For a successful business, websites play a vital role as these days everything is converting to online from offline. However, having a virus free, high uptime, secure and reliable website, depends on the hosting platform, user choose. Mainly, two kind of hosting platforms are offered,
Linux and Windows.
Linux hosting and Windows hosting are the two options but “Which one is better” as both have their own characteristics, benefits, and limitations. So, in this article, a sufficient intro to both the types of hosting platforms is covered, which may assist readers of this article to determine, which hosting platform is appropriate for them.
Linux Hosting
Linux is an open-source system. Various kinds of applications, software and programming languages including Perl, MySQL and PostgreSQL are supported by Linux. It is a cost-effective hosting platform, it is cheaper than Windows. It offers maximum speed, scalability and stability thus it has fewer chances of crashing than a Windows server. However, Linux hosting cannot be used with some Microsoft technologies like Access, ASP or MS SQL, for these technologies you need a Windows hosting server.
Linux hosting comes with more than one option i.e. multiple options to fulfill the requirements of hosting. In fact, most of the people consider Linux hosting as the best hosting solution due to advantages it has, it is a secure, reliable, efficient, affordable hosting platform, leads to great customer satisfaction. PHP is considered to be one of the most popular languages for programming and the positive point, it is compatible with Linux web hosting.
In Linux hosting, Proprietary software’s are not installed and due to this over head expenses are reduced. People who are learning to program i.e. practicing programmers used Linux hosting for testing new things. Moreover, at last, the biggest advantage of using Linux hosting, as we have read earlier also, is that it is very cheap and affordable. Next, if the user chooses Linux, he is not required to run Linux on his desktop or computer for hosting his website. User can go ahead without considering the Operating System he has on his PC, even if Windows XP is there, Linux assist in running the website.
However, websites which are designed for Windows-based application, for them Linux hosting is not a good option as it is not compatible with Windows applications and the coding conversions. It is considered as a serious issue, and this is considered as one of the major disadvantages. We have read the advantages, Linux hosting is considered as the best solution for hosting but with this there are some hindrances to be considered.
Windows Hosting
One of the major advantages of using Windows hosting is that it is provided by Microsoft- World’s no. One IT Company. Next major benefits of using Windows hosting is its user friendly interface as the majority of the people who use Windows as an Operating system on the computer said this. Windows hosting usage provide you with regular support and updates. It also provides you an option of using popular Microsoft tools such as MS FrontPage, MS Access and MS SQL. Windows provide complete use of the programming ecosystems sponsored by Microsoft, such as Visual Basic Scripts and MS Index Server to your web developers as they will develop your website with the Microsoft tools like Visual Interdev and Microsoft Access.
Windows hosting suffers from few limitations like it usually needs many system resources like a very powerful machine to run it. Most of its products are of Microsoft thus it involves additional investment for development tools which is very costly or expensive. Another negative point is that you will not get many free applications with it. The most common disadvantage of using Windows hosting which is known to everyone is that it lacks server stability. It requires restart or reboot more frequently.
Conclusion
From the above, it is concluded that both Windows hosting and Linux hosting are having some pros and cons. Now user need to consider several factors, before choosing the hosting platform among the two; like what is the budget, what are the requirements, users site is more compatible with which kind of technology, what is the purpose of the website and others.
However, from the point of view of hosting platform, Windows hosting is more effective and efficient than Linux hosting because Windows are provided by Microsoft- World’s no. one IT Company, a reliable, branded and reputed provider. It offers simple and easy to use interface, with regular support and updates and popular Microsoft tools and many more
