One of my recent converts to Onxshop experienced a devastating server disaster last year and thought it would be a good idea to share what we learned.

The whole ecommerce industry has really only existed for about 10 years. It is constantly changing and evolving in response to technological developments. Many websites are built without any kind of a support contract with the web design company (the builder) and they are doing things for you as they occur. Most web design companies, even those which are highly reputatable, are not aware of the potential for disaster. You cannot blame them, they have genuinely believed this cannot happen with a sophisticated web hosting infrastructure, i.e. Bytemark VPS. when all data are in RAID. What they should do is tell you that need long term support for the web server itself.

When this disaster happened, the builder helped to reinstall the operating system on a new machine provided by Bytemark. They immediately restored the site from the latest available backup, which was unfortunately one year old. Then they worked intensively with Bytemark on the latest data recovery from corrupted RAID and put a fully functional website back, two weeks after the disaster occured. Basically, there was a server disaster and the web design studio (the builder) fixed everything in two weeks at a cost of £600.

The client realised that to prevent a similar situation happening again, some additional protection would be required. This is exactly what the Onxshop service delivers. 

Please read my comparison, which should help you to understand why choosing Onxshop is the best option. 

Common web design studio (the builder)

Server hosting

A web design studio has no legal obligation to keep your website up and running, because the contract is between you and web hosting company (not the web design studio). You usually pay server hosting.

Server maintenance

Most maintenance contracts will cost on average £300 per month and will cover for this three essential ongoing tasks:

1. send you a backup file every week
2. run every week a security upgrade for the operation system
3. do an operating system upgrade each couple of years.

Server disaster recovery

A web design studio would be able to do a recovery and charge for it on an hourly basis, probably about £50 per hour. Recovery could take 8 hours.

Bytemark (hardware provider)

Server hosting

An average contract for server hosting with Bytemark will cost £27 per month.

Server maintenance

Bytemark offers a full management service for £80 per hour, so the estimated cost for a standard type website would be £160 per month. Bytemark guarantee that backup is working properly and the latest version is immediately available.

Server disaster recovery

Bytemark will charge for recovery on an hourly basis, just the same as any web design studio.

Laposa Onxshop (fully managed service)

Server hosting

Server hosting is included in the Onxshop package.

Server maintenance

Server maintenance is included in the Onxshop package.

Server disaster recovery

Recovery is completely FREE. It's secured by disaster recovery plan and completed within 24 hours.