It is a known fact that business web hosting serves as a foundation for any business website which is one of the most important mediums of interacting with your customers. Therefore, it is ever more important to select a suitable business web hosting plan. By extensive research and survey of a large number of business hosting companies worldwide, we have come up with top 3 small business web hosting service providers list. After choosing any one of the following hosting services, you can be sure of high standards and reliability.
| Rank | Host | Price/month | Features | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | FatCow |
$3.67 | Unlimited Disk Space Unlimited Bandwidth Host Unlimited Domains 30 Day Money back Guarantee $75 Ads Credit Powered by Wind Energy (Green Friendly) |
Read FatCow Review |
| 2 | iPage |
$3.50 | Unlimited Disk Space Unlimited Bandwidth Unlimited Domains Hosting 30 day Money Back Guarantee $400 Worth of Free Extras |
Read iPage Review |
| 3 | HostGator |
$7.95 | Unlimited Disk Space Unlimited Bandwidth Host Unlimited Domains 45 Days Money Back Guarantee Powered by Wind Energy $50 Adwords Credit One of the Largest Hosts |
Read HostGator Review |
A Complete Guide to Business Hosting
There’s a saying in small and medium business today: If you’re not on the Internet, you don’t exist. Commerce has migrated almost totally to transactions made via the World Wide Web. Even face-to-face business is mediated by customers first researching their purchases online before they step into a bricks-and-mortar store. That’s why even small businesses must have a basic knowledge of web sites and web hosting services.
Unfortunately, even many large companies still aren’t sure what makes a successful web site, or what to look for in a quality small business web hosting. This brief guide will cover the basics of websites, and business web hosts, along with some advanced knowledge for companies with more online experience.
Ask yourself: Why are we putting up a business web site?
The first thing a business must consider before launching any online venture is: Why are we putting up a website?
Strange as it seems, too many businesses don’t have a clear understanding of what the goal is for their web sites. Business owners and managers should start their online commerce by asking basic questions such as:
- Who is the audience for our web site?
- Will we sell products or services on the web site (this would effect small business hosting company selection)?
- Will the web site be our primary marketing tool?
- Do we want the web site to draw customers to our physical office?
- Will we use social networking tools such as blogs, surveys, polls or other links to form a community on our web site?
These questions and more should be answered in detail before a company engages a web site designer to create a business’ online presence. Unless a clear and succinct mission for the web site is determined, it will prove to be an expense instead of a profit center for the business.
One way to tackle these questions is to ask who in the company really understands computers. Some owners of small and medium-sized businesses are surprised to discover that some of their current staff already are Internet and web experts and they can easily launch a small business website, even though that may not be their job. An employee who has a personal web site or a blog may be exactly the person to lead the company’s web site development team. Let the entire staff know that the company is preparing a website and invite them to contribute their experience, including recommendations for possible web site designers and a small business web hosting service.
By delving deeply into these kinds of questions – and tapping into the existing expertise among computer-savvy staff – a business will be able to map our its web site goals and requirements and hence set guidelines for selection of an appropriate small business hosting company. This in turn will help the company know what its technical requirements are likely to be when it comes time to choose a web hosting service. Among these could be a database so the company can sell its products online. Perhaps the company wants to develop sophisticated scripts that make the customer’s online experience smooth and efficient. Maybe the company would like to invite its customers to contribute their own blogs as a way of building customer loyalty. These are among the questions that will emerge as the company explores exactly what it wants its web site to do and be. Based on the answers to above questions, the company will choose a suitable business hosting service.
One last tip for building a strong business web site: Use customer-centric design, also known as the “Don’t make me think” method. Although Internet use has become widespread, customers aren’t necessarily sophisticated computer users. They don’t want to have to work through a series of complicated steps to get what they want. They’d rather click on a single button and have the computer do it for them. So when designing the company’s web site, keep the “Don’t make me think” principle as a primary goal.
Choosing a small business web hosting service
The designer has completed the company’s new web site. It looks beautiful and functions smoothly. Now it’s time to enter into that important online relationship of choosing a business web hosting service.
The first rule of successful small business web hosting is: Don’t go for the lowest price! Launching and operating a web site is not a time to be cheap. That’s because the technical needs of a successful online presence for a business are beyond the capabilities of low-ball web hosting vendors. Some exceptionally cheap web hosting services operate out of a single computer in somebody’s basement. Sometimes the low-ball service is a reseller for a larger company and oversells its capacity. So always remember the first rule: Cheap web hosting may not be the best web hosting for your business.
Small businesses may prefer to contract with local vendors that offer personalized service that sometimes include small business web site hosting and development of site. This can be a workable arrangement if the vendor is someone the business owner knows and trusts, especially if the owner isn’t familiar with online commerce. There’s a lot to be said for such a business relationship. The two businesses may even help one another to grow. Many small business web hosting service providers offer their cutting edge services to international clients located across the globe.
