How investing in a dedicated server could help your company through further lockdown restrictions

When the UK went into its first lockdown on the 16th March 2020 as a result of rising cases of COVID-19, businesses around the country scrambled to find ways to keep operations running smoothly. For many, the short notice was too much, resulting in temporary closures for some and permanent administration for others.

Overall, the first nationwide lockdown was detrimental to the economy and the health of the business sector. Many employees found themselves on a lesser wage or simply out of a job for good. With infection cases once again rising as the Winter months draw closer, businesses now have more time than before to prepare for the inevitable further restrictions that, with them, will close office and premises doors.

But how can you prepare for remote working when you were pressed for time to do so before? The answer may lie in dedicated servers.

What is a dedicated server?

Traditionally, website hosting is done via a shared server. This means that multiple websites are on the same hosting plan; though this is cheaper and ideal for small businesses or personal blogs, it does have downsides. Such downsides include reduced scalability and flexibility, as well as potentially slower loading times and less chance for customisation and tailoring content to unique audiences.

By comparison, a dedicated server is a hosting platform for solely your website. Though this costs more than a shared server, dedicated servers promise innumerable benefits for your website and by extension your business. Let’s delve more into this, and why an investment in a dedicated server could be critical for your business’s survival during lockdown.

Security

Sadly, times of vulnerability are often seized as times of malicious opportunity. The first UK lockdown saw an increase of more than 60% in the number of cyberattacks on those working from home. A dedicated server means your website has more resources to help protect it, resulting in better website security.

By contrast, normal website servers have to share security resources among all of the websites hosted on that one server, meaning your company website is more likely to be targeted and infiltrated. From there, hackers can access the private data of your business, employees, and potentially even clients.

Flexibility

One of the downsides of a traditional shared website server is that its customisation options are often locked; this means you get little or no say in features such as enabled software, disk space, CPU, RAM, and more. This means your website is likely to not fulfil the needs of your business and be less efficient. Efficiency will be key to the survival of businesses during an ongoing lockdown situation, as every employee’s work and function will be paramount.

Opting for a dedicated server awards you flexibility that is improved tenfold. You get to decide what software and additional features suit your needs, and discard the ones you don’t require. This means your website is tailored specifically to your business, resulting in optimised efficiency for both your employees working through your site, and any clients visiting – this is crucial for driving business during difficult times such as the 2020 pandemic and its lockdowns.

Identity

Every website server boasts its own unique IP address. This means that all the websites on a single shared server share a single IP address; if other websites on your shared server are spam websites, have harmful content, or share adult content, then this could result in your website being pushed further down search engine rankings. As such, a shared server could be seen as counterproductive to those businesses pushing for search engine optimisation (SEO).

Search engine rankings are particularly essential during a lockdown as eCommerce will be the primary source of profit for many businesses – so you need as much online footfall as possible to drive sales and client interest. This is why having a dedicated server for your website alone is great – you have no other website to share an IP address with, and therefore no risk of your website ranking being pushed down due to factors outside of your control.

Choose CWCS Managed Hosting today

If the UK does go into another national lockdown, you don’t want to regret being unprepared. By investing in a dedicated server to host your website, you’re investing in the improvement of your business’s survival chances during a period of unrest and upheaval.

Here at CWCS Managed Hosting, we offer both unmanaged and managed dedicated servers. This means that we can host your website for you on your behalf, while still leaving it in your control. If you’d like to learn more about how dedicated servers or cloud hosting can affect your business for the better, simply go to our website and get in touch. A friendly member of our expert team will be on hand to help answer any questions you might have.