Choosing the Wrong Web Hosting Plan Can Cost You Customers, Even Your Business

Do you regularly buy goods online? Does this experience sound familiar.. you go to an e-commerce website, only to find, to your annoyance, an excruciatingly slow response. You wait over 5 minutes for the next page to load. In the end you give up, and never make that purchase. Presumably many other people also give up, causing the loss of many other purchases.

Now imagine that you own that website, and run that online business. You set everything up properly, but you find that many people face the situation described above. You lose customers, and eventually you lose your business, and all this principally because you chose the wrong web hosting plan.

You see, when you set up any online business, I cannot over- stress the importance of choosing the right hosting company and plan.

In choosing a web hosting plan, you must decide whether to go for shared or dedicated hosting. With a shared hosting plan, your website co-exists with other websites on a computer, known as a server. With a dedicated hosting plan, your site, and your site alone resides upon just one server. You can get a good shared hosting plan for under $10 per month, whereas dedicated hosting plans can cost from $50 to over $100 a month.

For shared hosting, one server handles the traffic (visitors) coming to all the websites it accommodates. So if your site shares a server with other high-traffic sites, then it could run slow because the server works extra hard. Maybe the site will run slow at peak times during the day, when you would expect most customers to come and buy, causing the nightmare scenario above. However, hosting companies usually use many servers, with only a limited number of sites on each, thus spreading the load. I therefore advise you to read reviews on hosting companies to see whether people complain about sites slowing down due to overloading. I will say more on reviews later.

For dedicated hosting, your traffic does not compete with traffic to any other web sites. However, this costs much more, so I do not recommend dedicated hosting unless absolutely necessary.

When choosing a hosting plan, you must consider bandwidth. I’ll give you a simple explanation of bandwidth. If your hosting plan allows you 10GB of monthly bandwidth, it allows you 10GB (10,000MB) of data transfer from your site each month. If each visitor to your site accesses pages containing 300kB (0.3MB) of data on average, then your plan allows you 10,000 / 0.3 = 30,000 visitors a month, or 1000 visitors a day. Ask yourself, do I need more than that?

Imagine the scene: your site averages 2000 visitors a day. Two weeks into the month, with your monthly bandwidth quota used up, your site “goes offline” until the beginning of next month, or until you buy more bandwidth. How devastating for your business! Take my advice: get enough bandwidth before you start.

Most importantly, you must know the effectiveness of your hosting company’s customer support. Many companies offer 24/7 phone support, where you can ring them up any time day or night with a problem. But imagine this scenario:

You created a database on your site for storing all your customers’ details. One day, the data gets corrupted, and everybody accessing your site sees an error message. Trust me, it happens! You need an administrator to tweak the database at their end. You must get this sorted out immediately but the hosting company gave you only an email address, so you send an email. Then you could wait two days for a reply. Many companies would actually email you back within the hour. However, a company with 24/7 phone support allows you to talk directly to a real person. He or she could then keep you informed of the situation as it progresses.

Always look at the hosting company’s “uptime guarantee”. Many guarantee 99% uptime for their servers, which sounds quite high at first, but it does mean that your site could go down for 1% of the time: over 7 hours out of each month! If you can, choose a host guaranteeing 99.7% uptime.

When you decide upon a hosting company, always look at what other people say about them. Go to Google.com and type the web hosting company name, and “reviews” or “testimonials”. This will give you a very rich list of sites where you can read other peoples’ reviews, testimonials, reports, etc. so you can form an educated opinion. A word of warning, you will always find someone who says something negative about even the best web hosting companies.

So finally, before settling for a specific hosting plan and entrusting your precious online business to them, ask yourself these simple questions:

* Do they provide 24/7 phone support, not just email support?

* Does their bandwidth allow the number of visitors that you expect?

* Does the hosting plan enable your site to avoid going slow? What do the reviews say? What do the testimonials say?

* What uptime do they guarantee? Would your business survive your site going down for the remaining percentage each month?

* And can you find plenty of good reviews, and testimonials of many happy customers, and no too many complaints?

