Selecting the location of your website’s hosting server is one of the most important decisions when starting an online business. The right server location can, after all, help in making your website faster and more responsive to the local user thereby helping in converting him into a customer and eventually increasing sales. However, deciding this seems to be a complicated task. It is as good as asking which is better – red apples or green? and, why is one more expensive than the other!
In this article, we’ll cover what a data center is, how important the location of the chosen server is and try to tackle a pressing question – are servers hosted in India more expensive than US servers, or it is just a myth?
Concept of Data Centers
‘A data center is a repository that houses computing facilities like servers, routers, switches and firewalls, as well as supporting components like backup equipment, fire suppression facilities and air conditioning.’ In simple words, a data center is like a warehouse that stores technical equipment like servers, switches, routers etc. Additionally, a data center requires extremely low temperatures which is taken care of by air conditioning and other cooling systems.
Data centers are usually owned by one single organisation which then partitions servers to provide a cluster of servers to their individual clients. This cluster of servers either physical or virtual in nature acts as a mini data center. The data center can be in the same country your company is in or it can be elsewhere.
Does Server Location Matter
When it comes to choosing a data center for hosting your website, some of the questions that arise are:
- Does server location and bandwidth really matter?
- If yes, how and why?
The answer to the above question is a simple ‘yes’. The location of your hosted server is extremely important. The location of your hosting server largely depends on the factor where is your target customer base. If a large portion of your customer base is based in a particular country it is best advisable to choose hosting as close to it as possible.
Consider, for example, you have a garment business and you are primarily running this business to cater to people living within India and not anywhere else. In such a case, it makes a lot of sense for you to choose hosting in India or closer to India as the distance matters. Greater the distance between the customer and your website server, the longer will be the response time of your website.
Now depending on the quality of the dedicated server hosting, this delay in website loading speed might or might not be noticeable. This is only applicable if your website is catering to an audience of just a single country. However, if your website is targeting international markets it really doesn’t make much of a difference where you host it. In such a situation, it is advisable that you choose a good global hosting provider with servers in Europe or USA.
Websites hosted on India Servers
If your target audience is based in and around India, here are the advantages and disadvantages you need to look at, to make an informed decision.
Pros:
- Hosting your website on India servers will load your website faster
- Improves your SEO and Google Page Ranking as it largely depends on website load speed
- Technical Support is easily available in local language too
Cons:
- Hosting on an India server means that you would be paying slightly more than you would pay with US hosting. This is because low bandwidth costs higher, for instance, the cost of broadband and cable is India costs higher as opposed to the US this is partially due to the fact that the infrastructure is expensive in India. Also, India has only 138 data centers. However, with the growth in the economy, this is slowly but surely changing
Websites hosted on US Servers
If your target audience is based internationally it is advisable to go for US-based hosting. Here are the advantages and disadvantages you need to look at, to make an informed decision.
Pros:
- Hosting your website on India servers will load your website faster
- Improves your SEO and Google Page Ranking as it largely depends on website load speed since your website is targeting customers globally, the location of the server is not of prime importance but the quality of the hosting server and CDN (Content Delivery Network) should be good. If these two factors are taken care of, then your website would load quickly irrespective of the customer’s location
- Compared to Indian data centers hosting prices are comparatively cheaper and economical in the USA. Also, US currently has 1716 data centers as opposed to India that has 138
Cons:
- If you look at a global page load rate, then in that aspect hosting your server in the US doesn’t really affect your SEO and page rank as the pages load visibly faster due to CDN and you as a user expect that slight delay. However, when compared with hosting where the majority of your customer base is as opposed to global, the page load speed is slow. Also, chances are if at some point the server is closed for maintenance it might happen with respect to local time and this can affect customers placed across the globe
Indian Data Centers are Expensive – Reality or Myth
Overall, as we’ve seen above, we can conclude that hosting your website on Indian servers is costlier compared to the US. The factors being higher economical, resources and bandwidth cost.
However, if your primary customer base is in India, it would be a wise choice to choose an Indian data center so that you don’t have to deal with slow website performance and page load speed. As this would directly impact your customer, their reduced rates which would, in turn, lower your revenue and also, make you lose out on your page ranking and SEO.
If you have any queries feel free to contact our sales and support executives. Alternatively, you can even drop us a comment below.
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