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Small business owners usually don't have the budget or the need to have a full time or even part time system administrator working for them, so if they are not familiar with the administration of a web server they might be better off with a hosting provider controlled web hosting account for their small business. Web hosting on a shared server or a managed web hosting account is fairly straight forward. All you need to do is upload your website and that is about it, but if you require any special applications for your website or have a dedicated server on your small business web hosting account
Then even a low level managed web hosting option might be for you.
Thankfully most dedicated server packages either include a minimal managed service or offer it for a reasonable fee. One colleague pays $69 a month for a managed dedicated server that includes 15 minutes of server management per month, enough for all the latest software patches and updates to be installed.
The same goes for VPS web hosting and is standard for shared web hosting, since the system administrators need to keep their server up to date so that they don't have any problems for their customers. That’s also the main difference between shared web hosting and VPS and Dedicated servers, if you do something that negatively impacts the web server on a shared hosting account it will more than likely affect all the accounts on the server, while if your VPS or dedicated server account goes down it is just your account that is out of commission.
Since many small businesses are on a tight budget for their website hosting, their best bet is to start out with a cheap hosting account that meets all their requirements and can grow with them. For small business managed hosting this is best done in a VPS hosting or dedicated server environment, since the hosting companies that supply these types of accounts have lots of upgrade options for when you need them. Shared web hosting accounts do have some upgrade room but the cheapest accounts are supplied by hosting providers that specialize just in shared accounts. This specialization allows them to offer amazing deals but when you need to upgrade chances are you will have to switch web hosts (Be sure to read our article on how to switch hosting companies).
Don’t let the non upgradability of most shared web hosting accounts bother you, since they are dramatically cheaper per month over your other options ($5 a month in a one year contract as opposed to between $30 and $250 a month for VPS or Dedicated servers). And even if you have no clue of how to switch host (very simple) you can hire a web tech or the system administrator of the new provider to do if for you and more often than not it will be real cheap to do.
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