If you can answer yes to all these questions, then go for it! I wish you every success with your online business.

About the Author

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Everybody says different things about web hosting, but HostCream.com regularly searches the internet for peoples’ views on the best affordable web hosting package.

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Business Hosting

For many small businesses, having a website is essential to growth. With the widespread use of the internet, business hosting for a website is a normal business expense. Websites can draw in new clientele, and a good company offering business hosting for your website can bring a lot of traffic and business for your company.

Business hosting for a website allows your site to have a place to live and grow. Your computer connects to the internet and is provided with an address, commonly referred to as an IP address. This IP address is how people find your computer to communicate with you. A business hosting company for your website allows you to take advantage of a DNS, or domain name system, instead of an IP address. This way other people can find your computer via a URL, or uniform resource locator. A URL is basically what most of us refer to as a web address.

A business hosting company allows you to put your website on a server that makes it available on a permanent basis, as that server will always be connected the internet. Keeping that server running all of the time is a lot of work, and business hosting companies are the ones responsible for the daunting task. By paying a small fee to a business hosting company, they will make sure your website can be seen by the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Some business hosting companies do it all from designing your website to maintaining it. However, in many cases, you will be responsible for uploading your website onto the server from your computer. However, a business hosting company will provide you with some essential for maintaining the operation of your website. Many business hosting companies will offer you a domain name and an e-mail program to give your company that professional edge.

If you are going to be using a business hosting company for your website that does not do the design and maintenance, you may want to consider hiring a web designer before you pick a business hosting company. By designing your website first, you will know more about what you will need from your business hosting plan, like how much storage space you will need and what operating system will be required.

Business hosting for your website is fairly inexpensive, and there are a multitude of business hosting companies available to get your website on the internet. Yet, you should make sure that you look closely at each business hosting company to make sure they have the features you will need. For instance, if you want chat rooms, bulletin boards, or a shopping cart, you need to make sure that the business hosting company for your website offers you that capability.

Read the rest of the article here: Business Hosting .

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Charles Fuchs is an established Six Figure Income earner and one of the top online marketer’s. He specializes in showing people the fastest way to Starting a business .

About the Author

Charles Fuchs is an established Six Figure Income earner and one of the top online marketer’s. He specializes in showing people the fastest way to Starting a business.

Web Hosting and Your Business

Web Hosting and Your Business

How do you choose a web host for you business?

*? Search online?

*? Word of mouth?

*? Online advert?

*? Printed advert?

Businesses are forever being told to invest in a website, a well designed site will generate business through sales leads both online and offline. Having your website provide you with constant web traffic is between you and your SEO company. Having your website visible online all of the time is between you and your web hosting company.

Providing your web site with a stable hosting platform to operate on is a key component of any business strategy. Without a suitable web hosting provider your business will suffer as potential traffic is denied to you through down time. Reputation is everything in business and your presence online will be spoiled by inaccessibility errors.

Finding a good web host is important. Online searches only provide you with a fraction of the potential hosting suppliers available. Let’s outline 3 key components of a hosting company, get your pencil and paper ready.

Reliability

Your biggest concern is reliability, so choosing a company that provides a reliable web hosting service is very important. You want all of those potential customers to get to your web site. So look for a web host that provides a high percentage of up time.

Support

Web hosting support is another important factor for your business. You need to know that any problem experienced by you or your hosting company is going to get fixed quickly. So 24/7 support by phone and email is vital. Any web host that does not meet these criteria ignore.

Web Hosting Package (domain name, hosting space, bandwidth, email accounts etc.)

Web hosting packages are starting to look very similar these days, which means that you need to pay more attention to the smaller details. Since you are looking for a web host you should make a few notes. Write a list of what you want to include in your website;

*? Articles

*? Images

*? Music

*? Shopping cart etc.

Think about what you want your site to be able to do. Once you have put together a list of your needs its time to go shopping. For your convenience if you wish to compare several web hosting providers then click here. This page includes a list of different web hosting providers covering those on a budget to companies looking for dedicated managed hosting. Each of these hosts have also provided a special offer so why not check them out and save yourself some money.

