Hosting is often an afterthought. You put great effort into getting a website designed and built. Then you find the cheapest hosting service around, because, after all, what difference does it make?
In over twenty years working with websites, I’ve seen quite some horror stories. One hosting company went out of business with no warning, leaving the client with not only no website but no backup copy to restore somewhere else.
Yikes.
That’s pretty extreme. More common: your website goes down frequently. What kind of impression does that make on potential customers? They try to visit your website – and it’s not there! Chances are that prospect is gone too.
Your website can also be slow loading. These days people expect a fast response or they leave – fast.
Both of these can also negatively affect your search rankings, making you less visible online,
What if your website is poorly protected and it gets hacked? How do your customers feel when their computers get infected by your website and start displaying porn or expose their personal financial information? It’s all too real. There are lots of criminals out there.
In my experience, most small businesses aren’t aware that there ARE differences between one hosting service and another. This is fed by the hosting companies themselves which limit their advertising to simple sound bites about speed or uptime or the amount of disk space provided.
Of course IT professionals may know the difference. But here’s the thing. Hosting is not a one-size fits all proposition. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ideal for a small business with adequate IT support. It is not a “do-it-yourself service. Too complex.
Depending on the website’s purpose, an inexpensive GoDaddy hosting plan may be perfectly adequate. But for many it is not.
Maybe the most visible aspect of a hosting service is the quality of their maintenance and technical support. The first place a hosting company saves money is on people. Competent live support is expensive.
But if your website is an important part of your business, it just makes good sense to invest in a high quality hosting service. It may be considerably more expensive. In the long run it just might be your best bargain.
