Over the years, the way that websites webmasters use chat rooms has evolved. In the past, it was common for a webmaster to install chat room software into a client’s website. This involved downloading, configuring, installing, and maintaining the chat room.
Now, there are better and simpler solutions! Using a hosted chat room service (cloud computing chat room) is much more typical these days.
Why the change?
Chatroom software could potentially be a huge headache for webmasters, creating problems within the website to a degree that it could possibly harm your business.
Case Study: A Real Life Horror Story for a Webmaster
This is an email from one of our customers that used to use a chat software within his website.
During a live event chat, he was forced to stop the chat, potentially causing him to lose customers and business. His words are below:
I installed a chatroom software script and used it for a 2 hour broadcast.
There were 6 people on the chat and maybe 20 messages in total were
exchanged.Within a short period, my hosting company took my entire site down because
they said the chat function was creating 20,000 queries per minute
and that it was using all the system resources of the server. Also, it
was not obvious to me how to uninstall the script and I had to get my
developer to fix it.
Can you imagine this happening to you or your business? How unprofessional! One small hiccup with chatroom software could seriously damage your reputation.
So how could this have been prevented? Below we will discuss how this happened, and three reasons why it is wiser to use a hosted chat room service in the cloud rather than chat room script software on your website.
Hosting Companies Prefer Websites Without Chatroom Software
Hosting companies do not like chatroom software. To understand why, let’s first make sure we understand what a hosting company does.
All websites are installed on a server controlled by a hosting company. Generally, hosting companies want to install as many sites as possible on one server. Even a small server machine with only a 1 CPU server could potentially host over 2,000 websites.
Bulkier websites take up more space and memory. Using chat room software on a website is a very heavy CPU and memory consumer. This means that the server has to devote more of its resources to make sure that one website is operating smoothly.
Like in the real life example above, one chatroom on one website could very well slow down the entire server because of all the server resources it is using. This means that 2,000 websites could go down just because of one little chatroom.
mmmm…..
In contrast, using a professionally hosted chat room service avoids these problems. Because the chat room is essentially run separately from your site, your website and all the websites on your server can continue to operate effectively.
Don’t make the same mistake of the man above! Chat room software can cause problems for you, your business, and all the other websites on your server.
Pricing of Hosted chat Room vs Chatroom Software
When calculating the cost of using chatroom software, it is important to take all the peripheral costs into account as well.
First, the chatroom script software itself will likely be expensive. In order to run the software, the appropriate server is necessary. For a chatroom with heavy traffic, you will definitely need a stronger server with at least 4 CPU’s and 16 GB of memory.
Another option is to use several parallel servers. Either way, this can easily get expensive.
Beyond the cost of running chat room software, someone will also need to install and maintain the software. This involves making sure it is configured correctly and dealing with any malfunctions that may pop up.
This process can be very time consuming, as the installation process can be complicated. While it may have initially seemed like a good idea, using a chatroom software could end up being a real pain.
And, what if you need to upgrade your server to allow more chatters to get in?
This will require from your webmaster to configure a new server, migrate the current software and basically do a new installation. Webmasters know, it is always (always) an issue to migrate from one small server to another bigger server.
Conversely, using a hosted chat room service really is very simple, as they can be easily integrated into your website. Just add one little bit of code into the HTML and you’re done!
Chatroom Software Can Make Your Website Sluggish
When you install chatroom software on your website, chatters must use the machine (server) resources to talk (e.g memory and CPU). All the resources used to operate your website or database must be spread a bit thinner in order to make sure the chatroom functions properly.
Why does this matter?
Well, if the chatroom is heavily loaded, which can happen easily, more and more resources must be used to make sure the chat keeps working. This means that other parts of your website will run much more slowly.
Chatroom software is generally not very robust. Load balancers, which help spread out the workload on a website, usually are not built into chatroom software, which can really pose a problem in a case of heavy chat traffic.
Another negative is that the chat software may not provide any way of backing up or storing conversation transcripts, which can be frustrating. You can always do it via the database, but hey, do you really want to get that way?
To compare, a professionally hosted chat room service does not share your website resources. This means all the CPU, memory, and bandwidth can be distributed amongst other parts of your website to keep it running fast and without any hiccups.
Essentially, a hosted chat room is run completely separately from your website. This avoids all the problems you may encounter using a chatroom software.
Though separate, a hosted chat room can still be seamlessly incorporated into your website. You are able to customize the style and feel of the chatroom so that it fits in perfectly with your site’s design and aesthetic.
Considering the cost-effectiveness, ease of use, and customized design options, it is hard to imagine choosing a chatroom solution other than a professionally hosted chat room service. Try it now!
