It’s hard to get attention from users online, and if you do, the clock is ticking and you have about 15 seconds before you could lose them forever. If you’re not using an unmetered dedicated server, you could risk losing your customers when they reach the edges of your bandwidth or when your app is slow. While you’re out building interest for your site, you need an unmetered dedicated server to keep the users you’re attracting.
Here are the pros and cons of using unmetered solutions.
Pro: Performance Ready for Your Success
When you’re first setting up your company, it’s hard to predict how long it’ll take you to succeed. It’s while you’re working hard at building your business, focusing on audience growth, and getting people interested that you’ll see growth. Usually, your success happens as a result of hard work, so you can’t exactly watch the pot until it boils.
When you have a dedicated and unmetered server, you can ensure that you have enough room to grow while you’re out there building your business. If you’re working hard on getting people engaged with your brand and then hit your capacity while you’re bringing people in, they’re going to turn around fast. It only takes one server error to get people looking for a service that’s more reliable than you apparently are.
Having enough bandwidth also means that you can stream high-quality content to your customers and clients. When people visit your site, they want to see your site is up and running with the information and data they want running at top speeds.
If you sign up for server space with a metered server solution, you’re going to be charged for overage. You’ll be stuck either dropping connections because you don’t have the bandwidth or you’ll be paying a premium for every extra connection that you get. You don’t need downtime when you’re trying to attract users.
Con: You’ll Pay More While You Build Your Brand
One of the downsides to unmetered servers is that you’ll pay more than you would for paying as you go. When you pay as you go, you’re not paying for a whole bunch of space you’re not using during those first critical months of your company. When you’re first starting to build your brand, you’re not going to have that many users, meaning you won’t need as much space, meaning it’ll just sit dormant.
If you know exactly how much bandwidth you need from month to month, you could save money with a metered server solution. You’ll be using very little bandwidth when you have only a few users pinging your server. Rather than paying for massive amounts of space and high-speed data, you could reserve that money for reaching out to users.
However, if you don’t watch your server carefully, you won’t find out that you’ve hit your limit until later. As mentioned above, if you allow your provider to charge you a premium when you go beyond your limit, you’ll get hit with a huge bill a month after a spike. If you don’t, you’ll have to turn people away at the door, making all of your work pointless.
Pro: You Get Flexibility
When you have lots of available server space, you get the room to make mistakes and to try out new things. If you have a massive platform as it is, setting up a new platform or a test version could take up a lot of space. If you’ve got the room to do it, that means you’ve got a whole lot of canvas to paint on.
It might seem wasteful to some, but if you’re thinking of rolling out a new version of your site or your app, you might want to partition your server. This allows you to run a test copy of your new platform and give people access. Without this server space, you’re forced to either make incremental changes to your old projects or you have to roll the dice on deployment.
When you have an unmetered dedicated server, you get the chance to do whatever you want with your space. If you have a high-bandwidth usage pattern, even for a temporary period, you’ll be able to accommodate. If you want to offer streaming content, you can take a risk and try it out without any ramifications.
Con: Staffing Is Always a Challenge
Companies offering a low bandwidth metered solution are often perfect for companies that are just starting out. If you’re looking for a solution that you can be pretty hands off with, you might consider starting there.
As your company grows, you’re going to need more tech staff. You’ll need people who have experience working with servers and who understand how to manage the data that moves in and out of your server. Without that staff, you risk suffering outages that you can’t fix.
With an unmetered server, you might be taking on a lot more than you can handle. This can be mitigated by talking with the company you’re thinking about working with. See what kind of support packages they offer and you might find that you’re able to work with an unmetered solution even with a shoestring team.
If you get 24/7 support from a staff who really cares about your success, you’ll find that you can get a lot out of the best unmetered servers out there.
An Unmetered Dedicated Server Is the Answer
When you’re struggling to find the right solution to fit your business, you need an unmetered dedicated server to ensure you keep your customers. As devices get faster and more powerful, your users are only going to expect more from you.
If you want to know more about why a dedicated server is vital, check out our latest guide.