About the Author

John Wright is an IT professional specialising in internet marketing and computer systems. For web hosting special offers click here…

Web Site Hosting For Your Business Free or Paid?

Its time to choose! Should you spend some money to get a web hosting solution for your business or get one for free?

Yes, the big moment has finally arrived. Your business is now on the verge of taking the next step forward. It will establish a web presence. This is an important step as from now on your business is able to reach more customers, is able to get more exposure, and hopefully enjoy online recognition.

Space, bandwidth and domain name all come with a cost, but there is a possibility to get them all for free. Resource management principles will probably tell you to choose the free solution.

Nowadays the cost for web hosting services has a very reasonable reason partially because of the technological progress, partially because of the stiff competition on the web hosting market.

Still why pay for it when you can get it for free?

Free web hosting

Dozens, even hundreds of free web hosting providers offer their services on the Internet. Could there be one that meets the needs for your business? Hardly, if any.

Please let me state clearly that this article is not intended to attack or discredit hosts or advertisers. Its only purpose is to assess and understand how can be best met the hosting needs of a business. Any business. And yes, in spite of everything stated here, even the author of this article has resorted at some point in time to the services of free web hosts!

You probably learned too, and at a very small age, that in life everything comes with a price. However, there it is allover the Internet: Free Web Hosting.

Nothing in this world is free. So how comes there even is free web hosting?

The definition of the term free according to The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary, states gives the following definition for the term free:

1. adj. not subject to external restraints or domination; not captive, at liberty; not having to be paid for; unhampered; open to all without restrictions; etc.
2. adv. without expense; without penalty
3. v.t. to release from constraint, set free

Therefore a literally free hosting service would mean no restraints, no expenses and no restrictions for the user. Webmasters would design with only limited by their imagination and skills. All the space and the bandwidth you would possibly ask for at no cost whatsoever. Real-life scenario? Could anyone really think so?

Indeed nothing in this world comes without price. Even it is not apparent. And the price you must pay for free web hosting comes in many forms, as free web hosting providers must pay too for bandwidth, not to mention other costs.

While some free web hosts require you to have one on their banners on your web site, others place pop up adds, or flashing advertising messages. So its free for you as long as you fulfill their set of requirements and meet their conditions. In addition to this, you should consider that host’s service is free with lets say 25 Megs of space; more space means different conditions and you could have to pay for it.

Paid web hosting

If you are billed, it means you own something. There is now a contractual bind between you and your web-hosting provider, which in turn must offer you his services. Ownership gives you more control of your online presence. Important as ownership is, it is neither the only nor the biggest advantage of paying for your hosting solution.

The identity of your business would be clear from your URL down to your web content without banners confusing your customers. Imagine that you deal with What I would say, is ask yourself if you would deal with someone offering a similar service/ product as you are promoting, who was obviously using a free site. If you would, then fine, but if not, don’t expect anyone else to deal with you!

You will have usually sufficient e-mail addresses to accommodate the needs of your business. How serious would you take someone who hands you a business card with e-mail like john.doe@afreewebhostingprovider.com. And more important: would you do business with him?

Its almost a standard for paid web hosting providers to offer features like PHP and MySQL, features that allow your site to grow along with your business needs. With such features you can easily have an online store, offer your customers the possibility to track their orders etc.

Often the web hosting provider offers guarantees for the uptime of the server, and this avoids unnecessary frustration for your customers. To complement this, support services of higher quality allow your business to overcome possible technical problems easier and faster.

Lets review the main points of each option.

