Category: Server Management

Ready to deploy a new server but unsure how to choose the ideal server location?

Server providers like Digital Ocean, UpCloud, Linode, and AWS have made it incredibly easy to deploy a server virtually anywhere, so you can pick the ideal server location.

But how should you choose your server locations? And how do professional SysAdmins choose the locations for their servers?

Why Does Server Location Matter?

The server that hosts your website can be physically situated at one of the thousands of available locations in different data centers across the globe (depending on your server provider of choice).

When you load up a website, a signal is sent from your computer to the server, and then onto the destination. If the server is far away, it’s going to take longer for that connection to happen.

Therefore, the location of your host server can play a crucial role when it comes to your website’s load speed, and by extension, its SEO.

One study conducted by KISSmetrics claims that 47% of internet users expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. This percentage is even bigger among mobile users, who make up over 50% of Google’s users. Hardly surprising given the attention span of people today.

Google has indicated that site load speed is one of their algorithm’s main signals to rank pages. So, having visitors leave your page before it is even fully loaded is bad for SEO and results in lower conversion rates – drastically decreasing your business’ earning potential.

What Is Network Latency & TTFB?

Before choosing your ideal server location, there are various other factors that play an important role in selecting your ideal server location. Two of these factors are network latency and TTFB.

What Is Network Latency?

Network Latency is the time taken by the site visitor to connect to a web server, their request to be processed and the server to begin sending data. It is measured in milliseconds. Network latency is affected by several factors, including:

Round trips: It is the journey taken by an object request (script files, HTML files, etc) to your web server and back to the user. Round trip is generally affected by the distance between the web server and user along with the number of intermediary points through which the connection travels.

Server performance: The correlation between server performance metrics — including server speed, available RAM, the hardware used and site latency.

Any small change in the latency can have some effect on the page load time and user experience. This becomes more important for eCommerce websites where high latency can improve the speed and user experience of the website.

Measuring Latency through TTFB

Time to First Byte (TTFB) is the time taken by the user’s browser to begin loading a webpage after your server reaches an initial request. TTFB can be affected by three main factors:

• The total amount of time it takes for your request to reach the network through the server.
• The total amount of time it takes for the server to process the request and generate the response.
• The total amount of time it takes for the response to propagate back to the web browser.

There are two ways to measure TTFB:

Actual TTFB: The total time it takes for the web browser to receive the first byte of data from a server. Network speed and connectivity can affect actual TTFB.

Perceived TTFB: The time taken by the user to notice that the page has started to load. It is important UX and SEO metrics and is mostly influenced by the time it takes for an HTML file to parse.

Choosing Your Ideal Server Location

Choosing the ideal server location is sure not a child’s play. First, let’s see how others choose server locations.

How Do People Server Location?

When was the last time you put some thought into where your server is? We ran a survey among RunCloud customers and here’s what they had to say:

• 66.7% chose a server in proximity to their own customers;
• 11.8% chose a server that’s physically close to themselves;
• 3.9% didn’t really consider the location of their servers;
• 17.6% said they are global and use CDNs.

So, what should you have in mind when choosing the ideal location for your server?

How To Choose Your Server Location?

Around 66.7% of the people in the above surveys preferred to choose the server location closest to the majority of the site’s audience. While choosing the ideal server location you should consider the important factor surrounding where your server should be located. For most people locating their server near to the majority of their users is the first choice. Perhaps, you should consider that while making your choice.

How To Reduce Latency?

There are different steps you can take at different points across the network to improve network latency. Like, making sure that the people on your network aren’t increasing your latency with lots of downloads or using up all the bandwidth. Also, check out the application performance to make sure that no applications are acting up in weird ways and putting pressure on the network. You can also subnet by grouping together endpoints that communicate frequently with each other. Using traffic shaping and bandwidth allocation measures also helps to reduce network latency.

Use A Content Delivery Network To Reduce Latency:

One way to reduce your website latency is to use CDNs, thus improving your overall website’s performance and UX. Website latency can be reduced by any one of the following methods:

Content caching: CDNs cache and compress mirror versions of the web pages are stored in strategically placed data centres. Later, content is delivered to your users based on their geolocation, thus reducing round trip times and latency.

Connection optimization: CDNs can optimize connections between users and origin servers through session reuse, network peering and TCP pre-pooling. Premium CDNs speed up the communication process further by routing traffic through a tier 1 network backbone that has the least amount of hops.

Along with reducing latency, CDNs can also improve your site’s page load times through front-end optimization like image optimization, minification and file compression.

Which Server Location Is Right for You?

Price plays a large part when choosing a server, especially when you’re on a budget. Or, you may be tempted to get a server close to your location.

However, investing in a server that’s close to the majority of your site’s visitors can be a real game-changer, especially if you’re running an online business. After all, how fast your end-users can access the site, find an item, and make a purchase, is what can make or break its success.

How the Server’s End-User Proximity Affects Your Website’s Success

If your target audience resides in a particular area or country, then it makes sense to host your website on a server as near to them as possible. Right?

Having it hosted further away can be a serious obstacle, as the geographical distance between your server and your site’s end-users can exponentially increase the time it takes for them to access the website. This can lead to your site loading slower for its users, and, as a consequence, you could be losing visitors and conversions.

With that in mind, we recommend you consider the server’s proximity to your clients and site visitors as a priority when choosing your ideal server location.

Using a CDN to Change Your Server Location

What happens if your hosting provider doesn’t let you change your server’s location?

In this case, you have a couple of options:

• Change hosting provider
• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

It can be a hassle to switch web hosting, so using a CDN like Cloudflare can be an easy workaround.

A CDN is a collection of servers placed in strategic geographical locations, acting as a network for caching internet content.

A cached version of your site is stored at each location, so when someone tries to visit your website they’ll be connected to the nearest server on the CDN instead of having to go directly to yours.

