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How to Choose Between SSD and HDD VPS Hosting

Modern-day businesses are beginning to realize the importance of agile hosting services. It has become evident that the quality of hosting will determine the success of several crucial parameters such as SEO, bounce rate reduction, customer retention, and to an extent even the sales numbers. Given the relevance of these factors in determining the success of any business, companies have begun to look for faster and better hosting services.

Gone are the days when companies would rely solely on the options provided by their website developers. Today, companies research the best possible solutions and evaluate what may be ideal for them. While most organisations have already made the move from Shared to VPS Hosting, smart organizations are diving further to determine the benefits between SSD vs HDD VPS Hosting. Let us try to find out what is the difference between Solid-State Drive and Hard Disk Drive along with your best possible option.

Mechanism
Before we take a look at the difference between SSD and HDD, it is vital to understand the underlying working mechanism of both technologies. HDD is a decades-old technology based on the mechanism of vinyl records. The HDD drive stores data in patterns magnetically. It has a thin metal disk which rotates at 7200 RPM to record and read data. Each driver is equipped with sensors capable of reading the data and sending it back to the motherboard.

The problem, however, arises with the fact that the disk will approximately spin 3.8 billion times a year leading to wear & tear and eventually some mechanical failure. On the other hand, SDD does not contain any moving parts. It stores data on interconnected flash memory chips. It can be seen as an upsized and advanced version of the regular pen drives. SSD uses a NAND-based flash memory making it more secure even when the device is turned off.

Speed
The working mechanism plays a significant role in dictating the outcome of SSD vs HDD Speed tests. HDD is equipped with moving parts bringing lesser read speeds and write speed as compared to SSD. SSD with its NAND flash memory is capable of clocking substantially high read and write speeds. The rotational latency in HDD leads to lower speeds when compared to SSD.

It is obvious that hosting servers employing SSD will offer better speeds than service providers using HDD storage. A faster loading website will give a significant boost to your SEO and improve your Google ranking. Search engine algorithms give importance to the website loading time in determining the rankings. Google and other search engines rewards websites with faster loading times as it provides better customer experience.

A faster loading website also gives a better customer experience as they can navigate without any lag and waiting time. Also, with the attention span of viewers reducing with ever increasing internet speeds, you have a narrow window to attract a customer before they decide to switch to another website. Web hosting with SSD ensures that your customer is delighted to visit your site and use your product or services.

Data Security
Data security is another crucial parameter that can severely affect your organization. The hosting servers are operational 24*7 which is different from the production environment. Overloading of hardware with I/O requests can lead to the failure of the hard disk. Such a failure could cause your website to go offline and raise uncertainty over the recovery of your data. While most data centres do keep a backup of the data, but there is always a possibility that you may lose some due to unforeseen circumstances. It is worth noting that the cost of data recovery with HDD is higher than that for SSD.

SSD comes with faster processing time reducing the risk of failure due to increased I/O requests. These also do not have any mechanical parts that could undergo wear & tear over a period of time and lead to mechanical failure. So, your data is extremely secure with SSD VPS hosting.

Environmental Factors
The usage of SSD drives in data centres results in lower power consumption when compared with the power consumed by the HDD drives. This is because the latter generates heat due to the mechanical moving parts and needs more energy to cool down. SSD drive, on the contrary, does not generate any such heat during its operation. Besides saving the environment, opting for SSD VPS hosting will also save your financial resources as the plans are comparatively cheaper.

Conclusion
The aforementioned benefits clearly indicate that hosting your website with SSD based VPS Hosting will have long-term benefits for your company. Although, it is essential for you to evaluate the needs of your organisation before switching to SSD VPS hosting. If you have an HTML based static site, you may not see substantial benefits. However, if your company has a high-performance website with heavy daily traffic, you will definitely benefit from SSD VPS Hosting.

It is worth noting that the prices of SSD drives have come down significantly in the past few years. These have ensured that many notable hosting service providers have switched to SSD storage. At Resellerclub, all our VPS Hosting plans from Standard to Elite come with SSD storage options. The SSD VPS Hosting plans offered by us provide storage space from 20-120 GB and an average OS boot time of 8-12 seconds.

SSD enables backup in about 6 hours, data access in 20 ms, spare up to 6% of CPU power and are less likely to fail. Unless the efforts required to switch out-weigh these benefits, you should switch to SSD Hosting. For any further assistance and to know more about the switching process, you can get in touch with our 24*7 support centre.

SSD VPS Hosting and Its Benefit for your Business Website

VPS Hosting or Virtual Private Server Hosting is one of the preferred hosting options for several small-medium sized online businesses. The reason being, it is a bridge between Shared and Dedicated Hosting, offering its users the best of both worlds. If you are new and want to know more about VPS Hosting, you can read more about it. However, we assume, you all know what is VPS Hosting, and will move on to understanding the finer nuances of it, namely the kind of storage device that VPS follows.

Storage devices are categorised into two types – HDD and SSD. HDD stands for Hard Disk Drive whereas, SSD stands for Solid State Drive. In this article, we’ll cover the new and advanced form of storage – SSD and how it integrates with VPS Hosting. So, first things first!

What is SSD VPS Hosting?
SSD VPS Hosting, in simple words, can be defined as a ‘Solid State Drive VPS Hosting Plan’. Here the VPS Hosting service provider uses an SSD disk instead of the traditional Hard Disk Drive on their physical servers. The benefit of an SSD over HDD is that it consumes less power and delivers faster performance and speed. Let us see in detail, what distinguishes the two drives from one another.

