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Choosing Your Web Hosting Platform

Windows or Linux: What is the right choice for you? This is one of the first decisions you need to make when looking to host your website. However, this is just one of the many ways that myhosting.com wants to make life easier for you, by offering both platforms as standard features of our Business and eCommerce hosting plans. You can get a Windows web hosting account and a Linux web hosting account for the price of one hosting plan. If your requirements ever change, or you want to make use of both platforms, you can do so without making any changes to your hosting service.

But what if you are interested in our Personal Website plan which includes only the Linux platform? Or how can you figure out whether to publish your site to the Windows site or Linux site under your Business Hosting plan?

FEATURES	Windows + Linux Sign Up »	Linux Sign Up »
Platform	Windows 2008 + Linux CentOS	CentOS
Internet Information Server 7	✔	-
Apache 2.0	✔	✔
Dedicated IP Address	✔	Option
Microsoft® ASP.NET 2.0 and AJAX	✔
Active Server Pages (ASP)	✔	-
PHP	✔	✔
SQL 2005 Database	✔	-
MySQL 5.0.32	✔	✔
RapidSSL® or QuickSSL® Certificates	✔	✔

There are a number of factors to consider.

There is a common misconception that if you are using Windows on your computer, you need to have Windows based web hosting. This is not true. The operating system of your web hosting account can be different than your computer’s operating system. So how do you choose?

The first is entirely dependent on how your site is created. For example, if your site contains only static web pages like HTML and CSS, then it could run on either a Linux or Windows hosting server.

What if I don’t just have static pages on my web site?

If you are using active content such as a forum, shopping cart or blog which requires scripting support, then you should choose your web hosting platform accordingly. Traditionally, applications scripted in PHPor MySQL run under Linux hosting accounts, and ASP, ASP.NET, Access or MS SQL run under Windows hosting accounts. In some cases, it is possible to run ASP scripts on a Linux server or PHP scripts on a Windows server. Some ISPs allow for such cross-platform scripting. We prefer to support scripting languages in their native environment, where they were meant to be used and where they run best. But recent advances with Windows 2008 have allowed us to support PHP on that platform.

Many users or hosting providers argue that Linux or Unix based web hosting servers are more stable and provide greater security. However, the stability and security of the server and your web hosting account is more dependent on the server administrator than the platform. With years of experience hosting on various Windows platforms, our servers are extremely stable and secure. For both our Windows and Linux hosting, we take your security very seriously and will do our best to ensure that our servers are patched and secured at all times.

How come comparable Windows and Linux plans don’t cost the same?

One of the most noticeable factors when comparing Windows and Linux web hosting is the cost. In many cases a Linux web hosting account is more affordable than a comparable Windows web hosting account. This is mainly due to the cost of licensing. Since the Linux operating system and software is often distributed with open-source licenses, there are little or no associated licensing fees. Whereas with a Windows hosting server, most products and software packages used on the server also include an associated licensing fee that the hosting company must pay, thus increasing the overall cost of operating a Windows shared hosting server.

Ready to make a decision?

Armed with this information, your decision on what type of hosting platform to choose may be a little easier now. Asking yourself these questions will help narrow down your choices.

Is your site a static design? Or do you require a specific type of scripting language or database support?
Do you feel more confident with the security and stability provided by Linux servers? Or Windows Servers?
What are your other minimum requirements for a hosting plan?

Thankfully, with myhosting.com the decision is simple. You can get the best of both worlds, without having to compromise your site design or development.