Using one can significantly shorten load time by increasing the delivery speed of your site’s data that’s cached on the CDN. This is not the same as web hosting, however, since the CDN is used only for caching your site’s data to improve its delivery speed, not hosting it.

Ideally, you want to combine well-placed servers with a good CDN to get the fastest load speed for your site. There are also many CDN providers to choose from ― Cloudflare, Imperva, StackPath, and Sucuri, to name just a few.

Cloudflare is by far the biggest and most popular solution, and integrates seamlessly with RunCloud, making it easier than ever to manage your servers and moving them to your most ideal server location.

In Summary – Choosing Your Ideal Server Location

Choosing the ideal server location plays a crucial role in its success.

If you can afford it, host your website on servers as close to your target audience as possible. This will lead to more conversions, fewer visitors abandoning your site, and better SEO.

Secondly, getting a good CDN will also improve your site’s load speed significantly. CDNs cache your site’s content on a group of servers in important geographic locations, so that your site can be accessed much faster even if the server it’s hosted on is far away from the site’s visitor.

Lastly, if you’re looking for a way to easily manage your websites, servers, and connections in one intuitive dashboard, you’ll love working with RunCloud.

Hundreds of agency owners, business owners as well as experienced developers rely on RunCloud to build, deploy and operate their servers so they can focus on growing their business. Freedom to host servers with your server provider of choice, giving you full control of server location while managing them all in one centralized dashboard – RunCloud.

Get started with RunCloud today.

IPv4 and IPv6 are networking protocols that allow electronic devices to communicate with one another. These protocols give connected devices an IP (Internet Protocol) address that is used to locate and send data between devices across the web and on local networks. But why are Internet Service Providers and cloud hosting companies are upgrading their networks to support IPv6? What are the differences between IPv4 and IPv6?

We’re going to guide you through the complexities of IPv4 and IPv6 with the goal of giving you a better understanding of the technology involved, key differences, and advantages/disadvantages of each one.

What is IPv4?

IPv4, or Internet Protocol Version 4, is a 32-bit addressing scheme that provides IP addresses as well as protocols to provide routing and connectivity to connected devices.

Each IP address provided by IPv4 will be in the format of xxx.xxx.xxx using decimal digits ranging from 0-9. With this format of addressing, there can be around 4.3(4,294,967,296) billion IPv4 addresses.

What is IPv6?

IPv4 or Internet Protocol Version 6 is a 128-bit addressing scheme that Is used similarly to IPv4. The biggest difference between the two protocol versions is that IPv6 utilizes 128-bit addressing vs IPv4’s 32-bit.

Each IPv6 is in the format of xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx. Ouch! That’s a bit hard on the eyes. IPv6 addresses are formatted in 8 groups of 4 hexadecimal characters. With this format we can create a total of 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses. That’s an insane amount!

What Happened To IPv5?

So, what happened to IPv5 and why did we hop from IPv4 to IPv6? IPv5, originally designed in 1979, included improvements for streaming data.

The introduction of this protocol led to technologies that we use today such as VoIP(Voice over IP) and MPLS(Multi-Protocol Label Switching). IPv5 still uses the same addressing scheme as IPv4, which was one of the main reasons why this protocol version was never released to the public.

Why Was IPv6 Invented In The First Place?

The main reason that the IPv6 protocol was created was to prevent us from running out of IP addresses. Currently, IPv4 addresses are constantly traded to meet the demands of the growing number of devices being used on the web. Making the swap to IPv6 will stop us from worrying about this problem for a long time to come.

IPv4 vs. IPv6 – Which One Comes Out On Top?

After learning about IPv4 and IPv6 you must be wondering, which one should I be using? The truth is… either. Or even both… Don’t worry, the following sections will shed some light on the key differences between both protocol versions.

Key Differences

Some of the key differences between IPv4 and IPv6 are:

• No need for NAT(Network Address Translation) in IPv6
• IPv4 uses 32-bit decimal addressing and IPv6 uses 128 hexadecimal addressing
• IPv4 sections are separated by a dot(.) and IPv6 by a colon(:)
• IPv4 packets utilize 12 headers while IPv6 uses 8
• Easier administration on local networks with IPv6
• Simplified routing in IPv6 (mostly due to not utilizing NAT)

IPv4 vs IPv6 – Security

What the common trend seems to state is that IPv6 is more secure than IPv4. That isn’t necessarily true and is all dependent on your network design. The three most significant technologies that people believe make IPv6 more secure than IPv4 are the innate defense from IP scanning, the built-in usage of IPsec, and the removal of NAT as a dependency.

Let’s dive into each of these in more detail.

IP Scanning

A common method hackers use to attack a network is through scanning public IP addresses and attempting to scan the network for vulnerabilities such as open ports. This attack method works well on IPv4 networks due to the average time it takes to scan every public IPv4 address being around 5 minutes. When utilizing IPv6 addresses, that time jumps from 5 minutes to an estimated 38 billion years.

That being said, you wouldn’t want to rely on the extended address range for any security. Even with an estimated time of 38 billion years, if your address was at the beginning of the list and you had unsecured ports opened, your network would still get attacked. While the odds are low that this can happen, the risk is still similar to IPv4 and is easily avoidable by securing open ports on your network.

IPsec

IPsec, or Internet Protocol Security, was designed to provide security to the network layer, specifically authentication and encryption. For IPv6, IPsec is a mandatory feature, and for IPv4, it’s typically used for encryption while utilizing VPNs. IPsec is a nice security feature that is easily implemented.

For both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, there are subtle nuances for utilizing IPsec properly. Starting with IPv6, IPsec is a mandatory feature for this protocol version. What this means is that all devices that support IPv6 will innately have IPsec as a feature set.

