What You Need to Know About Business Website Hosting

Business Website Hosting is Important!

Many small business owners are not overly concerned about their business website hosting. The overwhelming mantra seems to be the cheaper, the better. And while having your business website hosted for less than a buck a month seems like a great idea, it isn’t! There are many factors involved in business website hosting. We want small business owners to understand what some of the basic options are.

Your own business website hosting needs may be different from the average small business. We have seen some very unique cases over the years. But if you can understand the basics of business website hosting, you will be able to make better-informed decisions yourself.

Making a hasty decision regarding your business website hosting can come back and haunt you. Yes, some of these rock-bottom deals sound great! Keep in mind that in business website hosting, the cheapest option is not always the best option.

The only way lo-cost providers can provide any service and stay in business is by cutting service to the bone. That is not good when you have an emergency, is it? In some cases, technical support is fundamental as the respective IT support team has little or no training. If you want better trained and motivated help, you just have to expect to pay more.

Different Website Hosting Options

There are many available options for business website hosting. Choosing the right one for you depends on your requirements. Do you need a full-blown e-commerce site, or will a simple website do? Will you keep a popular blog that gets tons of visitors? Or maybe you plan to have lots of high-quality images on your site, or your site has a design feature that requires more resources to load.

In a previous blog post, we already mentioned how to optimize your business website performance. Those of you who read that post will remember we talked about how business website hosting affected your website performance. Today we want to go into a bot more detail to help small business owners understand the different available options.

There are four different types of business website hosting available to small business owners. They range from cheap and relatively limited on one end to all the benefits of your owning very own web server on the other. And in the end, you will have the resources to learn more about individual web hosts.

We use the example of leasing a car to illustrate the domain purchase and registration process for many of our clients. The natural extension of that thought would be to outline your different parking options next. They range from hoping you don’t have too many new scratches to the white glove valet service. We are sure you will find suitable ‘parking’ for your business website as well.

Different Types of Business Website Hosting

Shared Hosting – The Public Parking Garage

This type of web hosting is the bare bones, lo-cost option we mentioned earlier. Shared hosting means just that. Your business website lives on the same server as hundreds and thousands of other small business websites just like yours. Think of it as a public parking garage. You pay a small hourly fee or monthly charge to park your car with hundreds of other vehicles in the same parking garage. You don’t have your parking spot, you can’t store your spare tires, and the whole place is not secure.

That is precisely the reason why shared hosting is so cheap. And many small business websites don’t get that much traffic at first, and they have few, if any, additional CPU requirements. Initially, many small business owners are satisfied with that level of hosting. And some of them never really see any need to move on up. The rest of you should think about your own small business expanding, and perhaps not being such a small business. How exciting! But will shared hosting still serve your needs?

The Downside

Keep in mind that with shared business website hosting, you and every other business on that server share the same resources. That means that when everyone needs the same resources at the same time, things get messy quickly. Think of your public parking garage during a special event, or (gasp!) the holiday season! Where is your parking space now?

As your small business expands, maybe you need more resources. You definitely will expect more website traffic. And better site speed would help with Google. The extra image galleries alone will take up a lot of extra server space as well.  It may be time to move on to the affordable freedom of a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) – The Reserved Parking Space

VPS hosting is the next step up for business website hosting. A virtual private (VPS) server offers many of the same benefits of having your dedicated server. You have more room, a faster processor, and you generally have more freedom to do things your way. Look at it like having your own reserved parking space. Not quite as good as having a private garage, but a step up from the public parking garage.

With a virtual private server, you should have no problem handling additional website traffic and uploading tons of product images. You also get decent website speed and add more dedicated landing pages and subdirectories. And seeing that you pay a little extra, you can also expect a higher level of tech support when things go wrong. Some VPS servers even help you with website performance and security as part of their service agreements.