Free web hosting:

(+) It’s free. No money for space, bandwidth and domain name

(-) Your URL will contain the mark of the free web-hosting provider and thus would not reflect the identity of your business. Changing providers might result in loosing some or all the traffic to your online business

(-) Required advertising items such as banners, frames etc have a detrimental effect on your content in terms of accessibility and look, making it very unprofessional

(-) If you plan to use banner exchange on your site read carefully their Terms and conditions. Some free hosts doesn’t allow it

(-) You will probably have lower bandwidth then a paid host provides and space could also be restricted

(-) Features like PHP and MySQL are rather rare for a free web-hosting provider. Some dont offer FTP access to your website

(-) Its common that free hosting providers change their Terms and conditions at some point in time. Consider that no adds today could mean a banner or a popup tomorrow. Such changes could mean that the free hosting service is canceled and only paid web hosting services are offered. At this moment either you pay, either you loose your web site

Paid web hosting:

(-) You will have to pay for it. Usually you have to pay for hosting (space and bandwidth) and for the domain name

(+) You can host your own domain. With your unique domain name changing web hosting providers dont cause loosing your traffic

(+) Support is offered by most paid web hosting providers. This usually means 24/7 support via email or live chat and, in some cases, toll-free phone support is available

(+) The uptime of the server(s) hosting your web site is better then on free host and more and more frequently the web hosting provider offers uptime guarantee

(+) The amount of enough disk space and bandwidth available is very likely to cover the needs of your business

(+) Features like PHP and MySQL are almost standard for a paid hosting plan. Also you will have FTP access to your website.

It could be tempting to embrace the idea that a free web hosting is good point to start from, but it’s not something you would want to consider if you are looking to establish your business as a serious web presence.

In the end it all comes down to this one question: How big ambitions do you have with your website?

If you look to make some savings while getting your business online, save time instead and register a domain name. The small amount of money saved on web hosting might cost your business customers, and a loss of image. The cost of a paid web hosting solution is small compared with freedom it gives to your online presence. Yes, freedom of your image, of the way you treat your online presence.

If your online business is important to you, better make that if you care for it at all, when coming to the decision of opting over free or paid web hosing choose

Keep in mind that the success of your online presence will play a significant role in the future growth of your business.

About The Author

Calin Indre is editor at HostPinPin ( www.hostpinpin.com ), a Cheap Web Hosting Directory. HostPinPin.com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company. Providing web hosting articles, tips, web hosting reviews, compare web hosting plans and more.

This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the About and weblinks are kept intact.

Business Web Hosting

Business web hosting can be purchased or gotten for little to no cost. Yet, getting the right type of hosting for your business is very important. If you start out on a website that has limited size, limited access or is not reliable, then you will have problems once your business begins to grow and expand. The hosting solution that you do go with will also reflect in the quality of your website as well. Since your business’s storefront is vitally important to the success that it has, you will want to insure that your web hosting solution is the right one for your needs.

Consider this. Your online business is just like a standard store in your local area. If you have the option in choosing from two different locations, you’ll want to consider several things. For example, if the outside of the building is dirty or worn down, the customer’s first view of the business is tarnished. It does not matter what is on the inside then. Likewise, you may be able to choose a larger location that will get you more traffic for a slightly larger price. This too should be something to consider in the ebusiness world.

If your store is always closed when visitors come to it, they will turn and look for the next business to use. The same goes for online businesses. If you go with web hosting that is less than high quality, the customer will see a broken webpage or a server that is done, close the page and look for some other business to go to.

Web hosting defines many of the websites that are out there. Many individual like to start out with free web hosting. This type of hosting is generally full of advertisements and limitations through. Utilizing an ecommerce specific web hosting solution is a better choice as it will provide many of the features that are needed in this type of situation. For example, there are added features including shopping carts, merchant accounts and product listing services.

Selecting the best type of business web hosting for your website is ideal to creating and running a successful web business. There are numerous hosting services that can provide for your business. Simply look at what they have to offer and compare them to others. Determine which ones offer the best product for your needs and run with it!

View more articles fromarealhost.com

About the Author

Zach, the webmaster ofarealhost.com , is a part of the Sharing Information Group that provides useful information to the public through the syndication of free articles.

Web Hosting - Cheaper and Easier for Small Businesses

Most small businesses these days try to use the Internet to compete more effectively. The trick, however, is to accomplish that goal without spending too much of your precious money and time.