However, while IPsec is mandatory on all devices, its utilization is completely optional. Essentially, if you don’t confirm that you are using IPsec, there’s a chance that it may be turned off. Think of a door with a lock. The lock can provide great security for securing your home… if you don’t remember to lock the door, that lock does nothing.

NAT

NAT, or Network Address Translation, is a method of IP address mapping that is utilized to preserve public IPv4 addresses. This is mostly utilized in LANs (local area networks) with a one-to-many setup. Network Address Translation with a one-to-many setup ends up giving your router a single public IP address shared by all of your devices Due to IPv6 having enough addresses that no device needs to share a public IP, NAT isn’t used at all.

Some people view the removal of NAT as a boost to security while others view it as a negative. In actuality, it doesn’t make too much of a difference for your network’s security.

NAT can be nice due to its innate functionality of masking the current device’s public IP when sending data on the web. This process doesn’t add any extra security, the security comes from the use of a stateful firewall, which is supported by almost all routers. A stateful firewall remembers the hosts that the device is sending data to, and only allows packets back from hosts that you are sending data to. Put simply, this built-in firewall will block all traffic that was not initiated by the current device.

The biggest takeaway from this section is that IPv6 is more secure out of the box than IPv4. That being said, if you were to apply some simple configurations to your network, you can reach the same level of security with IPv4 that you would have with IPv6.

IPv4 vs IPv6 – Speed

This is a hot topic in networking, what about the difference in speed? Currently, it looks like IPv6 is faster than IPv4, but under most circumstances, the difference amounts to milliseconds – something that won’t have an effect on the end-user.

At the current time of writing of this article, it is believed that the slight increase of speed comes from the fact that devices can utilize public IP addresses when using IPv6, instead of sending data back and forth using NAT with IPv4.

Since IPv6 can send data directly between devices, IPv6 just needs to check the data was transmitted correctly, while IPv4 needs to do error checking at multiple levels to ensure the data is intact and accurate when it’s received by the other device. So yes, in terms of speeds, IPv6 is slightly faster.

Why you don’t need to switch from IPv4 to IPv6 right away

A lot is going on with transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6. It was estimated that around this time we would be at 50% utilization of IPv6 addresses worldwide. At present, we are at around 30% global utilization.

The future adoption of IPv6 largely depends on several factors such as migrations from ISPs, large enterprises, and cloud providers. Implementing this change on their end is a large and expensive task. Due to the fact that IPv4 addresses are being exhausted, there will be an apex where the cost of IPv4 addresses starts to exceed the cost of the transition to IPv6.

Is IPv6 Going To Become More Common In The Future?

Put simply, yes! As the connected world increases rapidly, the more we will need to utilize IPv6. The idea is to slowly move over devices to IPv6 to release pressure on IPv4 addresses. That being said, even though the technology is moving in this direction, the more IPv6 addresses we utilize, the more IPv4 addresses that will be released back into the pool for someone else to acquire.

The main reason you would not want to swap over to IPv6 right away is that all of the sites and services you visit may not support IPv6. As the adoption rate grows higher, the less of a problem this will be.

Effortless Server & Web Application Management with RunCloud

We’ve covered a lot of topics in this article regarding IPv4, IPv6, IPsec, NAT, IP Scanning, etc… that’s a lot of information to parse. Now that we are at the end of this article you might be wondering how to go about upgrading to IPv6, how to upgrade your network to support both IPv4 and IPv6 users, or even if your network is currently secure? Or am I vulnerable to some of the issues listed earlier?

This is where RunCloud comes in. RunCloud is a simple, yet powerful control panel that can help you manage multiple cloud services across various platforms. For example, earlier on in this article, we mentioned how IPv6 has IPsec built-in by default but may not necessarily be turned on. Utilizing a service like RunCloud will give you a simple method for securing and managing your entire server down effortlessly.

So, IPv4 or IPv6? Which one?

IPv4 vs. IPv6? Honestly, it doesn’t matter too much. What really matters is how you go about securing and optimizing your server and network to deliver optimal speeds and secure connections. If the option is available to you, it doesn’t hurt to flip that dual-stack switch up, just to be prepared for the future.

One day, we will eventually be using IPv6 addresses, IPv6 is the future of IP addresses. All networks will slowly start to make the transition over to IPv6. This transition will not happen overnight nor will it happen over the next couple of months. It’ll be years until most websites and services can be visited over IPv6. It will be even longer before websites completely shut off their IPv4 support.

So, there really isn’t much to worry about apart from focusing on deploying servers that are reliable, fast, and secure which is what we at RunCloud are dedicated to making easier than ever – and it’s why we’re trusted by people new to server management all the way to senior Linux SysAdmins.

If you have your own website or have been working in the online hemispheres, you’ve probably heard of the term DNS a few times before. But what is DNS and how does DNS work?

Shortly said: DNS stands for Domain Name System and is used to convert human meaningful names (like your domain name) to computer meaningful names (IP addresses).

But there is more to it! We’re here to break down what a DNS is, its different types, and how everybody with access to the internet uses it every day.

What is DNS?

DNS servers translate domain names to IP addresses so browsers can easily connect to the websites you’re looking for. Similar to how a phone translates a contact name to a phone number.

When you open a website on your browser by navigating to a URL – your computer starts to initiate a connection to the website’s IP address. But, if this is the first time you’re visiting that website, how can your browser know what the IP address is? That’s where DNS servers come in.

A DNS server will look for the IP address of the domain name you just searched for, and connect you to their server. Like the Yellow Pages or any other phonebook, but then for websites. Here’s a real-world example:

If you search for facebook.com, your DNS server will look for Facebook’s IP address for you. Without the DNS, you’d have to enter 69.171.250.35 to open Facebook on your browser.

