All businesses needs a website especially in 2019. Business without an online presence face a difficult climb, because we live in a connected world where people discover products, services, and local businesses by searching online. Creating a business website may take months of painstaking planning, debating, and compromise, but setting up a decent website doesn’t have to be painful, provided you have the proper tools or a painless leasing program like Screenwalker and one of the most important tools is the right web hosting.
Web Hosting Basics
If you are not familiar with web hosting, here is an explanation. Web hosting are servers that you will use to store and deliver images, video, documents, HTML and other files that make up your website and its content. These servers can be of the shared, dedicated, or virtual dedicated.
There are hundreds of web hosting services fighting for your business, including super-popular services (such as GoDaddy) and more affordable ones such as HostMonster. Large businesses can spend thousands of dollars each year on dedicated hosting or virtual private server (VPS) hosting, the two categories we focus on are medium to small businesses with website needs.
Many web hosts have several increasingly expensive tiers, with introductory features in starter packages and more robust offerings in higher-priced plans. We recommend a healthy course of comparison shopping before pulling out a credit card; you’ll want to sign up with a service that has the features that best align with your website needs.
So What Does Hosting Cost?
If you’re a small business owner, you’re going to want to run with at least a business hosting and if you have the bigger budget a dedicated or VPS hosting. A dedicated server will likely cost you more than $200 per month; it’s definitely not cheap web hosting plus you will need some type of IT resource to manage it since most dedicated servers under $500 a month are non-managed.
The benefit t having a dedicated server is your website lives on it’s own server so it takes full advantage of the server’s resources. You will need to handle firewalls and maintenance yourself, unless you opt for a managed server, which costs even more.
If you want to save money and not have to worry about needing an IT staff Business Class hosting is definitely a sufficient and more cost effective. Business Class hosting falls midway between shared and dedicated hosting. By building your website in a business hosting environment, you won’t as many resources with the other sites that live on the same server, the way you would with shared hosting. In fact, your site lives in a partitioned server area that has its own allocated processor, storage, RAM, and monthly data transfers, so you can expect smoother, more-stable site performance.
Some hosts charge extra for access to website builders that can help you design your site. Other hosts require you to commit to a three year hosting agreement in order to get that low per-month price. Or the price is an introductory one, and after a month, you will revert to a higher price.
Ready to Get Started?
We understand that no two businesses have the same web hosting requirements. We’ve rounded up two of the best web hosting companies for small businesses so that you can get a jump start on picking a service that works for you.
Recommended Hosting Packages
- Managed Hosting (High End/High Speed Professional Solution)
- Business Level Hosting (If you currently do not have a hosting solution)
- Affordable Startup Hosting (If you currently do not have a hosting solution, recommend you choose “Choice Plus” or “Go Pro” )
[price-item item_number=”3″ category=”hosting”]