Your business needs an online presence – it allows you to market your products and services more effectively and less expensively, communicate better with customers, and develop a strong brand, thereby increasing your profitability. How does web hosting work, and what do you need to know before entering into a contract?
Web Hosting
Essentially you’re paying an external company, usually by set monthly fee, to host your website on their servers. While it’s possible, but certainly not advisable, to host the site yourself, in practise the vast majority of businesses use a provider instead. The advantages are legion: UK2 website hosting for instance means you need to worry far less about security, storage or uptime than if your corporate web presence depended on the performance of your office-based computers.
The servers should be housed in a secure, climate-controlled data centre which ideally will be relatively close to your own premises so you can visit as and when necessary.
There are four types of web hosting that you should be considering, and the solution you go for will be determined by your business priorities:
Dedicated Server – Suitable for websites that see high volumes of traffic, or that have custom requirements, as all of the ample storage on the server is available solely to you, and you should have full admin access.
Shared Server – Your website shares a server with many other sites, sometimes into the hundreds. Fine if your website is not particularly complex or busy, or you have limited budget.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) – Your site is held on a shared server, but in its own virtual environment, so you have a lot more control and flexibility.
Cloud Server – Think of it as kind of a ‘server farm’ where clusters of servers are linked up online, and website data shared between them. Resources are pooled leading to economies of scale and multiple business benefits such as the ability to manage very high levels of traffic.
The right website hosting option for your business will depend on what your needs are in terms of issues such as control, scalability, availability, security, cost, bandwidth and storage. Let’s look at a couple of them to see what areas might be of concern to you.
Availability
Hosting companies, besides giving you web space and ‘serving’ your pages to people looking to find your company on the internet, also give additional value in the form of extra features, the most important of which is technical support, which keeps your site available as much as possible. There are many reasons a website might go ‘down’ such as DDoS attacks or server malfunctions, so it’s critical when choosing a hosting provider that you can rely on their service, that you can be certain of a prompt, capable response immediately, and that it’s available 24/7.
Bandwidth
The amount of bandwidth you require depends on how much traffic you expect, and what functions your website will be carrying out. If it’s a purely static site, maybe half a dozen pages, then you won’t need too much bandwidth at all. If, however, it’s of a transactional nature, such as a large ecommerce site, with many images, and hundreds of visitors hourly from various parts of the world, then you’re going to need high bandwidth.
Your hosting package will give you a certain allowance, but what happens if you go over that? For instance, if a new promotion works better than expected and you’re seeing a lot more traffic and transactions? Will your hosting company cut off access to your site, or will it charge you extra? Some companies offer unlimited bandwidth, but beware that this doesn’t mean just that, the opposite in fact – there will be limitations on what you can use your disc space for, and if you go over what the host considers reasonable, your contract may be terminated.
Other common extra features include domain name registration (you may incur a charge if you wish to transfer the name away if you change host company, so read the small print) and free email addresses, so people can contact you via ‘sales@(yourcompany).com’ or ‘support@(yourcompany).co.uk’, and website builder software. You may also find you have the ability to host multiple sites for no extra cost which means you can handle the web hosting for similar businesses to your own, a useful bit of side-revenue.
Finally, some things to watch out for…
Bandwidth issues – which have been covered above, can have a detrimental effect on your website’s performance and customer satisfaction. There are fears that the UK’s infrastructure will soon be unable to cope with the bandwidth demands placed upon it, so make an accurate assessment of your needs and don’t be surprised if costs go up at some point in the near future if you’re using a lot.
Hidden charges – you may sign up for a hosting package at a set price, only to find out that the extra features you need will cost you more. Always check exactly what’s included beforehand and use a company that offers a trial period.
Tech Support limitations – it’s vital to have confidence in your provider to keep your website available as much as possible, especially if you’re making direct sales through it. Know what you can expect from tech support and research for opinions from other clients of the same host.