The Small Business Solution

A VPS server is an excellent middle-ground for business website hosting for most small business owners. It can handle the average business website with performance to spare. Even e-commerce sites with a few hundred SKUs are no problem. By having your installation of Linux, Apache, MySQL, you have more abilities to take advantage of software upgrades and other improvements.

Keep in mind that with your own private parking space, you still have to deal with traffic. A VPS server is a viable business website hosting solution for most small to mid-size businesses. But there are times when you just need to do your own thing. That means you have to step up to your own dedicated server, your own parking garage.

Dedicated Server – The Private Garage

As the name implies, a dedicated server supports only one client or website, you! You have absolutely zero restrictions; this is your server. You can have as many website visitors and use as many server resources as your heart desires. Having a dedicated server is the equivalent of your very own parking garage, driveway, and everything. No pesky neighbors or traffic to annoy you.

But keep in mind that having a dedicated server means that you or your IT administrator has more control over keeping it running. Your host, the server farm that your dedicated machine lives on, will keep your server running. Still, you may find that regular backups, security, performance optimization and support along those lines are available, for a price. A dedicated server is among the more expensive business website hosting options.

This May Be Too Much

Frankly, we rarely recommend that a client gets a dedicated server. For small businesses, the cost and expertise required are simply not worth it. If you run a membership site or e-commerce store with very high-security requirements or develop websites, you may want this option.  Otherwise, there are not many reasons for small businesses to choose a dedicated server for their business website hosting.

If you want the best possible performance and functionality without having to devote a lot of time, you may want to consider a hosted solution.

Managed Hosting – The Valet Service

For those small business owners that want the best of both worlds, we recommend managed hosting. Just like the name implies, you pay a service provider to manage your business website hosting for you. You still control your business website or e-commerce store. But much of the essential maintenance and security are no longer your responsibility. Managed hosting is like having a valet service bring your car around when you need it.

For many small to mid-size businesses, this is an ideal business website hosting option. Managed hosting solutions generally provide high-speed servers optimized for website performance. Security is usually top-notch as well, with managed hosting providers offering SSL certificates as part of their service. And managed hosting providers can also take care of essential website maintenance, theme and plugin updates, and database configuration for you.

The Worry-Free Solution

You want worry-free business website hosting that takes care of your website to focus on running your business. We recommend you look into managed hosting. If you are worried about the cost, consider how much time and money you currently spend trying to keep your business website running. In most cases, you will spend less than that on a managed hosting service, and have more time to run your business.

Selecting Your Business Website Hosting

Now that you know the different types of business website hosting and understand the pros and cons, you are in a better position to select a hosting provider. Perhaps you already have a business website hosting provider and just wanted to learn more.

Most reputable business website hosting providers offer a variety of different packages and options. These choices should make it easier for you to find the optimum service level without having to leave your current hosting service provider.

If you are just starting, or feel like a different business website hosting provider would be a better fit, there are several options available. Be sure to check that a business website hosting provider will help you scale and grow your business when the time comes.

Here is an excellent post to help you compare different business website hosting options. It provides a quick comparison between shared, VPS, dedicated, and managed business website hosting providers.

Need a Place to Park Your Website?

Here at PixoLabo, we offer a full range of website support services, including IT and website consulting and business website hosting. You can also download a PDF describing our website maintenance packages. Contact us to learn more about our small business website hosting services. Our team can help you leverage business website hosting advantages of your own.

And if you are still not sure how your website hosting affects your business website, don’t worry! Simply reach out and contact us. Our expert team will listen to you, answer your questions, and determine if your business website hosting geared for your business success. That is one of our specialties, after all!

How is Your Website Hosting?

Where are you hosting your website? How is that working out for you? Do you have anything to add to business website hosting tips and facts? Feel free to add your comments below so our audience can benefit and grab our feed, so you don’t miss our next post! And feel free to share this post with your audience!

Thank you! We appreciate your help to end bad business websites, one pixel at a time!

By Gregor Schmidt
Co-Founder / CXO
@gregorinsendai