With the development of technology, the customer requirements for a hosting service increased a lot. Nowadays, it’s not just about the server space to host user website files and provide high uptime but also about winning customers offering them the latest software, convenient means to manage including some extra tools and services to solve user problems and adapt to by offering customization options for their hosting to deliver a more personalized experience. In turn, it also increases customers’ loyalty to the brand and helps to stay ahead of the harsh competition in the hosting market.
There exist different approaches to treating add-ons for the services. Some Hosting providers as Namecheap, for instance, are offering both a variety of plan solutions as well giving users a possibility to spend less by offering some extra features user may require as addons while others make certain services as a killer feature of certain packages.
One of the examples of a different approach is selling Managed Hosting as separate plans or offering management as an extra feature that you may purchase with your server giving a choice to a user to take advantage
In this article, we tried to gather the most popular add-ons for hosting services explaining how one may benefit from them.
Let’s jump straight into the addons for hosting services that make improve your experience and make your hosting plan a one-stop place to cover all your needs when it comes to running a website.
Empowering the iron of your hosting
The majority of providers offer a pre-selected set of technical resources allocated to a specific package. It means that with a higher plan you will receive more CPU, RAM, and Disk space altogether. But what if you need to increase only one of them? Sometimes, it will be better for your budget to consider adding them to your current packages. Here are the add-on services related to physical server resources:
Additional CPU
A CPU ( Central Processor Unit) is one of the main physical server resources. It acts as a server engine and takes care of carrying out all the processes running on the server. The more CPU you have, the more powerful your server is and the more load it can sustain in terms of the website performance.
Extra RAM
Operating memory (RAM) is required to ensure a quick response to user actions on the hosting side. When the number of simultaneous visitors increases, it is the lack of RAM that often becomes a bottleneck and slows down the operation of the web resource.
Extra Disk Space
During the growth and development of the resource, the allocated quota for data storage can end quite quickly. For example, one contest of graphic creatives in the comments can quickly fill your disc with user pictures. This problem can become a surprise to the owner of the site and even cause a failure to work. Therefore, the presence of such an addon by the provider is always a plus. After all, sometimes the most important thing is to return the website to work and not lose data that is already stored on hosting.
Extra Bandwidth
Bandwidth corresponds to the volume of data that can be transmitted through a communication channel in a unit of time. I.e. if you have a simple blog website, the amount of consumed bandwidth will be not so high, but for sure if you run some file-sharing websites, mirrors or selling digital products that can be downloaded would require the extensive amount of Bandwidth.
Today, providers strive to make their services attractive by offering unlimited Bandwidth for cheaper products such as Shared Hosting limiting the usage by their terms of services. That’s why it’s common to see the ‘Unmetered’ label when it comes to bandwidth. For high-end hosting solutions such as Virtual Private Servers and Dedicated servers, the amount of bandwidth is set to a certain limit. It can be explained bt the fact that Shared hosting is not originally intended to create entire web-based systems, which means that with a high degree of probability all the bandwidth traffic will be from a user’s browsers.
On the contrary, more expensive segments (VPS hosting and dedicated servers) are used for more complicated purposes such as web-applications, SaaS, and heavy websites that consume a high amount of bandwidth that imposes additional investments from a Hosting provider to cover these needs that’s why in most cases, they limit it.
The possibility of extending this characteristic is obviously more important for those who plan to include the file download/upload features for their websites or host a resource connected to automating the data collection. If let’s say you want to create a new worldwide social network, then it is better to always have such an opportunity in the stock rather than running out from bandwidth and fail to provide decent service to your customers.
What other Hosting Add-ons you can get?
While the physical resources as addons are more common for VPS or Dedicated servers, many providers offer various Security licenses, VPN services, or support as add-on services that may be applicable to all the types of Hosting services. So let’s have a look at some of them:
Backups
Almost all providers include weekly backups to protect their services. But in case of system backups, they serve only for internal purposes and providers do not guarantee to keep up the latest copy of your backup. Taking into account that the reliable backup solution means storing your data off-site Hosting providers often offer certain off-site disk space for your backups or sell Backups as an addon. This service is extremely popular among the customer as everyone wants to have the possibility to have all the data safe and sound in case of any emergency such as a hacker attack, unexpected errors after updates or a human error happens.
Dedicated IP
This addon is available for all types of products but is most relevant for Shared hosting. The reason is that high-end products already have 1 dedicated address available for free. Usually, on Shared hosting, you share one IP address with other users located on the same server and this may be the root cause of some potential issues. If the websites hosted on the same IP address as yours are engaged in some abusing activity, such as sending spam or hosting websites involved in some illegal activities, your reputation may suffer as well. That’s why to get better SEO scores and have a clean mail reputation it’s advisable getting a dedicated IP address which will be assigned only to one particular account thus making it protected from any issues caused by your virtual neighbors.
WMCS License
Web Host Manager Complete Solution is a licensed system that allows you to arrange the billing system if you are involved in re-selling domains, hosting, or SSL certificates. The user will be able to create separate accounts, manage the resources allocated to these accounts, and even organize an internal support service. This addon is usually included in the Hosting Reseller package as a part of the package but is also available for any other hosting solution. A very useful opportunity for people who plan to sell digital services and grow their customer base.
Server Management and Paid support
Usually, this one is applicable for more complicated solutions such as Cloud, VPS, or Dedicated servers. These types of hosting services require advanced technical skills to operate. In this case, less tech-savvy users can either hire an external server administrator or get server management, where the core services are handled by hosting provider. Alternatively, it’s possible to get a one-time failure recovery as a part of the emergency support if you are not ready to commit to the regular server management services.
Control Panel
This solution is mostly applicable to high-end products as well, but with some providers, it’s possible to choose between 2-3 options for Shared hosting as well. A control panel provides you with a user-friendly graphical interface to manage the hosting services, create websites, email accounts, manage DNS settings, and overall operate your hosting plan. The most popular control panel is cPanel but taking into account its relatively high pricing, users of VPS and Dedicated servers may want to try something different. Hosting providers can offer some free and other paid options such as Directadmin, Plesk, ISPconfig, and other alternatives.
Additional Security Features
Taking into account that cybersecurity is as important as never with the number of malicious attacks constantly increasing, people want to protect themselves as much as they can. Here come to some custom firewalls, antiviruses, and other extra-security features offered by hosting providers including the server licenses, anti-malware scanning systems, manual checks, and implementing the security basics on a server as a pre-installation configuration.
Wrap up
For sure, the abovementioned list of addons is not complete as various providers use their own unique approach to treating addons. Some people make a specific license a unique feature of the package, some of them make up sales during the purchase but it’s important to remember the main reason for their existence – making the management of your hosting plan more convenient and add more functions to it. In addition, using them does not solve the upgrade issue if let’s say you have overgrown a hosting you are currently using additional services or features would not cover all the requirements of your application or a website. It’s worth checking all the possible options you have, comparing the prices and check the market alternatives to see the best solution that would correspond to your hosting needs.
