Finding The Right Web Hosting Solution For A Small Business

Everyone knows by now that businesses, however small, need a website. If you don't have one, your business will gain no traction; it's both expected and essential, and there's really no excuse for not doing it. Western society has now reached a point where starting a business without a website is failing at running your business before you've even begun.

Websites need to live somewhere: they need to be stored on a special kind of computer called a server, which literally 'serves' the website up to people's internet browsers when they go to visit it. Some people set up and run their own servers, but this is complicated and expensive - it's far more common to hire space on one from a web hosting company. The packages offered by them vary hugely in cost, and when you pay more you're paying for things like:

  • Faster, more secure, more dedicated servers to keep everything ticking over
  • More space to store pages, images and other files for people to see and download
  • A speedier experience for people visiting your site, particularly when downloading
  • The ability for more people to view your site at once without crashing it
  • A properly customised domain name that belongs exclusively to you
  • Generally more options and flexibility in what you can do with your website

Free Hosting

Free hosting solutions do exist, but they're best saved for sites that aren't designed to be commercial. Free sites are perfect for distributing information, creating a fan site or an educational site on a topic about which you are passionate, and hosting other personal things - like a blog of your own, for example. If you're hoping to make money from your website, though - especially if you want to sell products online - you're going to need to pay for a host. This not only protects you from attacks and vulnerabilities, but also helps you to look competent and professional in the eyes of your potential customers.

Paid Hosting

Paid website hosting is a huge topic, and one that it can take a while to properly get to grips with. If you're just starting out, however, there are really only a few things that you need to know.

  • Paid plans vary in price between about $3 a month and, for the largest sites, many thousands of dollars a year. This means that there is a package for you and for your small business no matter what your website hosting budget might be like.
  • To start off with, you'll probably be fine on a shared server - which is what the cheapest deals often are. Over time, however, you should look into first a virtual server, then later a dedicated server, and one day if your site really takes off a cloud server of your own.
  • One of the most important parts of web hosting is choosing your domain name. Be careful to pick a package that lets you own the domain you're using, rather than your hosts.

A Point To Note

Some small businesses have larger data needs than others, and that will cost you money. If you intend to use your site for hosting and streaming video, for example, it will cost you more to run than if you're simply serving up ordinary web pages to your visitors. Bear this in mind while searching for and comparing quotes.