Web Hosting – Expensive Does Not Equal Quality
Web hosting is paying a company to store all of your website files on a server, making sure that your website is live on the internet continuously.
Hosting prices vary widely, and there are a multitude of companies offering these services.
Your website is an important asset of your business. Be sure when you purchase website services that you have account login access to your hosting account, and the ability to change hosting services if you are not happy with the service provided.
Many website services keep your website on their private servers, and so if you are not happy with the service provided, you can not change service providers. They operate like the telephone company did 30 years ago – not allowing you choices, or control over the product you purchased (your website).
Also important – make sure that your website dotcom name (domain name) is registered in your name, and that you have all the information about the company holding the registration on that domain, along with the annual renewal dates. If you don’t have that information, and you neglect to be notified about the annual renewal for your domain name, you can lose your domain name. We’ve seen this happen a few times with clients who were not well informed, or protected by their website service company.
When you purchase a website with our company, you will receive:
1 – one free domain registration for the first year
2 – free internet hosting for one year
3 – your domain name registered in your company name/ownership
4 – recommendations on how to choose a domain name for your business
5 – account access and login to manage your website hosting and domain name
6 – full ownership of your hosting and domain name, with Catch8.com
7 – 24/7 telephone support for your hosting, email, domain
8 – fast, reliable website hosting with 99% network uptime
A small business hosting a website should not have to spend more than $10 per month for hosting services.
We have seen small companies paying hundreds of dollars annually to hosting companies, literally throwing money away for unnecessary services. Some hosting companies justify these charges by saying, for example, that they are charging extra for submitting your site to the search engines. This is an unnecessary expense. Your site should not require continually submission to search engines.
Another justification hosting providers give for high fees is that they are providing a secure hosting service. While secure or privately hosted serverhosting may be necessary if you request payments, or confidential information via online quote forms, you can simply purchase an “SSL” certificate for your site for under $50 annually.
Most small business websites do NOT require these additional secure hosting services, as they will not be collecting confidential information or online payments from their clients.
The hosting company we work with, Catch8.com, provides a hosting package, complete with traffic statistics reports and email for $8.00 per month. Unless you need the secure hosting, or extras such as e-commerce, you should require no more than this standard hosting.