DNS is a fundamental part of the internet, without it, we’d have to memorize IP addresses to go to websites. which I’m sure we’d all agree is something nobody wants. 😄

When Was DNS Invented?

The Domain Name System (DNS) was invented back in 1983 because memorizing IP addresses made using the internet impractical. By connecting IP addresses to names, DNS made browsing through the internet much easier.

A quick overview of the history of DNS:

During the 70s, there was rapid growth in the number of computers used in the world. IP addresses were assigned manually as computers were only able to communicate using numbers back then. This was when the first 3-network system – Packet radio, ARPANET, and SATNET – was introduced.

The technology was progressing too quickly and people were having problems with the bookkeeping of numbers and IP addresses, so a unified solution was needed.

This task fell into the hands of Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of DNS. He designed a system that automatically mapped IP addresses to domain names, making the internet easier to use.

All of this resulted in the birth of DNS in 1983, and the same system has been used worldwide ever since.

How Does DNS Work

Domain Name Systems convert a hostname, or web address, into a computer-friendly IP address. A domain name, together with its matching IP address, is called a DNS resource record.

The DNS server has a collection of domain names and their respective IP addresses, like a phonebook, which is where the translating is done.

Therefore, you’re no longer required to remember IP addresses, and instead, just have to input the name of the website. The DNS recursive resolver will then find the IP address connected to the website you entered and direct you to the correct website.

Types of DNS Service

There are two types of DNS services that are integral to the DNS infrastructure. Each of these services performs different roles, which we’ll share below.

Recursive DNS Resolver

A recursive DNS resolver performs the repetitive tasks of tracking down the correct DNS record. When you type in a website address, the recursive resolver finds the correct DNS nameserver by making a series of requests. If it can’t find the correct IP address, because of a misspell or the website simply doesn’t exist, the DNS resolver will keep making requests until it times out. This is where caching comes in.

Caching works as a temporary storing location that provides a shortcut to the recursive resolver. It can readily provide the information the recursive resolver needs if it has the records stored.

You can think of this as your local DNS server. Whenever you type in the website’s domain name, your local DNS does its best to find you the website you’re looking for. If it’s a website that you frequently go to, the recursive DNS resolver keeps a copy of the website’s domain name and IP address. This makes your DNS faster because it already knows where you’re going without having to make a series of requests.

Authoritative DNS Server

An authoritative DNS server is responsible for the DNS resource records. It stores the list of website names and IP addresses and responds to the requests from the recursive DNS resolver. This server provides results to those requests without needing to ask or search from a different source.

These DNS servers are the dedicated stop-zone for DNS requests. Whenever you visit a new website, chances are you’re getting your IP address from here.

Authoratative DNS Server vs. Recursive DNS Resolver – What’s The Difference?

To put it simply, a recursive DNS resolver asks the questions and tries to provide an answer if it can be found in the cache. An authoritative DNS server already has the answers at hand, and can readily provide an answer.

The recursive DNS resolver will only pass the requests to the authoritative DNS server if it’s unable to find the IP address for the requested website in the cache. That’s why the authoritative server is considered to be the tail-end of the entire DNS query process, while the recursive server is regarded as the middleman.

Recursive DNS resolvers are faster than authoritative DNS servers because they cache the details of websites you frequently visit. This decreases loading time, which is why changing your DNS to a faster network can make your computer feel faster. Although your internet speed doesn’t change, faster DNS networks mean a faster response time to your browser.

How Does A DNS Lookup Work?

A DNS lookup is the process of looking up a DNS record from a DNS server. The DNS lookup translates email addresses and domain names from computers, servers, and smartphones into numerical addresses.

Here’s how a DNS Lookup process works:

1. When a user types in a web address, the computer sends that information to the recursive DNS resolver.
2. The recursive DNS resolver looks through your computer’s cache files to see if there’s an IP address for that website.
3. If there isn’t one, the recursive DNS resolver then sends out a request to another server.
4. If the recursive DNS resolver can find the IP address on one of the servers, the search will end, and the website will load on the user’s computer.
5. Otherwise, the recursive DNS resolver will send requests to servers until it reaches the authoritative DNS servers.
6. The authoritative DNS servers will then look for the IP address in its records.
7. Once the authoritative DNS servers find the IP address, they’ll send it back to the recursive DNS resolver.
8. The recursive DNS resolver will then send the IP address to your computer, and the website will load in the browser.

As you can see, there are a lot of steps in the DNS process; which is why each connection must happen as quickly as possible. We’ll get into DNS speeds later on, but first, we need to explain the different types of DNS queries.

What Are the 3 Types of DNS Queries?

DNS queries are requests made by DNS servers to look for the IP address you’re trying to connect to. Whether it’s your DNS server back to your computer, or your DNS server requesting from another DNS server, these queries all do one thing: find the website you’re looking for.

There are three types of DNS queries in a DNS lookup.

1. Recursive Query

A recursive query is when the DNS server receives a user’s request for a record and responds with the answer, the IP address, to that request. An error message might occur if the server is unable to find that IP address.

2. Iterative Query

An iterative query happens when the server is allowed to provide a referral of what is considered to be the best possible answer to the user. This answer may already be in the cache records. If not, it will direct the user to an authoritative server for an appropriate answer. This process will continue through other DNS servers until it can complete the request or timeout.

3. Non-Recursive Query

A non-recursive query is a request with readily available answers. This happens when either the record is already stored in the cache files or the authoritative server.

The Importance of Reliable DNS Servers

To have a good DNS server matters, because it makes your browsing experience faster, or completely puts it off the rails. A faulty DNS server can be the difference between connecting to a website or being told that the website can’t be found.

A great DNS server is the difference between connecting to a website in 2 seconds or in half a second. If you’re on the market for a DNS server, RunCloud recommends Cloudflare. And, you’ll be pleased to hear that Cloudflare’s Fast, Secure and Resilient DNS is entirely free to get started with.