Comparison between SSD and HDD

SSDHDD
SSD or Solid State Drives draw less power and thus, boosting battery life.HDD or Hard Disk Drives draw a lot of power thus affecting their battery.
SSD uses flash memory to store data. Hence data doesn’t get deleted suddenly due to the magnetic disk effect on data.HDD has circular platters to store data in magnetic format. However, a downside to magnetic disk storage is that magnets can erase data, hence data is vulnerable.
SSDs have hardly any moving parts. Hence they produce very little noise and vibrations.HDDs have platters to store data, and they cause noise while moving, as well as, vibrations.
Cost wise SSDs are expensive, but they deliver high performance to the website running.HDDs are cheaper as compared to SSD, but they compromise on the performance of the website in the longer run.

3 Major Advantages of SSD VPS Hosting:

  1. SSD uses flash memory to store data. This improves the read-write speed significantly, leading to improved performance of the server, as well as, the website loading speed.
  2. HDDs are more prone to damage as they use movable platters instead of flash memory. Thus, SSD’s are more reliable in terms of efficiency and durability which, in turn, builds trust and credibility for your customer.
  3. A faster loading website directly impacts Google search engine results and your website’s SEO. Websites hosted with SSD VPS Hosting load faster, thus helping you enhance your page ranking.

We at ResellerClub, provide all our VPS Hosting plans with SSD storage options, along with, storage space from 20-120 GB. Furthermore, with our SSD VPS Hosting you get to choose your choice of control panel either cPanel or Plesk.

Choosing the right storage option for your VPS Hosting depends on your needs. In the end, it is your marketing strategy, good content, and how you present your website to a potential customer that makes the difference, however, the right hosting plan just acts as a bonus! So decide wisely!

How to Choose the Best Caching Solution for Your Website

Consider this: you’ve set up your website and you finally have customers. However, the wait is long, and the website is slow to load. By the time it loads, you’ve lost your opportunity to convert a visitor to a paying customer – leading to a loss of revenue. In a matter of seconds, they’ve moved on.

Why?

Studies have shown that nearly half of the customers expect page load times of about three seconds. By recognizing this problem early enough, you can take steps to prevent this from happening. How? By implementing the right caching solution for your website.

What is Web Cache?

Caching refers to the process of storing data, temporarily, in a computing environment – namely a cache. When customers look at your web page, those files are automatically stored on the hard disk, in a cache subdirectory on their browser. When they return to look at that page, the browser can access those files from the cache, rather than returning to the original server to fetch the data again.

Without caching: When a customer visits your website, the browser will send a request to your server for site data, like content, media, code etc. The data is then sent to the customer’s browser. Each piece of this data needs to be loaded individually before it can be displayed. There are always delays while the transfer is happening and a lot of additional factors that can slow the process down. For e.g., if the visitor is located far away from your server, it can adversely affect your loading time.

With caching: The data is stored in a location close to your customer – it goes to where your customer is, cutting down on loading time. For example, web browser stores data at your customer’s end once the page is loaded for the first time. This reduces the page load speed by a mile for a returning user.

The advantages are clear. What you need to do is choose a caching solution that suits your website. There are many methods of caching available. We’re going to discuss three: server caching, browser caching and caching plugins and how each could impact your website.

Server caching: 
If your website is busy, dynamic, content heavy and experiences high volumes of traffic, you may want to look into server caching. One of the best cache servers is Varnish. This is how it works – when your customer visits your site, a series of requests are sent to the server to enable the page to load. The server then looks for the files pertaining to the request, execute any code related to that request and then return the web page to the user. By installing caching mechanisms like Varnish, it essentially acts as a middleman, between the user and the server and looks out for duplicate requests from before. The next time the customer visits your website, Varnish will respond by quickly sending a cached version of the result. This can increase the speed of your site exponentially. It also cuts down on how much processing power you need to respond to high volumes of traffic.

Browser caching: 
Whenever a browser loads a web page, it needs to download all the files to display the page properly – this includes HTML, CSS, images and JavaScript. If your website has a lot of files, you can face two issues – first, large files take longer to load (especially if your customers are using a slow internet connection). Secondly, each file makes a separate request to your server, which adds to the work your server needs to do. Browser caching will help by storing some of the files on your customer’s browser. The first time your customer visits your site, it may take time to load, but as they continue to interact with your website (either by refreshing, revisiting or even moving to another page on your site) files are being cached onto their browser. This cuts down on the data that your customer uses to load your site, and it saves bandwidth on your server.

Browser caching works by identifying elements of your website that can be saved offline. These elements are those that are not likely to be changed on a regular basis – like your logo for instance. To enable browser caching, you’ll need to edit your HTTP headers in order to set expiry times for certain files. If certain files are updated frequently, you can give them shorter expiry times.

Caching plugins: 
Currently, WordPress powers nearly 33 per cent of the web. If your website is one among this number, you can look at third-party caching plugins. These are simple and easy to install. The only catch is the sheer number of plugins available to you. However, some of these plugins are highly recommended, like W3 Total Cache, which offers to the cache via memory, disk or CDN (Content Delivery Network). It also removes unnecessary or redundant data on posts, pages, feeds, JavaScript and more. Thanks to this you can save on server bandwidth, which leads to increased server performance, reduced download time, and boosts conversion rates – all good news for you. You can also look at other popular plugins like WP Super Cache and WP- FFPC.

What are the benefits overall?

  1. Reduced network burden: Between your content and your customer, data can be cached at several points. For example with server caching, web pages are stored and served to your customer efficiently. When it is closer to the customer, requests will not place a burden on the network between the customer and your website – just the cache.
  2. Increased performance: When you choose caching as an option, it frees up resources on the original server to improve the overall performance.
  3. Ranking: Site speed is one of the most important factors when it comes to your website’s ranking. Faster websites are favoured by search engines (and aided by great SEO setting and good quality content). The slower your website, the lower you drop in the rankings.
  4. User Experience: You want your customers to have the best experience on your website. A faster website will help your customers browse better. What’s more, cached data saves on your user’s data (to a certain extent) due to the fact that static files are less of a load, as compared to dynamic requests.

