Many people looking for an operating system on which to base their web hosting find themselves a choice between Windows web hosting and Linux web hosting. And while many people swear by Linux web hosting, there is also no denying that there is an upside to windows web hosting too.

For one, Windows web hosting is much easier to set up and use than most of its alternatives. Many modern users of computers have grown in the period after GUI (Graphical User Interface) became the face of computing, and are therefore quite uncomfortable with the long command lines that setting up a Linux web hosting solution often requires. Windows, as it turns out, incorporates the intuitive easy to use approach that it is widely known for even in the applications required to make a Windows web hosting set up work, and this can be a great attraction to many people who don’t consider themselves ‘geeks’ and who want a simple way to go about doing whatever they want to do on the computer.

Secondly, Windows enjoys a level of user support that its alternatives don’t, which in turn translates into more support for its web hosting. As it were, all Windows products are things you actually pay for, which therefore gives you the opportunity to demand for user support as a right – compared to the situation in the case of open source solutions, where you can only request for user support from people who are basically your fellow users in the support forums for the operating system, who might or might not give you that support when you need it.

On the downside, though, Windows costs money. And in a business like web hosting where the margins tend to be rather small, the amount that Windows costs can turns out to be significant, as it has to be passed on to the users of the web hosting service, who on the other hand tend to be extremely price sensitive. Moreover, in a bid to protect is proprietary computing turf, Windows tends to not allow the installation of open source and other free applications you might need to make your web hosting solution work, and which in turn makes it an even more costlier approach to web hosting.

Another downside to windows often pointed out is its comparatively poorer performance, at least as compared to Linux web hosting. It is often pointed out that Windows web hosting, on average, tend to be less stable compared to Linux web hosting – which translates to (albeit marginally) lower average uptimes. Now many people looking to put their websites on the web will not even look twice at a web hosting solution which has even an hint of uptime issues, seeing that a website which is ‘down’ is of no use to the people behind it – and gaining a reputation as an organization whose website is forever ‘down’ is certainly not good for business. Of course it is important to note that, as pointed out, the differences in average uptimes between windows web hosting and Linux web hosting is only marginal.