After Action Report – Switching To Reliable A DNS Server

DNS truly is the backbone of the internet, working quietly in the background to fulfill virtually every request made on the internet across the world. So, what next?

Well, if you’re reading this because you run a website and care about your infrastructure – we recommend looking into Cloudflare. Cloudflare is one of the most popular solutions for internet security, DDoS protection, and optimizing loading times for your website.

And if you’ve been looking to make significant improvements to your server infrastructure as well, RunCloud makes this effortless. Choose your server provider (Digital Ocean, AWS, Linode, UpCloud) & get your site up and running in a matter of minutes.

Try RunCloud today.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you run an agency in the WordPress industry, the chances are you’ve heard of & even considered the WaaS (website as a service) business model as a part of your growth strategy.

So, in this guide, we’ll cover everything from what WaaS & WordPress Multisites are, to how you can plan, launch and run a successful website as a service business yourself.

What’s the biggest challenge you face while setting up your WaaS business? Is it setting up a proper ‘Website as a Service’ business model that can help you to host 100s, if not thousands, of blogs and websites together that generate recurring revenue, creating a smooth onboarding experience, or knowing the framework and platforms you need to develop dynamic web applications?

Whatever the challenge might be, this article will tell you everything you need to know about WaaS and how WordPress Multisite can be used as a business model for WaaS.

What Is WordPress Multisite & WaaS?

In short, WordPress Multisite is a way of adding multiple websites to a single WordPress installation. Activating it is super simple, not dissimilar to installing WordPress the normal way (which we’ll cover later), and once enabled, it’ll let you create sites that belong to your multisite network.

It’s a powerful piece of tech, and many big businesses have been built on top of this technology using what is commonly referred to as the WaaS (or, website as a service) business model.

WordPress Multisite & Website As A Service Examples

Let’s take a look at some of the most successful WordPress Multisite & WaaS examples:

The WordPress.com Platform

A perfect example to reference when discussing the power and scope of the website as a service business model is WordPress.com. Built on top of the self-hosted WordPress.org content management system, it uses WordPress multisite to power millions of blogs and websites in their multisite network.

WordPress acquires its users by offering free accounts to anyone who wants to set up a website with a free, branded subdomain included. And then, once you’re in, some features are limited in order to tempt people into upgrading to a paid account.

WordPress.com launched back in 2005 and continues to build on a solid reputation on the back of this WaaS model. It worked then and it still works to this day. Of course, if you were to launch your own WaaS, chances are you’ll choose a slightly more specific market to cater to (at least, initially) to fuel your growth – we’ll cover strategy in a separate section later in this article.

Incsub’s CampusPress & Edublogs Platforms

Another well-known example of a business that built and seriously profited off of the WaaS & multisite model is WPMU DEV’s parent company – Incsub.

Incsub owns CampusPress & Edublogs, both of which are great examples of WordPress multisites. They’re great examples of how other businesses can still launch a WaaS platform and profit off of it today; provided they carve out a section of the market that they know how to approach, sell, & market to.

Normal WordPress Installations vs. WordPress Multisite – What Are The Key Differences?

To run a profitable WaaS business, your success depends on a constant stream of clients needing to get work done.

However, this kind of workload is impossible to manage when you have to build a completely new website from scratch – complete with plugins and installations.

This is where WordPress Multisite comes in, and provides a huge quality of life boost compared to doing things manually.

The top three advantages of WordPress Multisite are:

1. The number of individual websites – You can run/update any number of websites through WordPress Multisite easily, without having to micromanage each one individually.
2. User roles – Activating WordPress Multisite enables the network and super admin roles, meaning you can delegate a portion of your workload to someone else.
3. Easy access to the whole network – All the sites that you create in the network are under your control, and you can manage/customize them according to your requirements.

Also, with WordPress Multisite, a single click can update common plugins across all websites.

How To Create Your Own Website As A Service Platform With RunCloud (New 🎉)

Both deploying & managing your website as a service (WaaS) platform as you grow has never been easier than it is with RunCloud thanks to our all-new Domain & SSL V2 support.

Today, we’re beyond excited to announce a range of improvements to our domain & SSL functionality as well as our integration with WP Ultimo – the best solution for businesses looking to launch their own WaaS today.

So, without further ado – let’s dive right in to have a closer look at all the changes. To do so, we’ll kick things off by deploying a web application on this existing server we’ve added to this account.

When doing so – you’ll now notice three new options:

#1 – The ability to automatically enable the www version of this domain to redirect to your preferred domain version (i.e. www to non-www or vice versa)

This first new setting is simply designed to let you decide as well as easily configure which domain version you wish to use right as you create your web application (to automate the process and make sure it’s just that one additional thing you no longer have to take into consideration).

#2 – The ability to choose your SSL/TLS method

The new option to select SSL/TLS Encryption methods has two modes. Advanced and Basic. The advanced mode issues a different SSL certificate for every domain added to this web application while when set to basic, a single SSL certificate is issued and used for every single domain on this web application.

And #3 – the ability to enable AutoSSL…

And, when using the Advanced method – you’ll also be able to take advantage of RunCloud’s AutoSSL functionality to automatically deploy an SSL certificate for every domain added to this web application.

Thanks to the Advanced method and AutoSSL, you no longer need to worry about hitting the Let’s Encrypt 100-domain limit, all while still enjoying the benefits of SSLs on all of the domains and subdomains that are attached to this web application.

And while for most use-cases, doing so is perfectly fine – issuing a single certificate and private key for multiple domains/subdomains can become messy at scale when new domains are attached wherein an issue can arise if the SSL certificate fails to be re-issued affecting all websites that relied on that certificate.

