FreeBSD vs. Windows 2000

The following information will help you choose between our Unix or Windows 2000 hosting solutions. Unless you specifically need to use features for Windows 2000 such as ASP, VB Scripts, MS Access, MS SQL or Cold Fusion, you should choose the Unix platform as it is feature rich and easy to use  (and cheaper than Windows).

Ease of use:

There are no differences in terms of ease of use between the platforms. You will find both platforms user friendly because both include our Web-Based Control Panel.

Reliability:

Unix is generally more stable in a multi-user (shared) environment, however we have made sure that the reliability of the Windows 2000 platform closely matches Unix.

Speed:

There is no difference in terms of speed between the two platforms.

Price:

Unix is slightly cheaper because most of the software licenses are free and that it’s easier to maintain Unix servers than Windows 2000 servers. You will see that our hosting prices reflect this.

Functionality:

This is where two platforms differ the most;

• The main distinction of Windows servers is that they are configured to be compatible with Microsoft applications, such as MS Access and MS SQL. Windows also offer web developers the use of programming environments such as Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic Scripts, MS Index Server and Cold Fusion.
   
• Unix hosting also offers many server applications and programs that have been written exclusively for use with Unix. Since Unix is an open source platform, tons of developers have already created a wide variety of CGI scripts, PHP scripts, and MySQL applications that will work on nearly any Unix system. If you choose Windows hosting, you may find that many of the scripts you want to use won't work since they were not designed for Windows.

But the trend is for solutions to be supported in both platforms. For example, Microsoft FrontPage, one of the most popular web site editors, is supported on both Unix and Windows 2000. Please see the chart below for the list of supported features.