Web Hosting: UNIX or Microsoft Windows?

If you are planning to have a good website and need a web hosting service for hosting your website then there are many different types of web hosting services available on the internet that may have unique beneficial features to help your website. You need to check the requirements of your website and then accordingly choose the best out of the lot that is available.

Generally, people who are new to the field of website hosting are rather unaware of which operating system will suit their website better. The UNIX or Microsoft Windows-based web hosting have their own exciting features, advantages, and disadvantages. A website that can do better on UNIX may not do well on the Windows-based web hosting, and vice-a-versa.

The UNIX and Windows-based web hosting are the two leading types of web hosting services available, and using the right type for your website’s overall needs is critically important. Learn all the features of each type and decide which suits well for your website’s needs. This decision will play an important part in your site’s success on the internet in future.

There are two most important web hosting services. They are the UNIX-based web hosting service and the Microsoft Windows-based web hosting service.

The UNIX-based web hosting servers are usually cheaper and are more efficient and they can also be used for running other open source programs, which saves the operational costs. Also, you can modify the source code and do not have to buy any additional licenses. The UNIX-based softwares are usually available either free or are very affordable compared to the Microsoft Windows-based softwares and tools.

Given below are some of the differences between the Windows-based web hosting and the UNIX web hosting:

Windows-based Web Hosting

One of the popular web hosting services today on the internet is the Windows web hosting service. The Windows operating system is becoming the most commonly used operating system because of the new and excellent web-related softwares released by Microsoft. It is now used by many web developers and web users who require other Microsoft Windows-specific features in their websites. Many important applications like Microsoft SQL databases, Microsoft Access databases are compatible with the Windows-based web hosting service which makes it more user-friendly and very powerful.

Also, using the Windows-based web hosting service for designing and developing your website does not require very deep technical knowledge. As, stated above, it is totally user friendly. The Windows-based web hosting provides you with a top-quality graphical user interface (GUI), using which, even a novice can design and develop a good, attractive, and professional website.

However, the Windows-based web hosting service and the Windows web operating service are costly as compared to the other services and also they are not provided for free usage. You have to purchase the free or proprietary softwares and the license for using these softwares. However, the Windows-based operating system supports many important applications, softwares, web tools and add-ons, which the UNIX operating system and the UNIX-based web hosting service do not support at present. The Windows-based web hosting also supports all the main scripting language. For example, Active Perl, C, C++, Active Server Pages, Visual Basic and many more.

UNIX Web Hosting

UNIX web hosting is a very popular web hosting option that is used by millions of web users. The UNIX web hosting service is quite cheaper, reliable, and stable when compared to some other web hosting services. Today, there are a lot of free packages of UNIX operating system as well as the UNIX web hosting services available on the internet.

UNIX is an also an open source operating system. This reduces the cost of UNIX web hosting service and makes it more reliable as this software is developed by many web programmers. Linux is a UNIX variant, and is developed and released under the GNU license, which is available free of cost. Any programmer can access the source code and add features, modify the software to make it more reliable and attractive, can make it more secure, can fix any bugs, and add more features to it.

UNIX web hosting service is also more flexible and very stable. UNIX operating systems and the UNIX-based web hosting supports many web tools and applications, for example, the PHP, Perl, MySQL, CGI-BIN, and other such tools.

It is very difficult to run Windows-based website on a UNIX-based web server. However, a UNIX-based website can easily run on a Windows-based web server. But, if you want to run Windows-based website on a UNIX-based web server, then you need to redesign your website according to the UNIX web server’s specifications. This may consume a lot of time and also a lot of money, thus making it more expensive. It is still a better choice to design your web site for just one of these two web hosting operating systems from beginning of your website’s design and development. Then, concentrate more on the other important tasks of design, content, advertisements, marketing, and sales using your website. This approach will surely make your site a success on the internet.

The choice of using UNIX or Microsoft Windows operating system depends chiefly on your budget, and on which databases and scripts you wish to use for your website. It is a fact that both these web hosting types are very popular and extremely powerful, and will remain so for a long time to come.