At the end of the day, caching is an excellent solution to speed up your website. Our Cloud Hosting services make use of advanced caching mechanisms like Varnish to ensure that the server caching is taken care off. Choosing which caching solution suits your website will require careful consideration on your part – which parts need to be cached and which data on your website will change with time.

When is it time to make the switch to VPS hosting?

To reduce the cost of operation, most business websites tend to start off with web hosting that is cost effective and that would be Shared Hosting. However, Shared Hosting is also limited in many ways and there may come a time when you need to consider an upgrade.

Logically, the next step up would be the type of web host which offers additional benefits that can help higher-volume websites cope with increased traffic or other requirements. VPS hosting is usually the popular option when comparing the features and price.

Before I go into greater detail about this and the benefits of VPS hosting, let’s take a look at the limitations of Shared Hosting so that we can be clear about what the key differences are as compared to VPS hosting.

The Limitations of Shared Hosting

As mentioned, Shared Hosting is usually the first step into the game and is offered by almost every web hosting provider in existence. It is the simplest of plans and basically involves a web host cramming as many websites onto a single server as they think it can support.

All of those websites have access to the same features and share the same resources, from disk space to CPU power. Think of it like living in a communal hall where everyone lives in one huge room and shares a common kitchen, washroom and other facilities.

Because of the limited features that come with Shared Hosting plans, websites that grow larger may have difficulties remaining on these plans.

The question then would be – how do you know when it is time to move?

The main types of hosting plans are shared, VPS, Cloud and Dedicated hosting in order of power (and typically, cost). Although in some ways similar in nature, VPS hosting gives you dedicated resources on one server. Cloud hosting gives your virtual space on a network of servers. There is a limit to how much you can scale up your VPS plan, but with cloud, the sky is virtually the limit – at a price.

When to Move to VPS Hosting

After considering the benefits of VPS hosting as compared to other options, below are usually the general indicators which let you know that it is time to step up to VPS hosting.

  1. Your Website Traffic Increases Significantly
    We’ve all been there before – your new site has just been launched and you’re eagerly monitoring your hit rates to see if people are visiting. Over time, the handful of hits a day that you first saw begin to grow and before you know it, you’re seeing hundreds or thousands of visits per day. Each of your website visitors consumes resources and if your Shared Hosting account is using up too much of those, your web host may take action. From throttling your traffic to an outright suspension of your account, your traffic may come to an abrupt halt. Although web hosts typically have a few Shared Hosting plans you can scale up to, there is a limit and once you hit that cap the logical choice is to move on to VPS hosting for better benefits and at affordable price. Caption: One of the most distinctive differences between shared and VPS hosting is how resources are allocated (Img credit: WHSR – how does VPS hosting work)VPS hosting also has you sharing a server with others but in a dedicated environment. This means that you will be allocated server resources specifically for your site. You won’t have to share the server resources such as CPU, RAM or any data with others.
  2. You Want Greater Security
    There may be times when you are looking to increase the security of your website for the benefit of your users. If you are running an e-commerce site, this might be for various reasons such as processing or storing the personal or financial information of your users. Because VPS hosting accounts are siloed, the data you store and the process is much safer as compared to if you were to use Shared Hosting. VPS hosting also lets you install additional firewalls or lay down better security rules and restrictions.
  3. Seeking Better Reliability
    This again goes back to the nature of Shared Hosting versus VPS hosting. When something fails on your Shared Hosting account, typically all the sites that are being hosted on that server goes down. It’s like a really dangerous game of Russian Roulette. By its very nature, VPS hosting is typically more robust and the environments are configured in such a way that if there is a fault in your VPS account, the management software will usually reallocate your website to another instance and rebuilds it rapidly. The is one of the VPS hosting advantages you can get. There will be a slight downtime, but certainly not as bad as if your Shared Hosting account encounters a technical fault.
  4. You Need More Control
    Shared hosting accounts are usually quite limited in terms of what configuration changes you can make to the servers. Even if your web host allows the changes you need, you will normally have to contact technical support and request that the changes be made on your behalf. This can be frustrating at times and may feel overly restrictive. Take for example if you want to install some extra tools for your website. Shared hosting won’t allow this since you don’t normally have administrative access to the server. VPS hosting lets you have full administrative access/root access irrespective of what OS your account is based on. You can also request customized plans such as specific amounts of resources such as processor cores or memory. VPS hosting plans are typically scalable and in some instances, these resources can even be adjusted on the fly.
  5. If You Run an eCommerce Site
    If you are leaning towards running an online store or eCommerce site, there may be too many restrictions in Shared Hosting to meet your needs. VPS hosting offers more options that are better suited to hosting eCommerce sites simply because these sites are usually high volume and very demanding. With VPS Hosting you will also be better equipped to meet enhanced security needs that come along with accepting online payments. Serving up pages with multiple products lists are coping with increased queries to your database are also factors to be considered for eCommerce sites.

Conclusion

Most new users should be content with Shared Hosting and in fact, many of them will be content to stick with that for a long time. However, if you are serious about running your site it is very likely that your traffic will increase steadily.

Remember, migrating a website is just like moving house – it takes time and proper planning. Always ensure that you are a step ahead in the game and are prepared to move before performance issues force your hand.

Remember, if your site performance is suffering, your traffic volume will likely suffer as well. Users quickly get frustrated with erratic websites and there are many other sites they can switch over to if you aren’t at the top of your game.

