How B-Stock hosts customer sites

One of the quasi-benefits of running an Internet company in 2011 is that we now have more viable choices than ever for hosting. Dedicated hosting, the stalwart, has been joined by virtual hosting and by cloud hosting, both of which are self-serve and often much less expensive. It’s the proverbial “Tyranny of Choice” in action – you have many options, all of them attractive on the surface. Now, choose.

Here at BStock, we regard hardware and networking (to simplify the nature of hosting) as a means to an end. It has to reliable, maintainable, affordable and, most of all, non-intrusive in our day-to-day operations. Our customers define the goals for us, i.e., they have businesses to run and they won’t tolerate availability problems.

Our hosting choice for our sites for the past 2+ years has been Crucial Webhosting. Rather than describe them in lofty ‘scalability’ terms, I’ll tell you what I’ve found out when the rubber hit the road: Crucial knows the interals, they can explain them and they’re available. They manage fantastic hardware in SoftLayer facilities and they stick to what know, which is making things work. Cloud solutions are sexy right now and, for the right customer, they may be the best solution. But last week’s catastrophic AWS failures reminded us that if your business depends on your host being available, you need to choose wisely. At BStock, we focus on what we excel at, which is running efficient marketplaces for liquidation via internet auction sites, and leave the hosting expertise to a great partner.