Websites are an essential asset for virtually every business in the UK, which means web hosting has come to be seen almost as a utility service. As with other utilities, such as gas, electricity and telephone lines, there’s a lot of competition and choice out there. It seems that many companies offering web hosting focus almost exclusively on the costs, presenting their services as the cheapest. Although the price of web hosting is an important consideration, just as with other essential utilities, it’s the service rather than the price which will add value to your business.
The first thing you should keep in mind when selecting a web hosting service is that absolutely no other element of your website has any bearing on who you choose. You are free to have one company register your domain name for you, another to create and design your site, and then a third providing hosting. Here at Web Consultancy we offer all three, and in most cases our clients much prefer the ease of having one point of contact for all of their web related matters. If you have a website you like, but believe that the hosting offered by those who created it for you is holding success back, there is nothing to stop you moving the site to a new hosting provider. This is a service we have carried out for many companies before, and it’s always great when we are able to assist someone with our superior affordable web hosting services.
As mentioned earlier, costs are an important element of anything for every business. Some companies advertise web hosting services in a way which suggests they charge literally pennies per month. However, if something looks too good to be true, it often is. Low cost hosting usually presents the price as being “from” per month. It often turns out that to get the web hosting you want – for example, hosting multiple pages and more than one domain – carries extra costs. Fixed cost web hosting might seem the more expensive option, but the investment will be well worth it. A fixed cost for reliable, unrestricted hosting is usually easier to manage than a variable cost approach.
Finally, speed and availability are important considerations for web hosting. In the age of swift broadband access, nothing frustrates people more than a slow loading site. Most people will simply switch off a webpage if it is taking too long to load. On a similar note, downtime is very dangerous – when a website is not available due to a hosting issue, many browsers assume that the site has gone forever and do not bother visiting again. With these two factors in mind, we always ensure that our hosting services allow for accelerated page loading and keep a very high uptime.
Website hosting is crucial to the success of your business site. You could have created the greatest website in the world, but poor hosting could let it down. If you currently have a business site up and running, why not try and access it once you’ve finished reading this? Try to take an objective view of it, and pay attention to how fast it uploads, especially in comparison to other sites you visit frequently. If you find that you feel your site could be opening up faster and better, get in touch with us and we’ll help make it happen.