If you are afraid of facing technical issues that you’re not sure you can cope with, there is always the option of looking for managed VPS hosting. UnifyHOST offers Linux VPS Hosting which gives you the technical support you needed. These plans may cost a bit more but offer you all the benefits of VPS hosting without the technical requirements needed to use them.

Managed vs Unmanaged VPS Hosting: Core Differences

Go back in time and think, what it was like when you first started your business website. Most likely, you were just making your way in the business world with little or no knowledge of what was to come next.

A business like everything starts small, and in time grows with the right marketing and nurturing. Not only does your business grow in its clientele and income but also, the incoming traffic to the website. And increased traffic is directly proportional to slower website speed. However, there is a catch, the former statement is only true if your business has outgrown the hosting plan.

Like most new businesses, chances are you too must have started with hosting your business on a Shared Hosting platform. But as your business evolves so do its need and with that comes the time to switch to a different type of hosting. Out of the several hosting options available, VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting is one of the most preferred options available. The reason being, it is the perfect mix of Shared and Dedicated Hosting environment. VPS Hosting can be categorized into two main types viz. Managed and Unmanaged VPS Hosting.

In this article, my aim is to help you understand what these two types of VPS Hosting (Managed vs Unmanaged VPS) include, their advantages, differences and which should you as a business owner choose. Let us begin!

What is Managed VPS Hosting?

Managing a server requires time, effort and technical expertise. In Managed VPS Hosting, your service provider takes care of all the server related responsibilities like core updates, maintenance, software installation etc. so you, the business owner can concentrate fully on growing your business. Managed VPS Hosting in simple words, is a hands-free approach.

If you are a new business owner with little or no technical experience, then Managed VPS Hosting is your go-to hosting solution, as you need not worry about anything server related.

What is Unmanaged VPS Hosting?

As the name suggests, unlike Managed VPS Hosting in Unmanaged VPS Hosting you, the business owner, have to take care of all the server responsibilities and maintenance tasks, whereas, your hosting provider only takes care of the physical server and its availability.

If you choose to opt for Unmanaged VPS Hosting then you should have the technical expertise or dedicated in-house resources managing your server, operating system and other server related resources. Even if you are technically sound, Unmanaged VPS Hosting is better suited if you are an established business as opposed to an emerging one, because the main focus is establishing your business in the market.

Advantages of VPS Hosting

Be it Managed VPS Hosting or UnManaged VPS Hosting, the benefits are the same. Let us have a quick look at some of the top benefits:

  1. Root Access:
    VPS Hosting is a bridge between Shared and Dedicated Hosting and as such it includes features of both. With VPS Hosting your server is isolated from other servers in spite of being hosted on the same physical server. Hence, you have complete root access to customize and manage your server and its resources.
  2. Instant Provisioning of Resources:
    Server resources like CPU, RAM, OS are provisioned instantly as soon as your server is up and running. These resources can also be scaled easily depending on your incoming traffic. However, note that the resources are scalable and not the hosting plan.
  3. Security:
    Since VPS Hosting is isolated like that of a Dedicated Hosting, it provides top-notch security to the website hosted on it. This is true even though all websites share the same physical server, as the IP addresses are dedicated to individual servers.
  4. Performance: 
    VPS Hosting comes with both SSD and HDD hard drive, however, most businesses these days opt for SSD VPS Hosting as its benefits outweigh that of HDD. SSD VPS Hosting improves the website loading speed which, in turn, improves the performance of the website, as well as, the Google search ranking.

Core Differences

There are not many differences between Managed vs Unmanaged VPS Hosting. Let us have a look at the two most crucial ones:

Managed VPS HostingUnmanaged VPS Hosting
Server maintenance and upgradation are taken care of by the hosting provider.Your hosting provider only takes care of maintaining the physical server and its guaranteed uptime.
Slightly expensive cost-wise but the best choice for beginners.Cheaper compared to Managed VPS Hosting but ideal for experienced users.

What Should You Choose?

By now I’m sure you’ve figured out which hosting is the most suited for your business website between Managed VPS and Unmanaged VPS Hosting if you plan to switch to VPS Hosting. And just like choosing the right hosting is important so is the choice of the hosting provider. A good hosting provider can make or break your website as no matter which hosting type you choose, the availability and uptime of your website depends on the availability of the main server.

We at UnifyHOST offer VPS Hosting with a maximum of 99.99% uptime, 24*7 support, top-notch infrastructure, DDoS protection, and much more so that you can relax and concentrate on running your business while we manage the technicalities.

With this, we come to an end and I hope you now have a fair understanding of Managed vs Unmanaged VPS Hosting and which to choose. If you have any more questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below! Until next time.

Managing Web Host Manager (WHM) Packages: All You Need to Know

WHM, which stands for Web Host Manager, is a tool which service providers offer, and lease, to individual clients. The same hosting provider will also handle all the server related issues, leaving you, the client, free to look after your business and to look forward to its growth.

Now that we’ve covered the basic question of what web host manager is, let’s dive a bit deeper. To understand WHM, we’ve also got to look at cPanel. cPanel is a popular, Linux-based control panel for web hosting accounts. With cPanel, you can manage all your services through one single panel. Whether that refers to creating new FTP users and email ids, monitoring the utilization of resources, installing software or creating subdomains.

WHM offers administrative access to the backend of cPanel. It also allows you a lot of flexibility and control – whether you’re managing a few, resource-intense heavy sites, or a large number of smaller websites. With WHM, you get the option of selling hosting services to clients. Furthermore, you also get to create and manage multiple cPanels.

What can WHM offer you?

