Hard question. IMO its a matter of preference and experience. Creating, managing, and maintaining a local web testing platform (http server, dns, network, etc) can take a lot of work, time, and money and there are many ways to do it such as dedicated servers or virtual machines, windows, linux......the list goes on. While you may not have a dependency on an external internet connection, there is a lot more that you do have to have working. You also have to have a copy of the code and possible a database, which you may not be able to get depending on your relationship with the site developers.
A hosted setup removes all the internal requirements and does have the external dependency issue but requires a lot less for you to maintain. Plus, you don't have to have anything other than the URL/site for your testing. This may be the only way again depending on your relationship with the developers.
I hope this helps.
A hosted setup removes all the internal requirements and does have the external dependency issue but requires a lot less for you to maintain. Plus, you don't have to have anything other than the URL/site for your testing. This may be the only way again depending on your relationship with the developers.
I hope this helps.