And last but not least, this also improves security as people snooping around SSL certificate records for all the sites that you handle the hosting for won’t have a field day when they can just scrape all of the people they know are in your WaaS (for example) by looking at the SSL certificate. This is perfect for WordPress WaaS and multisite platforms with multiple domains as well as custom SaaS platforms that use RunCloud to manage their servers and let customers connect their own domains so that they can always automatically issue an SSL certificate for those added domains.

How To Enable WordPress Multisite

WordPress Multisite is built-in, but always disabled by default. So to get started with your own multisite network on RunCloud, simply use our 1-click WordPress installation on OpenLiteSpeed (or NGINX).

After which, simply navigate to our file manager to edit your wp-config.php file to enable multisite.

To do so, you simply need to add the following code to your wp-config.php file just before the /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. / line.

/* Multisite */

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true); */

Once you’re done simply save the changes using RunCloud’s file manager and the change will automatically be propagated and deployed to your server instantly.

Once enabled, you will still need to set up the multisite network. WordPress walks you through the process step-by-step, to get started simply head to Tools > Network Setup.

What Makes A Successful WaaS (And The Benefits)?

The website’s design, trusted website signals, website security, marketing, and effective SEO come together to form the perfect recipe needed to build a successful WaaS business.

The Benefits Of WordPress Multisite & Websites as a Service

There are three key benefits of using WordPress multisite networks as opposed to just maintaining multiple individual WordPress installations, which are:

1. More efficient management
2. Better development workflow
3. Easier to host (especially with RunCloud)

These are the fundamental benefits that you as a WaaS owner can experience if you go with this business model. Let’s take a closer look at the offering as a whole & how you can use it at your agency to cater to a whole new market of people looking to build websites.

Smaller Initial Investment & Premium Add-Ons

Instead of having customers pay the typical $3,000-5,000+ (at the very least) for a custom-built website, WaaS is an excellent downsell to welcome the client until they decide to move forward with your agency for a larger website build.

The client will invest less at the start, from $400 – $1,000, coupled with a monthly fee that ranges from $150 – $600 per month. The monthly can range based on how many new requests and changes per month are included, advanced functionality like integrations, chat, eCommerce, scheduling and anything else that you could possibly need your website to do, including social media sites, bookings, events, multi-vendor eCommerce websites, and more.

Offer Ongoing Support & Never Let Sites Go Out Of Date

Even with big clients, when something isn’t on retainer the work stops at some point. It may be after they pay the final deposit or when the site gets approved. Generally, this means there is no recurring element to the work either.

However, design preferences change. A brand new site might no longer be truly reflective of a business down the line.

If a client paid 5k for a website, and 6 months later it makes their company look like it is outdated – this is less-than-ideal. Designs that were in yesterday, might not be in a week’s time and clients want to be able to make changes, access their site and get your help when they need it.

With Websites As A Service and Multisite you’re able to forego these issues and easily keep websites up-to-date – which is a tried and tested business model that’s worked for a whole host of businesses in the WordPress industry alone including, most notably WP Buffs & GoWP.

Launching & Growing Your WaaS – Next Steps

Niche Down & Specialize In What You Can Outperform In

Launching a platform exactly like WordPress.com on the average budget for a WaaS isn’t going to be easy. They’ve got huge amounts of money to outcompete you in what they’re building. While that certainly doesn’t mean building something that targets a broad market with a WordPress Multisite platform is impossible, it just tends to be better to start with a specialization in an industry where you have something unique to offer.

For example, let’s say your agency at the moment mostly works with agencies across the country where you’re based – building a solution that specifically targets and helps those types of clients will be easier to sell.

The next time you have a lead come to you which fits the demographic and doesn’t have the budget for a $5,000 website (or whatever you end up quoting them), you can refer them to your WaaS platform which was built exactly for dental professionals like them that are looking for something that’s much easier to get going and working right out of the box.

As Matthew Rodela of KeyPress Media puts it:

“The WaaS business model is a great way to provide an option for your clients that may not be able to afford your regular web design/development services. It’s also a pretty reliable source of recurring revenue. And finally, it’s a way to get paying customers to the top of your funnel easily. Customers who have already paid you for something are MUCH more likely to buy your other services. I’ve built a six-figure agency off the back of my WaaS…”

Matthew Rodela, KeyPress Media

An excellent example of this which we mentioned earlier is Edublogs – although their market is also huge, they’ve niched down to the teacher, educator and student demographic. One which commonly interacts and shares information (such as a platform like Edublogs with each other). At the time of writing, it hosts almost 4,500,000 sites. The basic package is free and pricing beyond that starts at just $7.95 which is incredibly low considering it is exceptional value – removing all of the technical headaches beginners face of getting started and hosting the self-hosted version of WordPress.

Marketing & Growing Your Website As A Service (WaaS) Platform

A WaaS is like any digital product and requires a large audience that is interested in it (like courses, plugins, etc.). So you do need to be good at reaching out to that audience via the typical marketing techniques like content marketing, SEO, and PPC.

But, a great shortcut to revenue is to partner with someone who has already established an audience in the niche you’re targeting. Almost any industry has at least one “guru” that has become known as the go-to person online. Reach out to that person (or people) and let them know about your WaaS and see if you can work out some sort of referral partnership.

What to Include in Your WaaS

There’s a lot of money in additional add-ons and premium services that can be sold on top of your website as a service platform – if done right.

As long as they all add value and are designed in such a way that they wouldn’t make sense to include in the original monthly price of your WaaS, customers will benefit & you can turn a profit.

Here are some ideas:

• Initial website design

Instead of just letting them handle their own website design with a DIY page builder that you include in your WaaS, you can charge a relatively small setup fee to take care of that for them to make sure it’s all working and in perfect shape. A lot of WaaS owners actually enforce this setup fee for all customers as it ensures that they get up and running and have a better experience all-round after their site is ready to go.