That’s becoming increasingly possible, according to some experts. You still must hire somebody to create and update your website. However, prices for ho s ting your website are falling rapidly, which will enable small businesses to create sites that are more sophisticated. Hosting services provide the computers, or servers, on which your Web site is located.

Most small businesses typically use so-called shared servers in which your website shares a server with the sites of other companies, according to Steve Dauber, vice president of marketing for Ensim. Shared servers typically cost between $10 and $50 a month, he noted.

A better solution is to have your own, dedicated server, but that previously was too expensive for many small companies - typically about $200 a month, according to Dauber. His company develops software to help manage both shared and dedicated servers.

“Now that price is coming down to as little as $100 a month,” Dauber said. “And I’ll bet it ‘ ll get even lower.”

Dedicated servers have many advantages, Dauber said. But, he cautioned, they also create new challenges.

Opportunities and Challenges

Dauber noted that dedicated servers are faster and more secure than shared servers.

“If you are sharing a server and another company’s site gets a lot of traffic, your site will slow down,” Dauber said. “And shared servers aren’t always secure.”

Those are among the reasons that Aaron Byrne, a Web designer for Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay, Wis., said his small organization recently switched from a shared to a dedicated server.

Besides the advantages cited by Dauber, Byrne said his hosting service provider is better able to support dedicated servers.

“When issues arise, we get great response time (from the service provider),” Byrne said. “If the Web site goes down for some reason, they’re on it in minutes.”

Perhaps more important, though, Byrne said he can create more sophisticated Web applications and data because of the increased speed and storage capacity of the dedicated server, according to Byrne.

However, one challenge is that dedicated servers are more complex to manage. Byrne, for example, develops websites and, like many developers, is not trained to manage Web servers. Nor is he familiar with Linux, the operating system used by the dedicated server, or Apache, the software that administers the Web site. Large enterprises typically hire personnel for those tasks, a luxury few small businesses have.

As a result, Byrne said he uses Webppliance Basic from Dauber’s company, Ensim, to manage the Web sites hosted on a dedicated server. The product isn ‘ t sold to users like Byrne but many hosting services make it, and products like it, available as a service to users.

“The program (Webppliance Basic) means you don’t have to hire an IT (information technology) person or a consultant,” Byrne said.

“It’s simple enough that you can administer services on the server and do things like restart the server. That’s a two-minute chore that, if you don’t have something like (Webppliance), you have to call somebody in. Now, it’s just a couple of quick clicks.”

Other capabilities of the program include being able to grant permission for those who can upload parts of Web pages, control the size of logs that list server activity and set other server parameters. It operates via a Web browser so anybody with Web access and access rights can use it.

“If I had to learn (Linux), I’d have to go to school for weeks,” he said.

Byrne and Dauber agreed that using a product like Webppliance isn’t for technical neophytes. However, it is usable by those who are interested in technology, even if they have non-technical jobs in a company, they agreed.

Better E-Mail

Dauber predicted that lower prices would lead many, if not most, small businesses to dedicated servers for their websites. However, the rise of dedicated servers has one additional benefit, he noted. They make it easier for small businesses to afford and manage enterprise-level e-mail products like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes.

Products such as these, which are staples in large enterprises, support group e-mail, calendaring and other functions. In larger enterprises, these applications typically are found on servers located within the company and are managed by internal IT personnel.

However, the lowering price of dedicated servers combined with products like Webppliance Basic, which can manage these products, means that smaller companies will be able to afford such applications. That’s particularly true with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, which Dauber said has more tools than previous versions for operating from dedicated hosted servers.

“Most small companies have their e-mail services hosted (by an Internet Service Provider), but there comes at time when you need something like Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes,” Dauber said. “It’s different for every company, but the sweet spot for that is when companies get to about 50 employees.”

Byrne said he isn’t involved in his institution’s e-mail, but a dedicated server has enabled him to create more sophisticated Web sites. That’s possible both because of lower costs for dedicated server and products like Webppliance Basic.

“This takes all the features you need as an administrator and makes them very easy,” he said.

