When you are ready to select a Hosting Package for a Website or embark on a Website Project, there are a number of key issues to look at. One can draw up a pretty complicated flow diagrams to direct you through the process. From our experience most people seem to jump in the deep end and deal with issues or obstacles during the process or find out afterwards that there are problems or better ways to get a better result. This of course is a huge generalisation but most will agree there is a bit of truth in this way of doing things.
We have been in the Website Hosting and Development Business long enough to give sound guidelines on Website Development and how that should be integrated with the relevant Business Model, Marketing and Digital Marketing Strategies. We would like to point out a few areas that will help make this process more focussed with better end results.
Itemised Considerations in Selecting the Correct Business Hosting Facility.
- Host Where Your Market Is! Your Website Hosting should be as close as possible to your Market. This way you will give your users the best possible website speeds. Another consideration is to host in the same time zone as your clients. This way any hosting issue can be attended to sooner than later. Data centres do updates and backups at night this could mean arranged outages could occur in your office hours and running backups will influence server response times.
- Shared or VPS Server, what should it be? Shared Hosting is when server resources are shared amongst users, this can influence server performance at times, reduce server flexibility wrt specific server requirements, it is however the all round most cost effective solution. VPS Hosting creates virtual 'containers' for each user reducing the effect each user has on the other. This service is more costly than Shared Hosting, but compared to a dedicated server solution, a good compromise. What do most of our clients and returning clients select? Most go for the Business and Website Shared Hosting. The reasons we believe that choice is most by our clients is the Shared Hosting platform is built into extremely powerful machines that very seldom loose performance due to user activity.
- Speciality or General Hosting Solution? Speciality Hosting is when Hosting is offered for a specific solution whether it's for a special type of Website type, such as WordPress Hosting or eCommerce Hosting or General Hosting Solution type such as Shared Hosting or VPS Hosting. Speciality Hosting can be used for general purpose hosting, WordPress Hosting for example can be used for an HTML Website, it is however configure to work best for what it is configured for, since there is usually a premium for Speciality Hosting.
- Business Hosting? Surely all Hosting can be used for Business! This statement is correct, however there's Hosting and then there is HOSTING. Business Hosting brings all facets of Hosting and complementary services to one place, to be reminded to what is available and to use this technology to your advantage. For example, and its sad to admit, in our experience but most users/business people do not make regular backups of any kind. So a good business person manages risk, lose your emails or lose your website this will affect your business. Malware can destroy your website integrity, as a provider for a large volumes of websites, this happens all to often. These and many similar incidences can be managed by using facilities offered in Business Hosting, its not rocket science, just common sense.
- Why Resell Hosting? This might appear to be a silly question, with an obvious answer, read on! Wanting to start your own Hosting Company is a good reason to resell hosting, but another good reason to purchase Reseller Hosting is for Website Developers to Host their own websites, to do this on a reseller hosting package. This facility gives greater flexibility to your clients, easily allocate resources and specific needs for scripts, and this is only the start of what can be done in a Reseller Hosting environment. Not ready for a dedicated server solution for your medium to large website, a Reseller Hosting Package will work, full control of the server resources, custom configuration, your own IPs and much more!
