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> Why are small businesses like that running their own servers? Because the more managed a service, the less of a commodity it tends to be and leaves you at th

> Why are small businesses like that running their own servers? Because the more managed a service, the less of a commodity it tends to be and leaves you at the mercy of the service provider wrt price changes, future availability, general quality.

solatic 3y ago
I don't disagree that there are benefits to running your own servers, just that it's not worth the cost unless you need it. When I buy a car, I may own the car, but I'm at the mercy of whoever for parts and service, which becomes more and more true over time as the OEMs shove more and more computerized parts into cars and stop publishing service manuals. Does that mean that I should build my own car from spare parts, so that I can be free of dependency on any one upstream manufacturer? Of course not - the costs of self-maintenance are too high. Now, if I run the New York Police Department vehicular fleet, and I'm responsible for thousands of cars that can't afford to be off the streets for too long, with the budget for a bunch of mechanic salaries and all the latest tools, then sure, maybe that's a serious argument. But not if I'm a small business and I have one server running a simple application.
- yakubin 3y ago
  Cars are commodities though. Your business won’t be disturbed when you change your car. There’s basically no difference from the point of view of your customers. But when you use a managed ecommerce service and you want to migrate to another provider, your old links will stop working, order histories will be lost etc.
  - solatic 3y ago
    And whether an online shop uses Shopify or WooCommerce also makes no difference from the point of view of that shop's customers ;) > your old links will stop working As long as your main website hostname is the same, you have 404s set up such that you land on a page that links you back to the main landing page... nobody really cares. > order histories will be lost For online shops, invoices anyway need to be exported to accounting software so that taxes can be filed correctly. I seriously doubt that a transition like this causes order history to truly be "lost". Look, obviously switching managed providers is rarely a seamless experience... but neither is it impossible or even necessarily fundamentally difficult. Indeed, it's not unheard of for managed providers to help people make transitions by offering import options... https://www.shopify.com/migrate https://www.shopify.com/migrate Shopify have guides to help with migrating, as does Ghost: https://ghost.org/docs/migration/ https://ghost.org/docs/migration/
    - yakubin 3y ago
      I can tell you that 9 times of 10 when I hit a 404 on an ecommerce website, I can’t find the product anymore through a website’s search function. Knowing this, sometimes I don’t even bother to search at this point anymore and go somewhere else. So there is at least one lost customer here in such a transition. And, observing how my less tech-literate relatives interact with websites, I suspect there are many more lost customers.
- thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
  >> I don't disagree that there are benefits to running your own servers, just that it's not worth the cost unless you need it. It depends on the size and funding of your organization. For larger organizations with plenty of funding, it is easier and cheaper to just pay someone to run your servers for you. There will be monthly bills, but "it's operating costs, not capital costs" so no worries. For smaller organizations with less funds, it is cheaper to buy a server, put a LTS OS on it, and self-manage it. If your IT budget is inconsistent, then monthly costs are too much and do not make sense.

solatic 3y ago

I don't disagree that there are benefits to running your own servers, just that it's not worth the cost unless you need it. When I buy a car, I may own the car, but I'm at the mercy of whoever for parts and service, which becomes more and more true over time as the OEMs shove more and more computerized parts into cars and stop publishing service manuals. Does that mean that I should build my own car from spare parts, so that I can be free of dependency on any one upstream manufacturer? Of course not - the costs of self-maintenance are too high. Now, if I run the New York Police Department vehicular fleet, and I'm responsible for thousands of cars that can't afford to be off the streets for too long, with the budget for a bunch of mechanic salaries and all the latest tools, then sure, maybe that's a serious argument. But not if I'm a small business and I have one server running a simple application.

yakubin 3y ago
Cars are commodities though. Your business won’t be disturbed when you change your car. There’s basically no difference from the point of view of your customers. But when you use a managed ecommerce service and you want to migrate to another provider, your old links will stop working, order histories will be lost etc.
- solatic 3y ago
  And whether an online shop uses Shopify or WooCommerce also makes no difference from the point of view of that shop's customers ;) > your old links will stop working As long as your main website hostname is the same, you have 404s set up such that you land on a page that links you back to the main landing page... nobody really cares. > order histories will be lost For online shops, invoices anyway need to be exported to accounting software so that taxes can be filed correctly. I seriously doubt that a transition like this causes order history to truly be "lost". Look, obviously switching managed providers is rarely a seamless experience... but neither is it impossible or even necessarily fundamentally difficult. Indeed, it's not unheard of for managed providers to help people make transitions by offering import options... https://www.shopify.com/migrate https://www.shopify.com/migrate Shopify have guides to help with migrating, as does Ghost: https://ghost.org/docs/migration/ https://ghost.org/docs/migration/
  - yakubin 3y ago
    I can tell you that 9 times of 10 when I hit a 404 on an ecommerce website, I can’t find the product anymore through a website’s search function. Knowing this, sometimes I don’t even bother to search at this point anymore and go somewhere else. So there is at least one lost customer here in such a transition. And, observing how my less tech-literate relatives interact with websites, I suspect there are many more lost customers.
thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
>> I don't disagree that there are benefits to running your own servers, just that it's not worth the cost unless you need it. It depends on the size and funding of your organization. For larger organizations with plenty of funding, it is easier and cheaper to just pay someone to run your servers for you. There will be monthly bills, but "it's operating costs, not capital costs" so no worries. For smaller organizations with less funds, it is cheaper to buy a server, put a LTS OS on it, and self-manage it. If your IT budget is inconsistent, then monthly costs are too much and do not make sense.