Archive for the ‘Hosting’ Category

What To Look For In Small Business Hosting

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

So, you need to get a web host for your small business, but aren’t sure how to choose among the many hosting providers on the market?  This this article is here to help you narrow down your choosing for selection the right web hosting for small business.  In order to choose the right host, you need to consider things like performance, uptime, features, and support.  I will outline each of these factors below.

Performance is a huge issue for small business owners.  Since the performance of your web site will reflect the performance of your business in the minds of your potential customers, having a nice, snappy web host is critical.  Be sure that you select a host with a good reputation for speed, and be sure that you get a fast enough VPS or dedicated server to handle your needs.  This might take some help to figure out, which brings us to our next point, support.

Having the right support, both pre and post sale, is critical to getting the right hosting package.  Pre sales support should be able to help you find the perfect hosting plan for your needs, while the post sales support will keep you up and running all the time.  Be sure that you always have someone to talk to if something goes wrong, as there is nothing worse than having a server down and having nobody to help you fix the problem.

Speaking of downed servers, be sure that the host has a very solid uptime record.  If the host is showing poor uptime, then you’ll want to be sure to look elsewhere for your hosting needs.

Features are also important.  By choosing the right features, you’ll be sure to get the most from your hosting experience.  If you’re using a dynamic website, be sure that you have the right environment available to run your web site.  For example, if you run OS Commerce or Wordpress, your hosting package will need to have MySQL and PHP.  Disk space and bandwith are other important features to consider.  Be sure you know what a bandwidth overage will cost you, or else you could find yourself facing a costly fee at the end of the month!

Overall, choosing hosting for your small business doesn’t need to be rocket science, but keeping these factors in mind when shopping will help quite a lot.  Be sure to read around this site for other great tips on web hosting for small businesses.

Types of Small Business Web Hosting

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

If you’re looking for web hosting for small business, you’ll need to understand the basic types of hosting options that are on the market.  Each level of hosting offers you some different advantages at different pricing levels.  In this article, we will discuss how you can use shared, VPS, or dedicated hosting to further your business online.

The first type of hosting we will discuss is shared hosting.  A shared web host will offer you a nice, low price to host a (typically) unlimited numbers of sites.  You are given a fixed amount of bandwidth and disk space which varies with the price of the package.  The reason this is known as “shared” hosting is because you are actually sharing the same server space with other sites.  This does not mean that other sites will have access to your data, but it does mean that performance is typically slower.  If the server is heavily loaded, the performance of all the sites will suffer.  However, most providers these days do quite a good job with providing solid service, so this is a good option unless your business web site is resource intensive, which is often the case with e-commerce sites, or sites with a web application like a ticket system or a support forum.

For these types of applications, you’ll want to step up to either a VPS or a dedicated host.  A VPS is a Virtual Private Server, which is like having your own server all to yourself, except that the server is actually a simulation of a single server that exists on a computing cluster.  Basically, this means that you will have much more resources available to you when compared to a shared hosting package.  This is great if your sites needs the performance.  You are also protected much more from the influence of other sites on the performance of your site, since your VPS “instance” has resources allocated to it that are generally not violated.

Another great thing about VPS hosting for small business is that it is scalable.  That is, if you outgrow the performance of your current server, you can simply pay more and be instantly upgraded to a higher performance machine.  Since there is no physical server, upgrading happens instantly by allocating your instance more resources.  This is a great way for growing small business to scale up without hassle.

If you’re looking for the ultimate in performance, you’ll want to consider dedicated web hosting for your small business.  In this case, you’re paying for access to an actual physical machine. This means that no matter what happens with other peoples sites, your site is completely independent of it.  You get the best performance possible.  Of course, this does cost more, and scaling up is difficult when compared to VPS hosting, but if you need the performance, dedicated is the way to go.

So, I hope this help give you some idea of how to go about choosing the right web hosting provider for your small business.  There are many other factors to consider, but this should give you a good start in understand what the different options are for getting your small business online.

Welcome To Web Hosting For Small Business

Monday, October 6th, 2008

If you’re a small business owner looking to establish an online presence, getting the right web hosting provider is essential.  This site is devoted to helping you make sense of the options you have to choose from when it comes to web hosting.  We’ll be here to help you understand how web hosting works, and what you’re getting for your money.  We hope that you’ll find our articles interesting and informative, and that they will help you make the right decision when it comes to choosing the right web hosting provider for your small business.