• Security

Anything from server updates, comment spam protection, SSL certificates and more. Everything that they no longer have to worry about because they’re hosting their website with you.

• Updates

Regular updates and testing for ongoing functionality improvements.

• Hosting

The server environment that your website and all of its files and database live.

• Backups

Regular backups and a recovery plan to get you back up quickly if something goes wrong.

• Support

Ongoing support to help ensure that the website matches the level of service and quality you provide.

Have any questions about launching, growing or running a WaaS platform of your own with the help of RunCloud? Let us know & join the conversation by leaving a comment below. 💬

A Domain Name System, or DNS, acts as a bridge between your device and the website you want to visit. Without it, you’d have to manually input the IP address of every site you want to visit instead of using a human-readable domain name.

Slow DNS servers can result in poor load times, and, in worst-case scenarios, if the DNS server happens to go down, accessing websites won’t be possible at all. This is why it’s crucial to choose a good DNS server.

In this guide, we’ll compare two of the bests DNS providers out there – Amazon Route 53 and Cloudflare. We’ll go through the pros and cons of each service so that you can make a more informed decision about which one better suits your needs.

Amazon Route 53

Amazon Route 53 prides itself on being “a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service”. Not only does it route users to the different AWS services – such as Elastic Load Balancing and Amazon EC2 instances – but also, it can route users to non-AWS infrastructure.

Let us look at some of its key features in more detail below.

Amazon Route 53 – Pricing

Amazon Route 53 charges you for “what you use”, as they state on their website. In other words, you pay as you go, depending on the number of DNS queries answered by Amazon Route 53, with some exceptions, like queries for qualifying alias records, which don’t incur additional charges.

Basically, you don’t pay in advance or commit to anything, which can be an advantage depending on your needs.

Route 53’s price varies according to the type and quantity of queries.

With standard queries, for the first 1 billion queries a month, you are charged $0.40 per million queries. Once you have over 1 billion queries a month, the price is $0.20 per million queries.

With latency-based routing queries, the prices are slightly higher, starting with $0.60 per million queries for the first billion queries per month and $0.30 per million queries for over 1 billion queries per month.

Finally, with Geo DNS and Geo Proximity Queries, for the first 1 Billion queries a month, you are charged $0.70 per million queries. Again, the price decreases after you have over 1 billion queries monthly, at which point you incur charges of $0.35 per million queries.

Of course, the final price will depend on what kind of other Amazon Route 53 features you are using as well – such as health checks, Route 53 Resolver, etc. – and can quickly add up if you’re running a large-scale operation.

Amazon Route 53 – Reliability

One feature that makes Amazon Route 53 stand out is its high reliability. With this service, you have four DNS servers: .com, .net, .co.uk, and .org. This means that if the root server goes down for some reason, you still have three DNS servers operating smoothly.

Moreover, since the four DNS servers are geographically distributed, even if some kind of accident were to happen to one of the data centers, the other DNS servers would still be up and running. Finally, all four servers are on different Anycast IPs, which ensures high reliability but comes at the expense of performance.

Amazon Route 53 – Speed

Route 53’s query speed is one of its main shortcomings. Amazon’s DNS service is actually better than many of its competitors but still stays far behind Cloudflare’s DNS.

It doesn’t matter which of their four DNS servers are closest, you have the same chance to hit this one or any of the others. This is the price that’s paid for Route 53’s increased reliability.

Amazon Route 53 – Privacy

With Route 53, you have privacy protection for contact information on a domain enabled by default. It hides most of your contact information, preventing spam, and blocking anyone who would otherwise be able to see your personal information by sending a WHOIS query.

However, Amazon doesn’t issue a guarantee that they won’t use your information themselves, for company or data purposes. This will be a big red flag for many of you.

Amazon Route 53 – Flexibility

Amazon Route 53 is very flexible. Thanks to the Amazon Route 53 Traffic Flow, traffic is routed according to several criteria such as geographic location, endpoint health, and latency.

Various traffic policies can be configured, after which you can choose which ones should be active at a certain time. The simple visual editor also enables you to create and edit traffic policies easily. What’s more, you have a history of changes to your traffic policies with Traffic Flow’s versioning feature. This way, you are free to roll back to a previous version if needed.

Cloudflare DNS

Primarily popular for its high-quality content delivery network, Cloudflare also features a DNS service called 1.1.1.1. They describe their DNS as the “Internet’s fastest, privacy-first consumer DNS service”.

Below we’ll examine some key features of this DNS service.

Cloudflare DNS – Pricing

1.1.1.1 is free of charge for ordinary users. However, if you are a developer or an enterprise with a professional website, you might want to make use of the Geo DNS feature, i.e. the Cloudflare Load Balancing feature. This means that you have to sign up for a monthly subscription.

The prices vary per server (origin), where a server can be an IP address or CNAME:

• $15/month for 2 origins (servers),
• $25/month for 4 origins (servers)
• $30/month for 5/6 origins (servers)

In contrast to Amazon Route 53 where you pay as you go, the downside of Cloudflare DNS is that you have to sign up for a monthly subscription if you are running one or several websites.

Cloudflare DNS – Reliability

Compared to Amazon’s Route 53, Cloudflare’s infrastructure is less reliable.

In case your server goes down, Cloudflare DNS will keep redirecting users to it anyway. Unlike Route 53, it won’t redirect them to a different, functioning server while the issue is being solved.

Cloudflare DNS – Speed

Query speed is no doubt the best feature of Cloudflare. This DNS is much faster than other competitors such as Amazon Route 53, Cisco Open DNS, Google Public DNS, or Verisign.

DNSPerf, the independent DNS monitor, ranks 1.1.1.1 as the fastest DNS service worldwide. Ranking way lower on the same list, Amazon’s Route 53 pales in comparison speed-wise.

