Hosting your own site - advantages/disadvantages?

[TOOL]

For a tutorial excercise at uni I have to write about the advantages and disadvantages of hosting your own web site compared to contracting a service provider to perform this function.

I thought this would be a great place to ask for opinions as you all know so much!

So please tell me what you think are the advantages and disadvantages of hosting your site yourself instead of hiring someone else to do it for you.

Thanks.
:)

[Eric Jr.]

Hosting yourself:

Disatvantages:
You need to have a webserver
You need to have a permanent webconnection with atleast 50kb upload
You have to solve errors yourself

Getting hosted:

Disatvantages:
You have to pay
You share your server with others (making your website slow)
You have limited bandwidth
Getting special modules such as PHP (usually standard nowadays), Ming, PhpMyAdmin, Frontpage extension, can be a pain.



or something

[Yeldarb]

also, with hosting yourself, if you shut down your computer, your website goes offline, plus your own browsing and downloading can be slowed by the activty (and your clients speed is slowed too...)

i'd definitely go with paying for hosting, it's actually pretty cheap...

[Eric Jr.]

Too, I didn't think about hosting on your own client computer though .. but thats also an option ..

[prstudio]

Disadvantage to contracting someone to host and do my website:
Paying someone else to do what I can do.
No total control.
Have to adhere to other's policies.

Advantages of "renting" a server and doing it yourself.
Boundless.
Free reign over accounts and permissions.
The ability to sell space to other clients.
The list goes on and on.
Freedom to develop as I see fit!

[TOOL]

Thanks everyone who has posted. Feel free anyone else to post something that you might think is missing.

:)

[RelandR]

If you are merely talking about a personal type of home site ... security is the biggest issue with serving from home, that and Most ISP's do not allow serving from a home connection (allthough a lot of people do it, they are likely breaking their TOS).

A big +++ ... Hosting off of your own machine is a great way to experiment / learn about server set up and management ... and getting the 'feel' of it from home first is a big advantage.

Being a host for hire tho, The downs to this from home are the fact that it is difficult to set up a reliable and speedy connection to the net. Hosts of any worth have multiple connects to several backbones and redundant power, which makes doing it yourself a questionable choice for being a commercial host.

Running a leased dedicated server is the most practical but you need to know what's what, therefore most ppl rent a small but managed-for-them space on someone elses server, trading control for simplicity and low cost.

[Digitalosophy]

i personally would much rather pay someone to host the site for me, especially when the client pays for it

[ahmed]

I wouldn't advise you to host your site on your own machine, unless you know you have enough security and machine that is really stable.. I'm hosting my current site on my home machine i must admit, but it's a pain in the *** since i always end up having to reformat my machine.. I also do the hosting on my own cause i experiment with different server and socket software from time to time, its a little easier to manager :)

[Digitalosophy]

yea ill agree with what ahmed said, sometimes you need to experiment with software that your exisiting company doesn't have. but hosting stuff on your own pc should be for experimental testing only(in my mind) unless you have great upload speed - 100kb +.

Even if you do decide to do it you should be running it off a different machine that you work with. I'm in the prossess of hookin up and old crappy pc i have laying around just for server side testing.