With WHM, you get a suite of tools, so that you easily carry out the following:

  1. Manage and monitor your sites
  2. Create custom hosting packages
  3. Delete, create or even suspend your cPanel accounts
  4. Access to look and change all of your DNS (Domain Name System) zones
  5. Permission to access server information and status to help with server management
  6. Create your own default page when you create a new account
  7. Brand and customize your hosting and control panel
  8. Change domain names and usernames
  9. Move between multiple cPanels in your account, and change anything that doesn’t need SQL access

There are two basic types of WHM. The basic WHM enables you to do all of the above. However, root WHM (also known as rWHM) has features which need root access to the servers, and as a result, you gain access to more tools.

Now, we’ve mentioned WHM and cPanel and explained the basics of both. They tend to be interchanged in people’s minds. However, there are differences between the two.

When you buy a web hosting package, you’re given a tool to manage your hosting service. Both cPanel and WHM help users manage and take charge of their web hosting. The key difference between cPanel and WHM is one we’ve mentioned earlier – WHM can have multiple cPanel accounts. However, it goes beyond that.

WHM is used primarily by a reseller to manage all the hosting accounts in each of their reseller plans. cPanel, on the other hand, is used by the customer to manage their own individual hosting accounts. While WHM provides root access to resellers, cPanel only provides access to the web hosting account to its users. The password details for your WHM and cPanel accounts are linked, that is, if you change your WHM password, your cPanel password will also change. cPanel enables its users to set the password. With WHM, you are restricted to adding domains, while cPanel makes it possible to remove add-ons and subdomains.

How to use WHM

If you are a web hosting reseller and provide web hosting as a service, then WHM will play a key role in the process. You, as a reseller, could use Web Host Manager to create a whole range of WHM packages that go from basic to advanced, to premium. The basic package might contain a smaller allocation of resources for disk space and bandwidth, while the premium packages are designed for far more resource heavy websites.

Once you’ve created a package with WHM, you can go ahead and create your account. Your new account will include:

  1. cPanel
  2. FTP account
  3. Website functionality
  4. SSH access (if it has been enabled in the packaged)

Creating a WHM package

If you’re looking to create a new package, here are the steps:

  1. Look for the Search box in the upper left hand of the screen, type package and then select Add Package once the option becomes visible
  2. You can type the name of the package (basic, premium etc.) in the package name text box
  3. Under Resources, you can set up quotas or limits based on the package you are designing
  4. Go to Settings and select the checkboxes for the resources you want to enable for that particular package
  5. Choose your cPanel theme after scrolling through the cPanel theme options (the default pattern is paper_lantern)
  6. For the feature list for the package, go to “Feature List” list box and select the options you want to use for the package. Alternatively, you can go with the default value.
  7. Select language locale from the Locale list box.
  8. The process ends when you click “Add”. WHM will then create the package

Editing the package:

  1. Type package into the Search box in the upper left hand of the WHM screen and click on the option “edit a package” when it is visible
  2. Choose which package you want to edit, hit the Edit option, and make the necessary changes
  3. If you make a mistake you can hit the reset
  4. If you make a mistake you can hit the Reset button and WHM will restore the package values to their last saved state
  5. Click Save changes, once you are done with your edits

Deleting a package

  1. Type package into the Search box in the upper left hand of the WHM screen and click on the option “delete a package” when it is visible
  2. Select the packages you want to remove and hit Delete – WHM will delete them immediately

WHM and Reseller Hosting

UnifyHOST hosting is considered to be one of the smoothest and easiest gateways for small to medium-sized businesses to join the web hosting business. WHM is the control panel that allows Resellers the opportunity to manage their hosting company. So, if you’re looking to venture into the world of Reseller Hosting, check out our different packages on our Reseller Hosting page. We also provide free WHM and cPanel with our reseller hosting packages.

By maintaining state of the art data centres and scalable servers, we provide quick solutions for your (or your customer’s) technical problems. We offer incredible and effective domain management through WHM and a sturdy infrastructure that can handle any network interface bottleneck.

How to Use Social Data to Launch a Successful Video Marketing Campaign

ideo marketing is a hit. According to Oberlo, 87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool. So, if you don’t implement video content in your marketing campaigns, you’re definitely missing out.

Essentially, video marketing is a component of an integrated marketing plan, aimed to increase audience engagement and boost social activity, mostly through social media. The strategy is built around one video or a series of videos that are connected to a particular product and are characteristic of the company’s values.

Why is video marketing on the rise, when there are so much other different content types that are as engaging? What makes it stand out? Take a look at these stats:

  • According to Renderforest, 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube on a daily basis
  • According to the same source, 70% of marketers claim that videos convert better than any other type of content
  • Optinmonster supports these numbers, adding that 94% of businesses are using video as an effective marketing tool, and 81% of the surveyed businesses saw an increase in sales. Moreover, 53% of businesses saw a decrease in customer support issues after using explainer videos in their marketing campaigns

Social Data and Video Marketing

Today, not a single marketing campaign can be launched without social media, not only because social media give brands extra exposure, but also because they provide brands with social data to help them keep up with the KPIs.

Although mining social data is a pretty down-to-earth process, with tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics making it possible, confusion may hit you when you actually try to use it for your video marketing campaign.

So, here are some insights on how to use social data to launch a successful video marketing campaign.

1. Study Your Audience for Better Targeting

Knowing your target audience is crucial, and your future video marketing campaign is no exception. But audience analysis is also an important part of video production and plays an important role in creating a video script.

Another reason why you should pay close attention to audience analysis in your video marketing campaign is delivering the right message to the right people, especially if you’re a newborn brand. According to Social Bakers, this type of content is used primarily in the early stage of a marketing campaign, when customers are only learning about your brand.

Audience analysis is a multifaceted process that involves the discussion of crucial points that will influence the nature of your marketing videos. This process involves the analysis of the following aspects:

These aspects describe one audience persona that will characterize the whole target audience that you will address in your video. The more detailed this description is, the more targeted marketing video you’ll create because you’ll know exactly who you want to reach with your video message.

