How do I decide between Linux web hosting and Windows web hosting?

We're often asked this question and what it could mean to your final site. Linux and Windows are operating systems and both have fundamental differences, but also many similarities. The truth is it all depends on what you want. Simple right?

Let’s start with the web site idea. When you start to pick a web hosting provider you're moving beyond the "I want a web site" phase and starting to move into the "I want my web site to do this" phase. Don't try to choose a back-end right away, you’ll just confuse yourself and get bogged down.

Let's start by thinking of a web site having a back-end and a front-end. The front-end is what your customers and clients see - this is the portal of your business. That face can be professional, whimsical, informational - anything you come up with. The front-end is where you think about graphic design, user interface and content of the site. This is also the part you're designing things on the back of a napkin and not worrying about how it works - just how it looks.

The back-end is getting into the technical portion and most likely where you'll need someone to work things through with you. This is the portion of the web site that no one will see except you and your technical people. When you chose a form in the front-end, what do you want it to do? Sure it can collect an email address for you to email them - that’s a basic function. Now decide what path that information will take - do you want to store that information, along with when they contacted you? Do you want to store that information just in your email client or do you want a database?

Now you have an idea of where you’ll be when you choose Linux or Windows for your hosting solution. Now we can use the tools in each to help decide. In our example your form is collecting email addresses. If you just want your information mailed to you and you’ll call them and delete the email - it won’t matter what operating system you choose they both can handle a simple feature like email. Do you want to store those emails in a contact database? If so, do you already have a database to store those in?

Linux hosting will generally come with a MySQL database. MySQL is a major database, able to hold millions of lines of information and is supported by major companies and numerous web support sites. MySQL is also free to use, easy to set up (with the right help) and a web standard. It interfaces with major publishing systems like Drupal, Wordpress, PHP pages and general HTML. If you don’t have a database for yourself it generally won’t matter what is setup - pick the cheaper one in this case. For most people if you don’t have a specific need - pick a Linux host, they’re generally cheaper.

Windows hosting is more specific to what tools you have to publish, maintain your site or internal tools you’re using. If you currently have an in-house SQL database, it’s a cleaner and easier solution to host that database on the web using a Windows-based hosting provider. If you have tools or programming done with Visual Studio, those tools can publish directly to your Windows-based website or directly convert into a web page hosted there.

Either choice in creating a website can be a technical challenge and it’s recommended to talk with a technical consultant. Even a quick consult from one can help you save hours of work on your part.