When speaking with potential dedicated server clients I often run across the question

"Why don't I just host this in-house and save on the monthly fees?"

While in-house hosting is certainly an option, one should be aware that what you are getting there is much different from what you'd get by hosting your application on one or more dedicated servers at HostMySite.com. The main points are as follows:

1. Connectivity: With HMS dedicated servers you have 10 GB worth of network capacity across 5 different upstream providers and two different transit paths (as of this posting). In layman's terms this means that our facilities will NEVER be offline, barring a MAJOR event on the East Coast which disrupts a good portion of the internet traffic for that region of the US. In such a case a good portion of your internet users would be without internet anyway, so it's a moot point.

When hosting in-house, oftimes you're limited to a single upstream provider with limited bandwidth and only a single transit path (i.e. one line of fiber, that if physically cut would interupt you internet service). This means that you should expect to be offline for an undetermined amount of time at least once every year or two if hosting in-house.

2. Power: HMS facilities are Tier III/IV datacenters with fully redundant N+1 (or better) power, meaning that your servers will never be hard rebooted due to a power failure. In most cases when hosting in-house you don't have backup generators, or if you do then there is no UPS to prevent the temporary loss of power while they start up. If you're familiar with computers then you know that such a reboot can often result in the computer NOT coming back online, so this is certainly not an ideal situation.

3. Security/General Facilities: HMS facilities are manned 24/7 and housed in a PCI/SAS70 compliant facility. In-house servers would often be in an office of some sort, which generally offers only a moderate amount of security (if any) and isn't designed to house mission-critical hardware. For example, if your servers are simple setup in a closet what's to prevent a janitor from accidentally spilling a bucket of water on one? Or if there is a fire alarm and the sprinklers go off are your servers going to be alright? In a 'real' datacenter gas-based fire suppression systems are employed to prevent this from happening.

4. Support: HMS facilities are manned 24/7 and you are given instant access to technicians with the ability to physically reboot your servers if needs be, or provide general troubleshooting in case of a software/application failure. When hosting in-house you often rely on techniicans that you have access to often work 'normal' 9-5 shifts so if you have an overnight outage you should not expect a resolution till midday. Depending on how much you stand to lose in terms of straight revenue and 'public standing' this may or may not be acceptable.

This are just a few major points - I am positive there are others - but the main lesson to take from this is that if you absolutely must have your application up 24/7 then in-house hosting isn't really an option, unless of course your business already maintains its own Tier III/IV datacenter and staffs accordingly.

I have to agree with Jamie 100%.
To give you an example, last year ( 2008 ) Houston was hit by Hurricane IKE.
I was without power for almost 3 weeks. If I had been running my servers out of my house it would have not been pretty. Datacenters have backup power, and communiation lines to ensure they never go down.

Another reason to go with a major datacenter is the ping times. Major Hosting companies can usually support much faster PING times than your smaller host.

Its important you pick a host that has a close proximity to your customer base. IE if you are located in the Washinton DC / NYC area, HMS has a huge advantage. One of my clients reported sub 20 ms ping times to their VPS box, and they were located in NYC. IF you are on the west coast I am sure the new Denver Datacenter will give you optimal PINGS as well.

Overall HMS is making the right move getting datacenters all around the country. This will help beat other hosts that only have 1 data center.

Please someone get that HOSTING.com logo off the homepage. It looks terrible. At least take the current HMS logo and keep the style and change it to hosting.com. I could duck tape some paper to my screen and get a better result.