So, for better targeting and for a more detailed marketing video, make sure that you have a proper audience analysis.

2. Explore Likes, Shares, and Comments for Content Ideas

If you choose to launch your video marketing campaign on one of the social media platforms, social data that describes the performance of your previous posts, as well as the data, collected from likes, and shares, will help you determine which platform will work the best for your marketing needs and which content your followers from each platform prefer better.

For instance, if your Facebook account stats show that posts with videos on your page are the most active, like here,

you can consider your Facebook account as the main platform for your video marketing campaign.

Activity on your posts, including comments, likes and shares, is the source of unique metrics, mined from social media platforms. They give you important information on what your existing social media audience likes and wants to see, and you can use it in your video marketing campaign. Social data that can be mined from them, can give a serious boost to your creativity, providing you with plenty of content ideas. Here’s how you can use them.

  • Likes and Shares

This is an indirect form of feedback from your social media followers. This way they express their perception of the content you’re posting, so listen closely. The more likes a post gets, the more clues you receive as for what your audience wants to see, and you can later implement these ideas during the video production process.

The analysis of likes and shares is a generator of engaging topics for your marketing videos. For instance, the international real estate company Flatfysaw an increased interest in posts about real estate statistics on their Instagram account. So, that’s how they came up with an idea for a marketing video, covering the global population and the future of the real estate search.

  • Comments

Your followers may express their feedback using the comment section under your posts. Comments are a great way to find out who watches your content and make necessary adjustments to your video marketing campaign.

For instance, one comment in Spanish under a “What is inbound marketing?” video inspired us to create a whole video in Spanish:

Such comments give you the idea about not only what your audience needs but who they are as well. So, watch comments closely to find inspiration for your marketing videos. They are a great source of valuable social data.

3. Perform Competitor Analysis

By taking a look at your competitors, you obtain their social data for your benefit. Analyze, how their marketing videos performing to learn from their mistakes and benefit from their wins as well.

According to Statista, competitor analysis includes the following essential steps:

  • Identifying relevant competitors in a specified market segment
  • Describing key data concerning the competitors that you’ve picked
  • Analyzing the business strategies of each competitor. In our case, you take all video marketing campaigns of each of your competitors and analyze their performance. You can use SWOT analysis to obtain the full scope of data
  • Studying their corporate philosophy and making a comparison to your brand’s values
  • Based on their behaviours and marketing strategies, you can establish your immediate goals

Including competitor analysis into your video marketing campaign is an important step to be taken before you even launch the production of the video itself. Competitor analysis can give you important clues and ideas for creating a video script, as well as the knowledge of the things you will need to avoid.

Your primary goal is to create a marketing video that stands out, thus, competitor analysis will help you understand, which characteristic features of your brand you want to emphasize.

4. Keep Track of Your KPIs

Lastly, valuable social data can be obtained from your own KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Take a look at your previous video marketing campaigns. How did they perform? What were their advantages? What were the drawbacks? How can they be fixed

By answering these and other possible related questions will help you figure out what should be included in your next video marketing campaign. When you launch it, keeping track of the KPIs will be the task that you’ll have to do on a regular basis to make sure that your video marketing campaign performs well.

Conclusion

Opting for a video marketing campaign is surely the right decision, and social data will help you make it right. Correctly applied social data will help you understand exactly who you want to target with your video marketing campaign. It will also give you important hints on what your followers want to see and even provide you with ideas for your marketing videos. Social data, mined from competitor analysis and your previous KPIs, will give you the knowledge of what you want to highlight and what should be avoided in your next video marketing campaign to make it successful.

Hopefully, these tips will help you figure out how to use immense amounts of valuable data you’ll get from social media in order to create a successful video marketing campaign.

Managed VPS Hosting and its Advantages

VPS is one of the most sought-after options when businesses outgrow their Shared Hosting space. The reason being your business now has a large customer base and the traffic count too has increased significantly. These two reasons impact your website by improving the visibility and revenue of your business but also, resulting in slower website loading speed. And while the former is a positive impact, the latter can affect your business and its brand value. It is thus important to switch to a hosting plan that accommodates your growing traffic, as well as, improves the website loading speed, and VPS Hosting fits the bill.

First off, let us understand what a Virtual Private Server is. In Virtual Private Server, there are several servers sharing the same server space, however, all are isolated from each other. To understand this better let us consider an example of an apartment building. Say you have a 4-floor apartment building, and each floor has 3 flats. The residents of the building share some common resources like water supply, staircase and elevator, however, they each live separate isolated lives each having a different number of people staying, interiors and consumption of resources and other such things, with no interference to the other flat owners. Here, the apartment building will be the main VPS server and, whereas, the apartments are the isolated server space each user is allocated.

Now, that we’ve seen what is a Virtual Private Server, let us move on to understand its type. There are two types of VPS Hosting available, namely, Managed VPS Hosting and Unmanaged VPS Hosting. In this article, we’ll help you understand what Managed VPS Hosting is and how it helps your business.

What is Managed VPS Hosting?

As the name suggests, Managed VPS Hosting is a managed service where you need not worry about anything related to server management. In Managed VPS Hosting, your service provider takes care of server maintenance like updating the core, software installation, backup, security and more. Thus, as a business owner, you need not worry about server management and can invest your time and concentration on growing your business further.

Managed VPS Hosting can be chosen by any business owner, irrespective of you having any technical experience or not, as it eases your work.

