Having a website today is a must for every business. It doesn’t matter if you are just a sole entrepreneur, dreaming of owning a business empire to rule, or you are a team of eager geeks trying to create the next big tech-bang – you need a website. Period. You can’t have only a Facebook page, a blog or some other non-standalone ways of existing. To do business you have to be found outside of social media, and the best way to do it is still owning a website. One for the company, where you can share your plans, sell items… and to which you can attach all the social media, and blogs you, or your team could have.

To own a website, you have to set up an account at a website hosting company – if you are not a huge tech company, you shouldn’t waste time and resources on building your own servers. Website hosting is much more affordable, and you don’t have to worry about the tech part, and you can save money since you don’t have to hire someone to maintain your server. From this article, you can find out how you could find the best website hosting provider for your business.

The Basics

Basically, website hosting is something that everyone knows nowadays. It’s a service, which makes it possible to have a website without the headache of buying servers, maintaining them, and to have expensive internet bandwidth to make your site work fast… which it would do on your office internet! The online web hosting providers are numerous. There are dozens of them, and you have to pay attention to which one you choose, this way avoiding having troubles later or losing money in the long run. The hosting services usually include a server, or a portion of a server, where you can store your site’s content, and a lot of additional features and services, some of which you wouldn’t even think about.

The different website hosting service providers offer different prices, features, and service, so it would be a great idea to spend some time checking them – or to take a look at our reviews! As a business owner, you probably know a thing or two about the market you are operating in. It’s utterly important because you are going to choose a web hosting service in accordance with your needs and predictions regarding traffic, storage, and security.

Prices and Services

Basically, if you look up articles about web hosting for small businesses, you are going to find that most writers “recommend” VPS and dedicated hosting. Now, we believe a small business won’t be able to afford real VPS service, nor dedicated, as they are the most expensive types. VPS means that your website will have its own “virtual” server, with set parameters – it doesn’t share the resources with anyone. The dedicated is a hosting service which grants you an actual factual server “box” in the data center, which has its own storage, operating system and everything a server has. However, these two are quite costly.

Basically, the dedicated server is the omega of the website hosting, and though it’s worth the price, a SMALL business won’t be able to afford it: starting at $90-120 the dedicated option sets your company back a bit, especially if you have to cough up a year’s worth of hosting fee. The VPS is a bit better solution if your business isn’t too small, and you already know that the income will come: VPS hosting starts from usually $60, and they are usually maxed at $120 – practically where dedicated would worth it more. So, VPS is the start if you are serious about it!

However.

There is always something else! Nowadays, shared hosting is pretty great too, and the cloud servers are also top choices if you are looking for some affordable solutions. Well, shared website hosting isn’t actually recommended if you are a business owner – except if you go for one of the high-level services. Shared hosting would be only a good choice if you choose one that allows unlimited sites – and if you plan to run many sites. If you are looking for a service to host your web-shop, for example, the shared hosting wouldn’t be an option. Even though the average $9-15 starting prices are quite tempting.

Some of the best web hosts (like SiteGround, for example), have cloud VPS services. This means, that you have all the benefits of VPS website hosting, but your server is proportioned via the cloud, and it takes advantage of the cloud-based content delivery. We recommend cloud VPS services for small, and even medium business, because these offer the best speed, and these are highly scalable.

Features a Small Business Needs When it Comes to Website Hosting

There are many things you have to take into consideration before you sign up at a website hosting company and before you decide to buy anything. The most important ones are: software options, security, and support.

Without the proper web-store or content management system, you won’t be able to run you site properly. However, most of the top website hosting companies support the popular, and up-to-date software. For bloggers, businessmen, and for those who offer offline services, the WordPress, Joomla and the Drupal system might be the best choices. Or, they could take advantage of the different website builders with thousands of templates. For web shops, the WooCommerce and the Magento are the most popular, and there are hardly any hosting companies which don’t support it. But, you should pay attention: some website hosting companies don’t allow you to run web-shop on shared plans, and sometimes not even on VPS! Check the details every time you are interested in a plan.

Depending on whether you are going to accept payments on your site or not, you have to check if the plan you are considering offers SSL or not. If not, then check how much would it cost. Believe us: you have to have SSL on your site if you accept payments. That enhances trust, and also keeps the transactions safe. As of other fields of security, we strongly advise you to opt-in (or find a plan that contains it for free) for anti-spam and hacking monitoring services. This can help you prevent hackers to access your databases or to infect your system with viruses via spam.

However, when such issues arise, you should seek out the support. And this is one of the most important factors you have to consider before choosing: you need instant access to support at any time, otherwise you might lose time, and if you lose time, you lose money. It’s that simple: information might be power, but time is still money. So, prompt live help is what you have to check. In our reviews, you can find the info about this, and there are some hosting providers who have real top-notch customer service.

Uptime is also important, and though most website hosting providers have 99.90% or higher overall uptime, there are some (e.g. Bluehost) which excel in this field. What you should check is what rating the chosen provider has in terms of Better Business Bureau ratings. A+ is the best, and F is the worst. Well, F is hard to find as such companies go down the drain fast.

Bottom Line

In case your company needs a website… well, it needs one, there is no “if” … you have to consider checking VPS or cloud VPS services. These are the best ones, which are still in the affordable range for small companies. Actual VPS is better as it doesn’t rely on the cloud, but you might have to sacrifice some speed for that. But, choose in accordance to your needs, and if you have questions, open the live chat window or call the hosting company on phone.