Cloudflare DNS – Privacy

Privacy is another advantage for Cloudflare DNS. Not only does the company promise that it will never use your browsing data to sell it or to target ads, but it also guarantees that it won’t log your IP address. If there are any potential logs, they are deleted within a period of 24 hours.

And they mean it: they even claim they retained a big four accounting company to audit their practices on an annual basis.

You can read more about their motivations regarding privacy here.

Cloudflare DNS – Flexibility

Cloudflare DNS is significantly less flexible compared to Route 53. It just doesn’t hold up against the dozens of servers with geolocation-based routing that Amazon boasts.

Unfortunately, configurability and flexibility are some of the tradeoffs that come with the top-notch speed of Cloudflare DNS.

Related: Cloudflare R2 vs AWS S3 – Full Comparison

Conclusion – Cloudflare or Route 53?

So which one is better for you, Amazon Route 53 or Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS?

In terms of performance, Cloudflare has the upper hand with its incredible speed of 12.52ms. Their commitment to privacy concerns is also a big plus. However, if you’re an avid AWS user – Route 53 might make more sense because you can run health checks against load balancers and easily use geo-routing for specific resources in your Amazon Web Services account.

All in all, it’s safe to say that both of these are solid premium DNS providers – and you’ll be very happy with your choice either way.

We at RunCloud use & highly recommend Cloudflare. This is why, with RunCloud’s built-in Cloudflare DNS integration – you can also enjoy its benefits. Deploying websites and managing servers for your web applications has never been easier. It’s one of the many reasons RunCloud is the server management solution trusted by industry-leading system administrators, yet accessible to everyone. Start your 7-day free trial today.

Which DNS provider do you use & recommend? Let us know & join the conversation by leaving a comment below. 💬

A proper backup and disaster recovery solution is an absolute necessity for anyone running a website. Whether it’s something going wrong with a server/infrastructure provider or a change on the application level that takes your site down, you need to be ready to handle it fast.

Fortunately, setting a backup solution that’s actually usable and reliable doesn’t have to be a hassle. So, in this guide, we’re going to walk you through how you can set up website backups with RunCloud Backup – a built-in backup solution designed to bring you peace of mind without slowing down your sites.

An Introduction to RunCloud Backups

Most backup solutions run at the application level, such as in the form of a plugin if you’re using a CMS like WordPress which is great in theory because it’s very easy to set up. Unfortunately, some solutions like this can significantly slow down your websites and tend not to be reliable for large sites.

With RunCloud Backups – both backups & restores are performed at the server level which means you’re not relying on any compatibility or size limitations not getting in the way. In fact, we also continue to closely monitor user feedback on backups ensuring their efficiency and reliability across the board on the hundreds of thousands of web applications that rely on RunCloud.

RunCloud Backup Features

• Incremental Backup
• Backup WordPress site (both Web App & Database)
• Folder/File exclusion
• Database Table exclusion
• Backup Frequency (12 hours – 1 week)
• Schedule Backup
• On-demand Backup
• Download Backup

How To Back Up Web Applications (The Easiest Way)

1. Log In To Your RunCloud Dashboard

The first step is to log in to your RunCloud account. If you don’t have a RunCloud account we’ll recommend you create one:

2. Create Your First Backup

Navigate to the RunCloud Backup page in your dashboard using the navigation. You’ll see the following (if this is your first time creating a backup with RunCloud).

To get started, simply click Backup your first site.

3. Configure Your Backup’s Settings

You’ll then be able to configure your backup’s settings, which is where you set the following:

• Backup Plan – Backup Basic or Backup Pro
• Backup Method: Web Application, Database, or Both
  
  Note: We highly recommend backing up both your web application and database if you use WordPress as the database is crucial for your website to work.
  
  
• Select your web application
• Select your database
• Name this backup
• Choose your backup frequency
• Choose your backup retention (how long do you want to store backup files?)
• Configure notifications for successful & failed backups

All RunCloud users get 5GB of storage included with their existing plans that can be used with RunCloud’s free backup service. However, if you feel that you’d benefit from advanced functionality such as custom file exclusion, on-demand backups, flexible backup retention & more – you can upgrade to RunCloud Backup Pro starting at just $1 USD per month for up to 50GB of storage.

Restoring Your Backups – Disaster Recovery

If you can’t rely on actually being able to use your backups when it comes to disaster recovery – then there’s not much point in having them there in the first place. You need a solid restore process in place so that if a server or site ever needs to be restored, you know how to get it back up & running in no-time.

This couldn’t be easier than it is with RunCloud Backups. Simply navigate to your backup instance and then view your Backup files. From this list of all backups – choose which one you wish to restore and then click Restore this backup:

You’ll then be able to select how you wish to restore this backup. What server you wish to restore it to, whether you wish to rollback the existing site or create a new site from the backup and more.

And once you’ve made your selection, simply click Restore this Site and that’s it! 👏

RunCloud Backups – Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion – RunCloud Backup, A Built-In Backup Solution You Can Actually Rely On

While we highly recommend having a backup solution such as RunCloud’s built-in Backup service in place, for more advanced sites with multiple people making changes to your codebase, we highly recommend using version control with GitHub for Continuous Integration and Deployment.

And with RunCloud working in the background to ensure backups are taken on the server level, you don’t have to worry about having a reference point to restore to – no matter what happens. For instance, if you were one of the millions affected, our free solution that couldn’t be easier to get started with could have saved your data from being lost in OVH’s data center fire in France.

The last thing you want to deal with is data loss on a service your customers rely on in production. And at RunCloud, we’re driven to make it easier for you to run your business giving you everything you need to manage your servers. If you have absolutely any questions, comments, or suggestions – feel free to leave a comment below! 💬