Advantages of Managed VPS Hosting

  1. Full root access 
    VPS Hosting is a combination of Shared and Dedicated Server Hosting, thus, providing the ease and advantage of both. Since your managed server is isolated from other servers you can modify it based on your needs and have full root access allows you to do so.
  2. Ease of management
    With your server management and maintenance is taken care of by your web hosting provider, you can now easily concentrate on building your business and managing the brand side of it, whereas, the technical aspect is taken care of by the web host.
  3. Instant resource provisioning
    Server resources like OS, RAM and CPU are instantly allocated as soon as your server is set up. Moreover, as your traffic grows you can easily scale these resources depending on your needs.
  4. Cost Saving
    Since the maintenance of your website’s backend is taken care of by your web hosting provider, you need not hire an additional technical administrator to manage your website. Even though Managed VPS Hosting may seem costly to you at the start, however, when you compare it with paying a dedicated resource it is economical and cost saving to invest in a managed virtual server.
  5. Performance 
    The performance of your server depends on the hard drive used. There are two types of drives viz. SSD and HDD. And most businesses these days opt for SSD based VPS Hosting as it is better as compared to HDD in terms of performance. One of the most important advantages of SSD is that it improves the website load speed thus, improving the Google search ranking and performance.
  6. Security 
    Website security is of utmost importance. With managed virtual server hosting even though all the websites share the same physical space, the IP addresses are unique to each server owing to the Dedicated Hosting feature of isolation.

Should you go for it?

If you are a growing business whose goal is to increase your customer base and incoming traffic, then it is implied that you would be spending your resources and time planning the marketing and development activities to engage your customers better. At such a time, it would be a wise decision to choose Managed VPS Hosting, as it allows you to concentrate on the business aspect while the service provider takes care of the technical aspects of running your business website.

We at UnifyHOST understand the importance of time and resource management and offer fully Managed VPS Hosting with top-notch infrastructure, 24/7 system admin support, 99.9% uptime guarantee, easy upgrade, an intuitive dashboard and much more so that you can focus on running your business.

I hope this article helped you gain a better understanding of what managed VPS hosting is and its advantages, and if you as a business owner should opt for it. If you have any questions or queries, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

Importance of a Website and the Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses

Everything starts small and then grows big, even businesses. By definition, a small business is a business that is owned independently and is limited in terms of size and revenue generated. For instance, a cake shop or a web design agency with an employee size of 10-12 can be said to be a small business. Furthermore, the upper limit to the employee count is 500. Thus, if your business falls under the bracket of 1 – 500 employees you are a small business.

Moving on, irrespective of your business size in today’s competitive online trending world having a social presence is a must. Be it a Facebook business page, Twitter or Instagram to engage more users and reach a wider audience base, however, a business website is also a must and shouldn’t be overlooked.

In this article, we’ll be covering the importance of a business website and the best hosting for small business websites. So let us begin!

Importance of a website

If we were to say, having a business website adds to a business’s credibility, wouldn’t you agree? You most likely would! In fact, it is easier to browse through a website listed on Google as it is more detailed along with your YouTube, Facebook Marketplace or Instagram.

In fact, according to a report, 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses, whereas, another finding says, only 64% of small businesses have their own website. If we are to go by the results of these two findings, we can conclude the importance of having a business website. Chances are 64% of businesses will perform better than you in gaining an audience and broadening their outreach. Retaining the customer, however, is a secondary thing.

Let us see the top 4 reasons why having a business website is important:

  1. Your website shows up in the local internet search results, resulting in more people to know about your existence.
  2. You can leverage your digital marketing strategy by running dedicated campaigns on social media and linking back to your website for more in-depth information.
  3. You can collect customer information by asking them to subscribe and keep in touch with them on a timely basis with the right email marketing.
  4. Content is king, and you can use it to sell products to your customers by attracting them with the right words and information. Your website is like a one-stop-shop for customers looking for a dedicated product, albeit, a virtual one. Thriftbooks, an online bookstore is one example of a website that is a virtual bookstore and has steadily grown over the years.

Now, that we’ve seen the importance of a website for your small business. Let us move on to tackle the next big thing, the backend of your website. You may wonder, why the backend? However, you must know the technicalities while running your website.

Things to look out in web hosting

Imagine you finally decide to set up your website and are launching it at 11 AM local time. The invites have been mailed, the social media poster launched and bang as the clock strikes 11, your current and potential future customers click on the much-awaited link! However, to their surprise and your utter horror, the website is down because the server you hosted on crashed due to or your website loads slowly because of so much traffic. And if this is a recurring issue, instead of your website helping you gain more customers it will end up making you lose more customers. Tragic, isn’t it? Calm down, it isn’t tragic, the right web hosting can help you avoid this problem, however, what is the right web hosting?

When it comes to web hosting solutions for a small business there is always a doubt which is the best hosting for small businesses? Before tackling that question, let us first understand what are the things that you need to look out for in web hosting.

  1. Managed Servers 
    Being a small business you will have a limited number of employees to manage your business and marketing activities. Along with that if you were told that you even need to manage the technical aspect of running your website, it might complicate matters. Web hosting that provides managed services is simple and helps take care of your business website by maintaining it, upgrading the software, managing the security, backup and much more so that you can concentrate on running your business without worrying about the website. Our Advantage: We offer managed hosting services that are simple and secure along with an easy intuitive dashboard, cPanel, for free to help you navigate through your orders easily. This means you can take care of running your business while we take care of the website management.
  2. Website loading speed 
    Website loading speed is an important factor when it comes to how your customers feel about your website. According to a survey, 40% of users abandon a site if it takes 3 mins to load. To make sure your website visitors don’t get the same experience which, in turn, can hamper your performance make sure to choose a web hosting service that offers good load speed. Our Advantage: Our web hosting services, especially Cloud Hosting comes with varnish cache and ZFS storage. Varnish cache helps in boosting your website speed by 1000x that means, blazing fast website load speed, while, ZFS ensures there is no single point of failure!
  3. Support 
    System admin support is very important in case you are stuck with something and don’t know how to proceed further. A good web hosting service provider will always offer 24/7 website support. Our Advantage: We offer round-the-clock expert website support to resolve any of your technical queries to provide uninterrupted services.
  4. Resource upgradation 
    Today you are a small business, tomorrow your performance may multiple and you will outgrow your hosting resources. At this time, it is important that your hosting provider offers resources upgradation like RAM, CPU, etc.to accommodate your growing traffic. Our Advantages: Our hosting plans are easily scalable. We offer easy single click upgradation of hosting resources like RAM, OS and CPU with our Cloud Hosting.

