A recent TechRepublic survey showed that the majority of respondents use Web hosting services primarily because of the infrastructure costs or an inability to keep the site up 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The informal survey, taken by more than 100 registered TechRepublic members, ran in the CIO community from Oct. 21 to Nov. 1.

Advertisement
IBM Corporation is the exclusive sponsor of TechRepublic’s special series on Web Hosting. IBM’s e-business Hosting gives you the freedom to customize an array of services into a solution that is shaped by your business, not ours.

For more information, check out TechRepublic’s Web Hosting Center, or visit IBM’s e-business Hosting site

IBM Corporation is the exclusive sponsor of TechRepublic’s special series on Web Hosting. IBM’s e-business Hosting gives you the freedom to customize an array of services into a solution that is shaped by your business, not ours.

For more information, check out TechRepublic’s Web Hosting Center, or visit IBM’s e-business Hosting site

Only 19 percent said they do not use a Web hosting service. The majority responded that they used a Web hosting service for some aspect of the company’s site.

Choosing to use a Web hosting service
Why did respondents choose to use a Web hosting service?

The answers were varied, but the most-cited reason was a lack of internal resources to keep the site up 24/7. Infrastructure costs and the fact the Web site is not a core competency were each cited by 22 percent of the respondents.

The survey also asked about the obstacles to using a Web hosting service. Respondents were allowed to choose multiple selections. Cost and concerns about being able to quickly alter content were each checked by 25 percent of the respondents, as the chart below shows. Security also ranked high on the list, receiving 21 percent of the 160 responses to this question.

We asked what factor was the primary consideration when choosing a Web hosting service. The responses indicate cost is the top concern at 34 percent. However, service agreements, bandwidth, and scalability also rated highly. Data center and private transit Internet connectivity each received less than 5 percent.

Changing services
Finally, we wondered if companies are inclined to switch hosting services once they’ve established a relationship with the service. So, we asked if the respondents had ever switched Web hosting services. Forty-nine percent said yes, while 51 percent told us no.

When asked why they switched, most cited poor response time. Despite the concern for cost when finding a Web host, cost ranked low as a reason for switching Web hosting services, as the chart below shows.

TechRepublic is featuring a series of articles on this topic in every republic this month. If you’d like to see what your IT colleagues are doing with Web hosting, click here.