In order to get your website on the Internet, you need a host server to upload its content to. This is the field of hosting and it is quite vast as it has many concepts and technical terms that newcomers and people without much previous experience can find difficult to navigate. However, in this particular article we are going on one particular area of hosting, which involves paying for your services using cryptocurrencies and more notably – Bitcoin. But why is this important and why does paying with Bitcoin matter in the grand scheme of things? Well, there are actually a plethora of reasons that you should at least take into consideration before you decide to buy a given server. Here are a handful of them.
Crypto transactions protect your privacy
Bitcoin is a wonderful way to pay for something while remaining anonymous and retaining your identity. But why is that? Well, to put it into a simple perspective, paying with crypto means transferring a given amount of that currency from one address to another. There are no third-parties, no additional processors or vendors. Everything happens directly and each payment is then recorded and stored into the blockchain, which keeps track of every transaction ever concluded. This allows you to, later on, check all of the payments that you have made if you have access to a special terminal, which allows you to check the transaction itself. This makes paying with Bitcoin an ideal choice for protecting your privacy and preserving your identity. Some hosting providers have had a bad reputation for collecting their customers’ data only to sell it to other companies to serve for research and ad targeting. Overall, if your hosting provider does allow you to pay for your services with Bitcoin or any other type of cryptocurrency, you should take advantage of that method. Additionally, this means that your provider is also willing to protect your privacy. An example of such a company is VPSBG as they have been accepting Bitcoin as an alternative payment method since 2014.
International payments are much cheaper
Paying internationally for any goods or services usually means having exceptionally high additional fees. This is due to the fact that you are making a transfer between divergent currencies which requires extra funds in order to cover conversion costs and other types of fees that apply when using third-party payment processors such as traditional banks for example. However, paying with Bitcoin is a lot cheaper when it comes to international locations. Given that Bitcoin has a universal value, it does not fluctuate in comparison to the way in which different currencies do. Because of this, it is much cheaper to make an international payment, which is something that many hosting customers appreciate, especially if they want to get a server in a different country or continent.
Serving as an alternative option
Many people worldwide do not have access to traditional payment methods such as PayPal or normal credit card banking. For these users, Bitcoin payments come as salvation allowing them to still conduct transactions. This is especially prominent in countries from South America and Africa for example. Paying with Bitcoin for your servers is quite easy as it only requires you to have an established wallet and a device with an Internet connection. Creating such a wallet takes just a couple of minutes and minimal effort, making it quite easy to do. This is why users tend to go for Bitcoin and other crypto-currency related payment options.
Does the payment depend on the server type?
The simple, straightforward answer is that yes, you will need to pay more or less based on the type of server that you have chosen to go for. Generally speaking there are three main types of hosting servers that you can go for when choosing a particular plan. These three types are shared hosting, dedicated servers and virtual private servers.
Overall, shared hosting is the cheapest option out of all of them because you will be required to share the server’s resources with other users and their websites, applications and projects. While this will cost you the least amount of Bitcoins, you should only invest into this server type if you are unable to afford the other two as it can be quite a setback in some situations. This is because sharing resources, which is also where the name of this hosting type originates from, can be quite damaging to your website in the long run because if other websites happen to see a drastic increase in traffic, they would consume more of the server resources, leaving your website starved, which will ultimately result in longer loading times and if you are running an eCommerce platform – unhappy customers. Additionally, there is also not that much storage and you will most likely end up having to purchase more space.
Dedicated servers, on the other hand, are at the other end of the scale as they offer you completely unique and personal resources which only you can use. This, however, comes at a hefty price as you will have to pay quite a lot more when compared to shared hosting for example.
If you do not wish to give that much Bitcoin over to your provider for this particular hosting option, you can try the middle option that combines the best out of both worlds – virtual private servers (VPS). VPS servers are a very good alternative as they are quite affordable but also offer you much more in terms of features that you can utilize in comparison to shared hosting. Probably the most notable of those features is the ability to scale depending on your requirements. But what does this mean?
Scalability refers to your VPS server’s ability to expand or downgrade in terms of resources. Need more space? Just purchase additional storage and directly have it implemented into your hosting plan. The same goes for any other resource that you might find your server needing. You do not have to spend additional Bitcoins on a new hosting plan as you can just upgrade your existing plan. Furthermore, you can also downgrade your server and end up paying less as you will not need to spend more money on something that you are essentially not using.