About the Author

None

Cheap Business Web Hosting - 4 Things For You To Consider To Save Time And Trouble

Having no doubt spent a considerable amount of time planning, preparing and setting up your business, you will want to make sure that as many people as possible get to know that you are now ‘Open for Business’. As the owner of a traditional bricks and mortar business, the best way to offer your products and/or services to the masses is online via the Internet. In order to do that you are going to need to source reliable, cheap business web hosting provider, somewhere where you can upload and store your website’s files so that they can be accessed worldwide.

One thing you want to bear in mind right from the start. Why choose a cheap business web hosting provider when you can get free web hosting? Well, because the free web hosting providers do not charge for their limited services, they have to rely on advertisers paying their costs. This means that any websites you host with them will have annoying banner ads and pop up ads displayed whenever someone visits your site. This could prove to be a great disadvantage as these types of ads have proven to discourage website visitors, producing the complete opposite effect that your business clearly requires.

When looking for cheap business web hosting, here are a few things that you need to consider:

* Prices. Cheap business web hosting services should range from about $10 - $50 per month, depending on the features that you are going to need.

* Guarantees. Whatever the cost, check that refund policies and/or any ‘money back, no questions asked’ guarantees are offered by the cheap business web hosting companies that you are researching.

* Customer care support. Another important point to consider in choosing a cheap business web hosting is the reliability and professionalism of its’ support services. Don’t be afraid to send them questions to test them out. How long did they take to respond to your question? Did they appear to know the answer to your particular or did they use a canned response?

* Reliability. Having made a list of cheap business web hosting companies, research them. Check out their website. How long have they been in operation? What services do they offer?

You have spent a lot of money and time setting up your business so why would you sacrifice this work with an unreliable cheap business web hosting company, it’s important that you spend as much time as possible thoroughly researching your short list.

For more information oncheap business web hosting try visitinghttp://www.thewebhostinginfosite.com , a website that specializes in providing advice, tips and resources on web hosting andcheap web hosting providers that you can use to help you get your website online as easily as possible.

7 Must Have Scripts to Look for When Shopping for E-commerce Hosting

When shopping for e-commerce hosting there are a lot of things you need to keep and mind. When you know what to look for it is a lot easier to ensure you get exactly what you need and not leave any important information out. Consider these 7 must haves before you start shopping for e-commerce hosting so you will be prepared.

1. Storefront

Regardless of what software you are using, one of your main concerns should be the storefront. You want to be able to customize your storefront to your specifications, at least within reason, and certainly you want it to appear professional and well put together. This should be a main consideration when shopping for e-commerce hosting.

2. Support

Regardless of the hosting you are using you will want support, 24/7 if at all possible, and support that is real, live, and will help you with your problems. In addition to this, you should look for some self help support as well in the form of a FAQ area and support providing advice for when you find yourself in certain situations. Good hosts will provide you with a great deal of information so you can help yourself.

3. Building

With your e-commerce host you want to be able to build your site easily and to your specifications. So, you certainly want to use software that is easy to understand and implement. In addition, it is helpful if wizards are available to help you throughout the building process as well.

4. Integrated

You want to make sure the host is integrated and works well with all of the other systems that you need for your site to be successful. If it is not integrated you should strongly consider other options.

5. Tools and Functions

This is important because you want as many functions available from multiple currencies to a log of purchases, so your e-commerce host will need to be able to provide you with the space and tools you need to keep up with all of this information.

6. Software

When it comes to e-commerce software you can either buy from a physical store, buy online from your host, or create your own. The best option is to find a host that offers software that is of high quality and will help you with e-commerce.

7. Ease of Navigation

Your e-commerce software as well as your host should allow you and customers to navigate easily through all of the pages and all of the links without getting confused or backtracking.

Shopping for e-commerce hosting requires you know what you are looking for as well as what you need. As long as you choose an experienced host who has verified experience, you’ll have a much better chance at making a wise decision.

About The Author

Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now athttp://www.powertraffictactics.com/

info@powertraffictactics.com

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