Back in 2020, when we released our initial pricing survey, we found that 64% of businesses were on a tight budget, while 28% had plenty of money but wanted a safe and reliable web server to use it on. I’m sure a lot has changed since then, but these days, as a marketer anyway, the sweet spot for me is the 28% who want a safe and reliable web server.
Here’s the thing. As a marketer, you’re going to run into this issue almost always when you’re promoting a product or service for a business. So you might consider this post an issue-free zone. I’m going to make some assumptions about you and your viewers, and I’m going to help you solve this problem. Hopefully, this will help business owners, product managers, and marketers in general who want to run a successful email campaign, but don’t have a lot of resources.
Assumptions
I’m going to assume you’re familiar with Unix. If you’re not, here’s a quick overview.
The Unix operating system was created in the 1970s as a replacement for the AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph Company) commercial Unix. The open source community that created Unix continues to develop it today. As a result, more and more businesses are opting to use Unix-based servers due to its reliability and security.
Linux is the most popular open source operating system developed in the 20th century. Like Unix, Linux was also developed by the open source community, primarily as a replacement for the UNIX operating system. The main difference is that the Linux community developed it with the intent of making it easier for developers to create software.
Windows is the operating system developed by Microsoft (News – Alert) for use on personal computers, as well as on various servers. It was originally designed for use with x86 (Intel) hardware processors, and all PCs that come with it are Intel-based.
Solution
Let’s get to the good stuff now… For the purpose of this article, I’m going to assume you’re running a Linux-based server, and you’d like to use it to send email announcements, among other things.
If this is the case, you can take advantage of our managed dedicated servers and receive a free upgrade to a Linux-based server with each new order.
Our team of expert Linux administrators will install and configure the operating system for you, and they’ll make sure it’s running smoothly before they hand it back to you.
We understand that not all businesses are comfortable with the idea of managing servers themselves, so we’ve also partnered with Hetzner to offer fully-managed dedicated servers where we provide the server and a team of Linux experts will take care of the configuration for you. You can choose this option if you’d like to receive a dedicated server without having to worry about the configuration process.
Benefits
There are a number of perks to having a managed dedicated server, not the least of which is peace of mind. When you’re on a tight budget and want to avoid wasting any precious money on server-related costs, it’s hard to justify buying everything yourself when you could be paying someone else to take care of all the details for you.
If you’ve ever tried to configure a conventional web server, you’ll know it takes a considerable amount of effort and isn’t something you can do on your own. Letting someone else handle all the technical details and keeping your focus on what’s important to you means you can get back to what you do best and let the experts handle the rest.
Getting Started
To get started, simply visit the Hetzner website, enter your credit card information, and submit the form. If you’ve opted for the fully-managed dedicated server option, your account will be instantly verified and you’ll be provided with a quick access code.
You’ll then be directed to a dedicated IP (Internet Protocol) address that you can use to interact with the server. From there, you can follow the steps outlined in the Get Started page to install the operating system of your choice — I recommend either Debian or CentOS as they’re very user-friendly and provide you with a ready-made Apache (News – Alert) web server with a ton of pre-installed software you can use out of the box.
Additional Resources
If you’d like to dive deeper into the world of dedicated servers, here are a few other resources you might find useful.