web hosting plans
“My site is falling.” – Have you ever heard this phrase? Or even pronounced it? So what should you avoid with web hosting plans?
In any online business, there are several things never to compromise on – Consistency, Speed and Security. It doesn’t matter how big your business is – either you have a huge e-commerce store or a group of small businesses – the fail of any of these three ‘whales’ will ruin your brand’s reputation.
The performance of your business is as good as its website. And it is obvious, your online presence would be nowhere without properly managed hosting services (fast and secure). It is the pulse of a website, determining your company’s rankings in search engines and the way it could be found by consumers.
You may argue with this statement, saying, design and features matter, however, you can never show the design if your site is down, which means good web hosting plans and a hosting partner is the most important thing for your business.
There is no reason to wait until your business becomes huge to get serious about your website. Let us look in detail at the compromises you should never make with web hosting plans (the ones we’ve discussed above):
- Consistency. The idea is – your website should be intuitively clear to consumers: the information should be presented in similar ways and there should be appropriate tabs to easily navigate.
- Speed. According to numerous data, the majority of Internet-users are not ready to wait more than 5 seconds for the page to be loaded. It means your website should be fast. In order to organize the proper load of all the elements of the webpage – it is better to have a developer, who will help you organize the code.
- Security. Virgin Blue Company, Australian airline services provider, secured $20 million in damages, when their booking system failed. Moreover, they lost the reputation, which is even worse. You should try to prevent such situations on your website, especially if you ask your consumers for some personal data (i.e. credit card details for the payment).
What else to avoid with web hosting plans?
- Scaling. As your business is growing (and we believe it does), you should be ready to enlarge your hosting plan. It is better to be one step ahead and try to predict the growth (for instance, during the holiday season) to avoid downsite. Discuss all the available solutions with your provider and make sure the provider has enough datacenters to serve effectively.
- Support. In case you are not a professional developer and you spend a lot of time to grow your business – it is always better to delegate part of the responsibilities to a third party. Choosing a managed hosting you can save time, energy and money. And a provider with a good 24/7 support team will help you if a) something is going wrong, b)you would like to know how it all works.
- Features/applications. Your businesses website may require special operating system or some additional applications to install (i.e. a shopping cart or a blog). Make sure it will not be a stress factor for you. Of course, this point is less important, then all the discussed above. However, it is a thing to remember about.
“That is nice but way too expensive.”
Of course, a choice of a fully managed web hosting can be out of your budget. Knowing how small businesses struggle to allocate the budget we decided to list things you can compromise on to save some money:
- Location. It is undoubtedly better to have your hosting not far from you. And it is even better if hosting company has several datacenters in different locations close to your target regions. However, you can compromise on this, choosing the company that fits best all the other needs.
- Site-builder. Choosing web hosting plans that allow you to build a website based on one of the provided templates can be tempting. However, it is sometimes cheaper to hire a developer, who will make a simple website for you, then to pay additional fee for a hosting plan each month.
- Marketing tools. It is really important to have a good marketing strategy, however you can save money by adding marketing applications of your own taste (or according to the strategy you built up) rather than paying for a full package of marketing tools (not knowing how to use half of them).
We hope this article was useful for you and helped you to determine what to avoid with web hosting plans and how to choos a managed web hosting, what things you can compromise on and what things are crucial for your businesses website.
