Why does Captainwoo only use Amazon AWS for website hosting?
Amazon has one of the largest networks in the world. How many you ask? According to their website as of 2019, they have their network in 73 cities and 33 countries. You can geek out at their stats here.
Why does that matter and how does that affect me? My site is small do I need this?
Many web developers want to host you on their server or on their shared account. They offer ridiculously low prices and make guarantees they cannot deliver. Often putting 100 customers on the same server and connection. Let’s be real for a moment. Can your web developer compete with Amazon?
We use Amazon for multiple reasons. Here are a few:
- It’s affordable. Amazon AWS is pay as you grow. Often it starts at huge price of $0. If you need more space, performance, or network capacity you simply click a button.
- It’s ultra redundant. You can almost be guaranteed 100% uptime.
- It’s very fast. Their servers start with solid-state drives and high end compute power.
- Their network is dynamic. You can setup AWS to deliver content to customers based on their geographic location. This reduces geographic network delays dramatically. I explain more later.
- It’s your own instance. Often hosting companies give you what’s called “Cpanel” on a shared server. When you build your site with us we create an independent instance on Amazon’s cloud. No Cpanel to worry about. Also, no other customers are in your instance. This also means that if another customer’s site is being attacked or is compromised you have nothing to worry about.
The reasons we choose to use Amazon could be pages. I mean Amazon uses robots to sort their warehouses. Robots!
Why is geographic delay important?
Let’s talk about geographic delay. Communicating across the internet has delays. A big one is data traveling from point A to point B.
For example, if you live in California and you visit a website hosted in New York you will have about an average delay of 83 ms. That doesn’t seem like a lot. But the way computers communicate is not like how we do. Without getting too technical I will explain.
When you receive information over the internet you are receiving small bundles of data typically in 1500 bytes. We call these packets. Every time you receive 1500 bytes from New York, your computer has to send back data to confirm it received the data. This is the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) portion of TCP/IP you might have seen on your computer. (Not all data works like this but for websites typically this is how it works.)
Now imagine you want to view this website hosted in New York. Say the website is 1 megabyte. How many packets would you need to receive? It’s about 102 packets. All 102 packets getting an 83 ms delay. Remember there is an additional delay because your computer also has to send back communication confirming you received the data. 83 ms eventually turns into seconds. Those seconds equal frustration and confusion. You might start to wonder if the website is having a problem.
With Amazon, this works differently. You can have your website hosted in different states. Wherever your target audience is located we can host you closer and that equals faster response times. Also with Amazon having such a large private network, it’s possible for you to bypass public network delays through their massive private network.
Right now your asking. Is Amazon paying you? Do you get commissions? Do you resell their service?
The answer is no. We will work with you to get the Amazon AWS account set up in your name and your billing. We do not in any way profit from hosting you with Amazon.
How we do profit is by seeing proven results on a platform that is rock solid.
I wrote more about why you need to have a fast mobile-first website here.