Web Hosting: Do you need what you pay for and do you get what you need?
Most ongoing business concerns have an online presence of some sort these days. If you are not online, you are not going to be found by people who may want to use your services or buy your products, and this can be disastrous for your long-term professional prospects.
While some businesses are content with a listing in an online directory or a rudimentary social media presence, professional concerns should have their own website. Your website is your shopfront to the world, and it is therefore important that you get things right when setting one up.
As well as contemplating the design and content of your website, you should assess the options of where your website will be hosted. Web hosting is the service that determines where and how your website and associated services are kept on the internet. People or businesses that provide this service are known as Web hosts.
Web hosting is often independent of the actual design of the eventual website (although some web hosts do offer rudimentary site-building functionality), and web hosts can offer associated services relating to internet connectivity, such as e-mails and the registration of domain names (the ‘web address’ by which your website can be found via web browsers).
The actual processes behind web hosting can vary, with customers either buying or leasing space on a web host’s own internet servers or by setting up a server at their own premises. A popular new hosting method is through the Cloud, whereby the website is hosted on the internet and backed up on different, multiple servers. Websites or individual webpages or electronic files can be uploaded to the purchased or rented web space through a process known as File Transfer Protocol (or FTP for short), and the space can be configured to different Content Management Systems (or CMS) that allow for easy editing of the eventual website.
Some web hosts offer such services at heavily discounted, sometimes negligible rates but this can be a false economy. Many people or businesses when building a website for the first time do not appreciate the complexity or the levels of support that they may require going forward, and often they can get caught out by having to buy additional services beyond what was the initially attractive price. Conversely, ‘off the shelf’ web hosting packages often include many features that the standard business will not use, so they end up needlessly paying more for website hosting than if they went with another, dedicated provider.
Here are 8 things to consider when looking for a web hosting service for your website:
- Customer Support
This is arguably the most crucial element with any web hosting service; are you able to contact a person if or when things go wrong or if you need assistance? Many of the cheaper web hosting service providers don’t have advanced customer support services, with customers either being referred only to online technical support materials or to chat room type interactions, often with operators based on the other side of the world.
At the cheaper end of the market, you may also be engaging with staff who are not fully qualified or trained to deal with the issue you are raising or who may not take ownership of the problems you are encountering with the web host services.
By dealing with a smaller, dedicated hosting company, you should find a personalised and personable service that does not treat you as just another caller in queue.
- Services that are tailored to your specific needs
Do you really know what you are buying when it comes to web hosting, and do you really know why you are buying it? Many off the peg web hosting solutions work on the assumption that one size or a pre-determined choice between, say, three different hosting packages meet the requirements of their users, which is often not the case.
Sometimes, users of web hosting services find that they have to quickly upgrade their package with their provider because what they initially bought was not fit for their purposes. Even worse, the upgraded packages often contain advanced features or provisions that users might not need, so you can end up paying over the odds for one particular facet of web hosting services by default.
- Back-up services for your site
Does your potential web host offer backup services for their servers and, in particular, your website? In other words, do they ensure that your website is protected in the event of any catastrophic error that can affect the server, whether that be a computer virus/glitch or something more tangible, such as a fire.
A good web host should be able to retrieve your website from a very recent point in time in the event of disaster. This is even more important if your web host is also your web designer, as sometimes sites built by web designers (who are independent of the web hosts) may have their own backup you can use. If web designer and web host are one and the same, you will not have that option.
- A guarantee of uptime
While no web host can guarantee 100% uptime of your website (in other words, your website being accessible online at all times), a good web host will take steps to minimise outages and to offer continuity of service. Any downtime that is scheduled in advance by the web host should be advertised well ahead of the outage and at a time of day convenient to your business (at night or at the weekend, for example).
If your site goes down (or offline) for any period of time, you want to know that your web host will be aware of the issue themselves and will be doing their best to rectify the situation. You don’t want to be the one to discover that your website is down, nor do you want to be the proactive element that triggers the repair; a good web host will do that automatically on your behalf, without prompting.
- Ease of access
Most web hosts will have an online control panel with which you can monitor the usage, functionality and status of your account with them. It should be easy to use and to access, both by you and/or your web designer (if they are independent of the web host).
Having ease of access to, and a range of controls with which you can use, features offered by your web host will minimise the amount of time that you have to interact with them or their customer services. Once you have rented or purchased your space on the web, you will be wanting to use it unhindered and without complication.
- Domain name registrations
Your website will require a web address for your site to work, and it makes sense to buy this through your web host, who should be able to offer this service.
The web host should also be able to advise you on which domain name suffixes you may require (.com, .org, .co.uk) to make the most of your online presence and to protect you from others (such as competitors) who may want to purchase similar domain names to undermine your efforts.
You should also have the option to auto-renew your chosen domain-name(s), as you don’t want to inadvertently lose the rights to the domain name that you have been using, especially as trademark protection does not extend to domain names.
- Associated services
A good web host will offer other associated services that are necessary for a modern business, such as e-mails. While there are free e-mail services available from companies such as Microsoft and Google, you are going to be subjected to those companies’ terms and conditions and you will have no guarantee of ongoing service; you can’t seek compensation for service failure if you have not paid anything for that service in the first place!
Also, it helps a company’s image if it has professional looking e-mail addresses that are associated with the domain name of its websites. joe.blogs@companyname.co.uk is preferable tojoeblogs@gmail.com.
Hiring or buying space on a server offers other options to a company as well, such as document back up or hosting of other company electronic processes (such as computer software or remote working via virtual desktops). Often these processes can be consolidated with your web hosting agreement in one service level agreement, cutting the costs of your business’ overheads.
- The option to change your web hosting provider without hassle or complication
The time may come when you want to change your service provider for web hosting, either due to cost considerations (you have found a cheaper provider elsewhere) or if you have become dissatisfied with the service offering or customer support. In this event, you will want to know in advance that you can do so relatively easily and without complication.
There are anecdotes in business circles of web hosts becoming either difficult or obstructive when a customer chooses to take their custom elsewhere, so you want to know from the outset what the process is for moving your website and what contractual costs are involved in doing so.
With luck you will find a good web host first time around, but both businesses and circumstances change, and you should have peace of mind that you can switch your website to another provider without unwarranted complication or intimidation.
