "home" connection, they would be perfectly within their rights to disconnect you and then charge you a horrendous reconnection fee.

I can't really see why people would want to host from home for financial reasons as hosting is so competative nowadays that it really is not expensive to get a professional solution. However I can see why from a purely fun / hobby point of view this would be interesting for some people.

There are also some open source applications that auto setup and configure all you need to run a website on a windows box, (apache, php, mysql etc) such as foxserv http://sourceforge.net/projects/foxserv/ that make it all a bit easier to manage.

coxadmin

29th October 2005, 13:00

I am a small business owner and my website is hosted by 1and1 (http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=7436489) on their most basic package which works out at £4.99 + VAT per month. You pay 6 monthly and I have found them to be excellent in all aspects.

Spire

30th October 2005, 13:27

Hi

I use a US hosting company as I can get more of everthing for the same money, I accept that I am in the bottom end of the hosting tree paying about £40.00 per year for my hosting,and I will be on a server with lot's and lots of others but in truth I would only be willing to pay substantially more if I were getting my own server with full control so I kow exactly what is on the box, as I am a wary sort I don't believe everthing I am told.
So I only pay for my hosting on a month by month basis so I can up sticks and move, having had a bad experience with a hosting company paying 12 months in advance and beeing badly let down.

As for hosting my own site from home I would have liked to be able to do that when I was testing my Pay Pal Ipn scripts and did indeed did try to get it set up, but my Isp is BT and although I got the dynamic IP sorted out I was unable to reach my home site from outside my own network it was not visible to the internet.

Not sure what the reason was and I was more intrested in getting the script sorted and at £40.00 a year hosting cost why go thru the hassle that could come from hosting my own site.

As an example my current hosts have been running round like headless chickens trying to handle a DDos attack for the last week thank goodness I was not on that server.

SmallBizSoftware

31st October 2005, 11:20

I would love to host from home myself but to be honest I don't see thast it is cost effective. Don't you have to rent name space anyway? With hosting packages strating at £30 p.a. seems a lot of agg.

That said, never sure who your hosting company is .... I play sunday footie with a 14 year old kid who resells hosting from a server that he pays for hosting himself in the states! Great kid but not sure if I want to trust him with my revenue stream.

Richard Conyard

31st October 2005, 11:32

Normally I would say it depends what you want, but with hosting prices for simple services being so reasonable I'd quite happily pay to have the headache taken away from me. As well as that there are the technical issues, most guys offering hosting here will have the following in place:

Hardware firewalls set-up for hosting
Console apps
Connection redundancy (routed through different providers and cables with OSPF on fallover)
Off-site back-up
Stats
DNS
E-mail

To me the easiest solution here is to outsource.

Astaroth

31st October 2005, 11:53

I used to self host as the sites I created ran off ASP and one of ASPs major down sides is its use of components which need to be installed onto the server. There are not many of the budget webhosting companies out there that will allow you to actually install software on their servers due to the chance of it causing instability for other users.

Now adays I just have hobby websites and there is little point in running the risk with my ISP of getting banned for just a bit of fun so I currently pay in the region of £50 per year.

Naturally-You-Therapies

10th November 2005, 09:48

Well, I took on board the comments about ISP's disconnecting me if they discovered I was hosting from home, and went for a hosted service. I wish I hadn't! http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=6319

Doh!! :D

MinuWeb

10th November 2005, 10:31

Doesn't sound to good.

I am sure a few of us here could comment that maybe you went for the wrong hosted service :D

Asteeleleith

12th November 2005, 01:30

hosting from home is something i have considered as well. Though i am no expert but i do see

It has its pros, like unlimited web space. Well as limited as ur hard drive is.
You have total control
Your choice as to what server etc you use.
You don;t have to pay for hosting anymore.

you can even pay for a static ip address form ur isp

but, it also has its cons.
You need it running 24/7, might not be feasible if ur working from home.
Extra space for a server.
You could be in breach of isp contract as someone said above.
It is for you to put in place adequate backup/recovery procedures.
If there is a power cut and ur server goes down, so does the site!
Though UPSs' can power a computer for a limited time.
Your home insurance might not like u leaving ur server on while ur away for the weekend, or on hols.

If i could overcome this lot, then i would do it like shot :)

Al

kroggy

12th November 2005, 10:39

Hi,
with so much competition out there from the many hosting companies you have to ask your self what are the benfits of hosting from home?
The main priority is that your server is up and running but the next priority is CUSTOMER SUPPORT! Without going over the top can a home style hosting solution give that support?
There are experts in the field of IT (formerly known as 'webmasters') that look after the servers, and support stations that deal with problems from clients. Basically I have a reseller account from a hosting company (e3servers), and I have been with them for well over two years now, yes I have problems with the sites I operate from time to time but I know that any faults can be rectified very soon with their help.
That support comes as part of my reseller account and that is worth paying for without a doubt!