However, there’s also something to be said for working with a larger national or even international web hosting company. Although the “high-touch” factor of personal service may be less, the technical capabilities of such hosting vendors often compensates for the distance. This is especially true for many of the top-rated hosting companies that have been in business for the past decade. They’ve grown up, so to speak, with the business of hosting web sites, and so they offer expertise born of experience, as well as the most up-to-date hardware and software.
Whether evaluating a local vendor or a national web hosting service, the qualifications are the same. The best business web hosting service will provide top quality performance in four areas: disk space (data storage), bandwidth (data transfer rate), uptime (reliability) and technical support. Here’s what to look for in each area. Although Yahoo small business hosting service is quite big in size and people often choose them, we would only recommend them if you already have good knowledge about server level programming and managing hosting accounts on your own.
Disk space. This web hosting term refers to the amount of storage capacity your company’s web site(s) will have on the business hosting service’s computers (more precisely called ’servers’). Many companies today promise “unlimited” disk space. This limitless storage can be true, provided the web host has enough computer storage capacity. The way to tell whether your web site will get truly unlimited storage is to check whether the service limits the size of the data files you’re allowed to upload to the server. It’s simple logic: Anything that’s limited in some form can’t be “unlimited.”
Bandwidth. This term refers to how fast the data will transfer between your web site and your customer’s computer, and it relates to the size of the telephone system connections of the Internet. Here again, the term “unlimited” can be misleading. The web hosting service may have the largest possible telephone connections leading out of its computers, but the local service of its physical location may not be as big. What’s more, a web host’s “unlimited” bandwidth can be clogged if all of its hosting clients happen to get large amounts of web site visitors at the same time. Some unscrupulous web hosts offer “unlimited” bandwidth without large network connections, gambling that the volume of their clients’ data transfer won’t exceed the web host’s capacity. If your company’s website seems slow to “load” on your home computer, bandwidth could be the issue and should be checked.
Uptime. By now we’ve all seen that cartoon of a cobweb-draped skeleton sitting in front of a computer screen while a technician asks, “System been down long?” That cartoon is what “uptime” is all about: reliability. Fortunately, unlike disk space or bandwidth, uptime is something that a business hosting customer can measure and verify. The best web hosting services offer 99.9 percent uptime, meaning that its computers are working virtually all the time, day or night, every day of the year. This is crucial for a business web site that sells products online, because its customers now shop any time of the day or night. Reputable web hosting firms will provide their clients with uptime audits to verify their reliability claims. Companies also can do their own uptime audits of their web sites.
Technical service. For most small businesses, technical service isn’t an add-on; it’s a must. Few small businesses, and not many medium-sized ones as well, have the computer skills to monitor and repair technical issues that occur with web sites. What’s more, although web hosting companies now routinely provide fairly easy control panels for web site updates, there are always “glitches,” or things that go wrong. The best web hosting company for any business is the one that provides qualified technical assistance around the clock.
What kind of hosting should our company have?
Once a business designs its web site and chooses a qualified, reputable and reliable web hosting service, the final decision about launching a web site is what kind of web hosting to purchase.
There are basically three kinds of web hosting services: Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting and Dedicated Server Hosting. In addition, VPS and Dedicated Server hosting come in two options: managed and non managed.
Shared Hosting is the kind used by most people for individual or small-scale websites. Customers’ websites are housed on a single server and must take turns using the computers’ resources, while the web hosting company takes care of everything related to the administration and upkeep of software and hardware. Small businesses that use their websites mainly as marketing tools often find shared hosting the most economical option.
Some business website owners may also be retail business outlet owners. If you are one of them then you would require a good quality software for your point of sale. There are many software options to consider including this retail point of sale software which can increase the profits and productivity your business through efficient use of POS technology.
As a business grows, it often needs more storage space for its web site, especially if it sells products or services online. However, it may not yet have the resources to purchase and maintain its own servers. This is where Virtual Private Server hosting has become popular. With VPS, a company leases a portion of a server for its exclusive use. This “partition” of a server acts as if it were a separate computer. It runs its own operating system and can be started and stopped independently of other customers on the same server. The business advantages to this arrangement are better reliability and greater control of operation.
The ultimate in business web hosting is Dedicated Server Hosting. With this option, a business leases an entire server, or several servers, for its sole use. This is the most expensive form of web site hosting, but it gives a business total control of its hosting. This alternative offers advantages to medium- to large-sized business with high volumes of web site traffic.
As mentioned earlier, VPS and Dedicated Server forms of hosting can be managed or non managed. With managed hosting, the web hosting customer leases the services of its hosting vendor to take care of the maintenance of the business web site and its software. With non managed hosting, the customer assumes complete administration for its web site, the operating system on server and all software necessary to run the web site. Non managed hosting requires a business to have one or more employees with specialized technical skills whose job it is to run the web site and the servers that host it.
Conclusion
Yes, the Internet has revolutionized business, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Companies that intend to succeed in this brave new world of Internet business can use these guidelines to create profitable web sites placed online by reliable, qualified web hosting services.