Small Business Web Site Hosting

Your most critical decision

Probably the most important member of your small business Internet team is your website hosting company (not to be confused with your "Domain" hosting company).

When your server goes down, your business stops! Hang that "Closed" sign on the door and go on home; you're not doing any business.

Of all the horror stories we hear, bad hosting companies top the list.

The Myth of Up Time

One of the things we cover in our live workshop is what we call "The Myth of Up Time". When you read in the web site hosting literature "our servers are guaranteed to be up 99.5% of the time". Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

Well 99.5% up time means 45 hours of down time.

The other part of the guarantee is, "we'll refund your money for the days your server is down". Let's see, if you pay $12.95 a month then you can ask for a $0.43 refund for every day over the 45 hours. Not really worth the effort, is it?

All the more reason to have a web site hosting company you can trust.

Where can you find a good small business web site hosting company?

My favorite site for doing research on web site hosting companies is http://www.findmyhosting.com/. They are free, unbiased and a very comprehensive web site hosting resource.

You see how the hosting company is performing and read reviews and comment from their small business clients.

If you want to save yourself some time I strongly recommend worldics. They are the best!

Here is a direct link to the ratings from findmyhosting.com (watch out! a pop-up). This link will take you to the details for their Unix hosting plan.

Their web site hosting plans are very reasonable, starting at $6.95. The support is absolutely excellent; Harold is the best. And the product offering is everything you need.

If you decide to sign up with their small business web site hosting service, let me know and I'll send you an invitation to two of our TeleClasses on how to use your Control Panel, absolutely FREE.

Your Control Panel is one your most powerful online tools. Most people don't have a clue how to get started or how to harness this tremendous set of tools.

Each of the TeleClasses cost $39 so both classes would cost you $78. Its like getting six months of free hosting.

Worldics also offers a 30-day money back guarantee, so you don't have anything to loose.

Here's what to look for in a website hosting company:

Unix, Linux Server - This is by far the most supported small business web site hosting server environment available. There are a lot of things you can add to and do on these servers.

Disk Space - This is like the disk space on your computer.

You should have at least 50 MB. If you're planning to use a lot of server intensive software (chat, forums, streaming audio, video) or a lot of images you should consider a minimum of 200 MB.

[Note: a byte is a measure of size in the world of computers. KB is a thousand bytes, MB is a million and GB would be a Billion bytes]

Always buy more than you think you need. Once you reach your limit, which includes your e-mail's, you site may stop working.

Bandwidth - When someone looks at your website, they are using your bandwidth.

For example, if you have a page with 5 images that are 30 KB each and 100 people look at that page, the bandwidth used is 150 KB or 15 MB (it can go fast).

This is another reason to build "light" web pages (low to medium graphics).

At the very least you should have 1GB of bandwidth. 3GB - 6GB if you are going to offer images, downloadable audio or pdf files.

Here again, buy more than you think you need. If you're marketing program is successful and you're getting a lot of visits, you can use up your bandwidth very quickly.

Once you reach your limit, no one will be able to see your pages until you buy more. They get a very nasty error message.

FTP Access - FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It's how you transfer your web pages from your computer to your server.

[We have a great getting started TeleClass that will give you free FTP software, quick training and a whole lot more.]

Telnet Access - This is another way to access your website. It's for more advanced users (which you will become, believe it or not). This is optional but will let you add some great programs to your site.

Email Accounts - You should be able to add at least 10 pop email accounts.

In the Free Stuff section you'll find some ideas on how you can use these accounts to prevent Spam. Having "disposable" email accounts is your front line of defense.

Static IP Address - If you're planning on using e-commerce (shopping carts, private and secure directories, etc.) you need a static IP address for your small business web site hosting (these are the numbers that are attached to your domain name, don't worry, everyone has them).

Here's why

On most servers that market their small business web site hosting packages, you share the IP address with every other business on that server (and their can be hundreds).

If just one small business on your server is accused of spamming the whole IP address can get banned. Your email will not get delivered.

This can also happen with search engines. One business can get caught spamming the search engines and the whole server (IP address) gets banned.

Unless you're monitoring your website daily, you won't have any idea that you've been dropped and people aren't finding you.

Having your own IP address might cost you a couple of bucks but it can be worth the expense.

Some small business web site hosting companies don't even give you the option for a static address so I would avoid using them.

Control Panel - I can't tell you how important it is to have your own control panel. If you are serious about your online business you need this collection of tools. You need to be able to:

Set up your own email accounts
Forward e-mail's to a different account
Quickly add software, and
Set up an auto responder

[Just what is an auto responder? In the Internet age, we are all very impatient. We all demand, and appreciate, a quick reply.

Let's say a new business prospect sends and email to you at sales@your company.com. With an auto responder you can send them an instant reply that says, "Hi, thanks for stopping by …".

View your server logs.

Another important tool for anyone doing business on the Internet is your server log.

Your logs record all the activity on your website.

Unless you can see who is coming to your site; what pages they are looking at; what pages they are leaving from; what keyword they searched on to find your site, what search engines are visiting; what browser your business visitors using; you might as well hang it up.

There is no way you can have a successful small business web site without your server logs

You need this information to refine your web site, to design a marketing campaign, target keyword, and measure your success.

The log file I like the best is AwStats. It's very graphic, easy to read and gives you a clear picture of who is visiting your website. Lots of great features.

If your web site hosting company doesn't offer Awstats, you can download it from their website and add it to your site yourself.

Your control panel is so important; we have a complete series of TeleClasses to help you get the most out of your panel and your web site statistics.

So as you can see your small business web site hosting company is a very important member of your team.

Our team is dedicated to your success. Read some of our Internet success stories and see how we have helped other professionals meet and exceed their expectations.

If your ready to explore the options, please feel free to drop me a line or give me a call (800) 606-1255. My name is Dan Smith and I look forward to helping you build a great website.