How do you host your websites?

On a dedicated server that runs Bind (for your DNS), Apache (for your web pages) and a MTA (for your email)?

or

On a shared hosting server and everything managed by your web hosting company?

Now let us assume that your server went down for whatever reason.  The web hosting provider sends you an email telling you about how long it will take to fix this.

But… you can’t access your email because it runs on the same server that is now dead!

You customers can’t reach you because your websites are down and your email is no longer working!

The truth is, it very easy to avoid such a scenario without actually spending a lot of money!

The problem here is that all the critical components have a single point of failure… Simply separate them so that one of them failing will not take down the other!

DNS Hosting

The most important part of your web based business is the DNS hosting. Without it there is no web site and there is no email. It is also the most overlooked aspect of website management.

So, the first thing is to find a reliable DNS hosting provider. DNS is very important because that is what maps your domain name to a physical computer. Here are a few suggestions (the costs vary from a few dollars to several hundred)

DNS Made Easy (we use this)
Zone Edit
Easy DNS
or do a search!

So why should you use a separate DNS provider and not your web host?

Remember the single point failure? that is why! 

Dedicated DNS providers have multiple backup and fail-over systems that make sure that they always stay up.  In some cases your registrar may also provide DNS management.  If your web host or the registrar has the same facilities then do go with them!

Once you have selected a DNS hosting provider, set it up so that all your domains are managed from there.

This will give you very good control over where your domain are pointing to! You can now switch your email, web site locations etc very easily (and often in a few minutes)!

This also makes it very easy to switch from one web hosting account to another in case the first one fails. You can even sign up for two different web hosting accounts and automatically switch to the second one if the first fails (yes, this will happen even if you are sleeping)

You should check with your DNS provider to see if fail-over switching is supported and how much it will cost.

Email Hosting

The next step is to find a good email hosting provider. Again, why not on the same server that hosts your websites? For the same reason that if the web server goes down, the emails also go down (especially if you are on a dedicated server). However, many shared hosting providers do use separate servers for email and web hosting.

There are a number of companies that specialize only in email hosting. They have good spam protection (without actually losing the important emails), have mechanisms in place for fail-over switching and also provide web based and mobile email (especially when you are traveling), etc.

Here are a few email hosting suggestions

Mail Trust (we use them)
Google Apps (free and paid)
or do a search!

Please note that DNS hosting and Email hosting are very important and you should always use a good provider who has the features you want. You simply don’t want your DNS or Email system to ever fail!

Web Hosting

Once you have separated DNS and Email hosting you have lot of freedom about the actual  web site hosting. You can even sign-up for multiple web hosting accounts and spread your websites over different geographical areas. Even if you don’t want to do this, you could sign up for a cheap web hosting account with a second provider and make a simple page about support options.  You can then use this as a temporary place holder page if your main websites are down (Set this up using the fail-over options at your DNS provider).