If you are reading this article there is a good chance you are in the situation where you are choosing between unmanaged or managed web hosting servers or semi dedicated servers. In this area of web solutions there are many areas to compare to come to a solution to your needs. Keep in mind the importance of your purchase and do your research on each provider to ensure the quality of your purchase.  The geography, terms of service, back bone providers, and back up power supplies should be part of your research based on your hosting requirements.

Unmanaged servers tend to cost less because you or your company is completely responsible for monitoring the performance and services ran on the server as well as general software maintenance.  If it is imperative that the website is to stay online this can be a risky choice if you do not have a 24 hour qualified team to monitor your server or servers.  This is often a very expensive investment for employees if they are not already staffed for different duties around the clock. Any situation that does not require the web hosting server to be stable and secure is ok for unmanaged hosting without having a staffed management team.  The cost of employees that are qualified to manage a server should also be considered in your decision.

In the situation your new server is going to be used for a web server that needs to always stay online you will definitely want managed web hosting. Your purchase should depend on the services you decide to have managed including updates, security patches, 24/7 monitoring and load balancing. Normally this is all taken care of for a very reasonable rate due to the fact that data centers work your system into a bulk of systems they manage. Managed web hosting is the only choice for anything but gaming and personal web servers.

With most companies the cost difference between managed and unmanaged web hosting is a very small on a single server but with a large server cluster you may see significant savings on purchasing unmanaged servers. You will also want to make sure that the server management team is one that is always available and reliable. Compare your needs and requirements and make sure you are purchasing a service that provides you with all of the requirements your needs require. Your research into the matter will surely pay off.