Best web hosting for small business

Having seen what are the things that your chosen web hosting should have it is time to figure out which web hosting is best for small businesses?

There are several web hosting options available, however, one that we would recommend to small businesses is Cloud Hosting. In Cloud hosting your website data is stored across multiple devices, which improves redundancy and website load time. Moreover, it offers all the above features, along with, data mirroring, several 1-click application installations like WordPress, Joomla, etc. an intuitive panel to monitor your resources and much more. Above all reliability is of utmost importance and Cloud Hosting promises that and we believe it is the best hosting for small business.

We hope this article helped you in understanding the importance of having your own business website, as well as, choosing the web hosting solutions for your small business. If you have any queries or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

5 Best Online Payment Gateways in 2019 for your E-commerce Website

Running an online e-commerce business takes a lot of strategizing and planning. Right from setting up your website, to selecting the right web hosting, and most importantly choosing a payment gateway for your store. To make your work easier we have compiled a list of the 5 best online payment gateways in 2019.

Do Payment Gateways Affect your Business?

Choosing the right payment gateway is crucial when it comes to the success of your e-commerce store. Payment gateways are like a bridge between the buyer and seller. They permit fund transfer directly to the seller, keeping the security and comfort of the buyer in mind.

As per a survey by Baymard Institute, 6% of the customers abandoned their cart because there weren’t enough payment methods available. Added to this, most users these days prefer mobile payment options as they are quick and effortless. Thus, it is imperative that you choose a payment gateway keeping these points in mind:

  • Secure
  • Well-known
  • Easy to use

Let us have a look at the top 5 online payment gateways to look forward to in 2019.

  1. PayPal
    PayPal is a global online payments platform that assists in online money transfer. It currently has over 277 million users worldwide and operates in 202 markets. Moreover, PayPal allows customers to send, receive, & hold funds in 25 currencies worldwide. One of the advantages of PayPal is that you need not have a PayPal account for processing payment. This is a great advantage of e-commerce stores as they need not worry if their customer has a PayPal account or not. Key Features of PayPal:
    1. Doesn’t require users to have a PayPal account to process payment
    2. Supports international payment and credit card
    3. Multi-currency support
    4. No withdrawal fee
    5. Fast mobile payment
  2. PayU 
    PayU is a prominent online payment service provider that processes payments faster for both merchants and buyers. PayU covers 18 markets across Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa catering to over 2.3 billion consumers. They have over 300 payment methods for fast, simple and secure electronic payments across platforms. It supports one-click buy that allows users to purchase with a single click, thus improving customer conversion rates on your e-commerce website. Key Features of PayU:
    1. Easily integrate and receive all local payment methods instantly
    2. Supports one-click buy allowing users to purchase with a single click
    3. Mobile integration
    4. Web checkout
    5. Multi-currency support
  3. Amazon Payments
    Amazon Payments is a payment service offered by the e-commerce giant Amazon. The payment gateway is available to Amazon users both sellers and buyers to help smoothen their online purchase process. In Amazon Pay, the merchants can accept payment either online or on mobile. Moreover, it easily allows users to access their information from the merchant’s site so you don’t need to add any details like name, shipping address, credit card details etc. without compromising the security. This smoothens and fastens the payment process. Key Features of Amazon Payments:
    1. Has a faster checkout process
    2. Offers top-notch security
    3. There is a merchant website integration
    4. Supports automatic payments
    5. Fraud protection
  4. Braintree
    Braintree is an online payment gateway and a division of PayPal designed to make your payment process simpler. Braintree supports over 45 countries and 130+ currencies worldwide. One of the benefits for Braintree is that users can tailor their checkout flows any way they would like while remaining PCI compliant. Moreover, it saves your customers the time and hassle of re-entering their payment information every time they make a purchase. Key Features of Braintree:
    1. Merchants can customize their checkout workflow
    2. Easy data migration
    3. Dynamic control panel
    4. Easy and Faster repeat billing
    5. Advanced fraud protection
  5. Authorize.Net
    Authorize.Net is a payment gateway platform powering over 3+ lakh customers. It provides security and complex infrastructure to enable fast, secure and reliable data transfer. It offers plenty of options to its users for both accepting and processing payments. It offers an online payment system, as well as, at retail locations. The online payment system accepts credit cards and electronic cheques from websites and deposits the money directly to the merchant account. Key Features of Authorize.Net
    1. It supports multiple payment options viz. Mobile, retail, mail and phone payment
    2. It employs advanced Fraud Detection Suite
    3. It supports recurring billing
    4. It does not have a fixed enterprise pricing scheme
    5. It supports sync for Quickbooks

Conclusion:

We at UnifyHOST, use PayPal (USD, EURO) and Paytm (INR) payment gateways as we have a presence in India, however, as an e-commerce store owner you need to figure out which is the best online payment gateway option for you. It might be one amongst our top 5 list or any other payment gateway. The right choice is the one that is the most beneficial to your customers. Satisfied customers equal to increased and improved conversions which, in turn, leads to improved business.

Which is the online payment gateway used by you? Is it one amongst these or something else? Tell us in the comments section below.