Before installing CiviCRM, careful consideration must be given to where it will be hosted. The main options with an outline of the situations in which you would want to choose them, and the advantages and disadvantages of doing so are outlined below:
If you have an internal IT department or staff members with a technical background, you may wish to host CiviCRM internally. To do this, you will need:
- Servers or dedicated PC hardware available to run as a web server, 24-7.
- A space on premises to permanently store the hardware, possibly air conditioned.
- An un-interrupted power supply (UPS) to ensure the server is still available during power outages.
- Either a stable internet connection with a static IP address and an SLA (Service Level Agreement) for high availability, or a leased line. It is important to note that should the Internet connectivity to the building in which your server resides goes down, only users on internal network will be able to access it. External visitors will not be able to access your website, including logging into CiviCRM and accessing online contribution forms. Widgets posted on other sites will also become unavailable. The bandwidth is also an important factor, as it must be high enough to serve the amount of traffic your website receives.
There are other aspects to address too. If you have an internal network, the web server should be partitioned from the other computers and servers to enhance security (e.g. in a Virtual Private Network or DMZ). A web server could, potentially, introduce vulnerabilities that an external individual, script or bot could use as a gateway into your otherwise private, non-Internet facing systems. It is also a good idea to research the maintenance and daily running costs of having an internal server, and compare it to that of using an external host.
With internal expertise you could manage the install and configuration in-house, but host CiviCRM with an external provider. In this instance, we recommended you rent a VPS (Virtual Private Server) to ensure you have complete control of all packages and libraries (e.g. PHP, MySQL, etc), and are therefore able to configure it to your specific requirements.
Many shared hosts restrict the level of access you have, and may not support CiviCRM if you are unable to install the required pre-requisites. Shared hosts can also be prone to performance issues, as the hardware is shared between a group of customers with varying usage levels; if one customer's website suddenly receives a large spike in traffic, every website on that server could experience a lengthy outage.
Disadvantages aside, leasing space on a shared host is typically cheaper than a VPS, and both are subscription services on a monthly or annual basis (discounts may be available for longer leases.
We advise that you trial run any service for a short-term before committing to a longer period.
If you are already using a website host, contact your provider to determine whether they support the packages and libraries required by CiviCRM. If they do not, there are two options available to you:
Depending on the CMS you are using, the process of moving from one host to another may be fairly straightforward. You are in a good position to transfer to another host if you can:
- request that your users stop creating and updating content during the migration,
- export and import all of the content from/to the chosen CMS,
- edit your DNS records to switch the 'pointers' to your website from the old host to the new host
If you cannot move your website to a different host, you could purchase a second account on a host capable of running CiviCRM, and run the two systems alongside each other.
In this instance, you would use a CNAME DNS record to point to a second copy of the CMS and CiviCRM on the other host (e.g. civicrm.yourwebsite.com; the CNAME effectively adds a prefix to your website's address), and link to it from your website, perhaps in form of a log-in button.
Aside from paying a second bill, one of the limitations to this approach is the need to clone the style of your website on the second host to give the visitor the illusion that they are in the same place. If changes to the style are changed, the work must be duplicated.
There are implementers and experts in the CiviCRM community able to manage the hosting and/or installation for you. If requested, they may also be available to manage a local implementation and configuration on your premises.
For a list of experts recommended within the community, visit: https://civicrm.org/providers