What is Smart Web Hosting and What should Small Businesses look for?

Let’s talk about what web hosting is and what you need to look for based on your needs.

Can’t I just host my own website?

Let’s get this out of the way at the beginning, so those in the position to do so can skip the rest of the article.

Yes. You absolutely can host your own website. There are millions of sites out there that are self hosted.

With the correct expertise and people, you can do whatever you need really.

Hosting and running a website in commercial environments however, usually involves the combination of departments.

Software, Infrastructure and procurement. Once you have your hardware setup, you then need to get the website running, the correct runtimes installed, the correct ports open and implement all of the correct security measures.

It’s a hassle.

Having worked in the Software Engineering game for a long time, I’ve done this. It works well when you have the funding and time.

For most small businesses however, there is absolutely no need to host your own site. There is just no benefit.

I’ll repeat that. There. Is. No. Benefit.

I have to emphasise that as there’ll be techy die-hard out there that will disagree.

Definition of smart web hosting and its importance for small businesses

Let’s start with the basics. What is web hosting?

A web hosting service is just a platform that gives individuals and businesses the ability to get their websites on the internet. Nothing more than that.

Small businesses need web hosting to establish to be seen and reach a wider audience.

Choosing a web hosting company will be dependant on your needs (defined and suggested below).

Whare are the benefits for a small business of using a web hosting provider?

If your company sells shoes, you shouldn’t need to waste your brain cycles on IP addresses, two factor authentication or IIS servers.

You should focus on what you know best. Shoes.

Web hosting companies exist to create a platform on which businesses can run their websites. That is their business.

What do you get from a hosting prodiver:

• Hardware capable of making your site as quick as can be
• Great failsafes and back ups ensuring your site is always up and backed up.
• Security experts keeping your site and your users data safe
• Scalability. Grow your website with your business
• Tech support

The ultimate web hosting is the hosting that suits your needs, so lets dig in.

What are the Top Web Hosting Providers for Small Businesses?

This isn’t going to be a “Top 100 list” like many blogs out there. There’s always another hosting option. I’ll give you the ones from my personal experience that have worked for me over the years.

It just so happens that these platforms are also the biggest in their niche. They are the biggest for a reason.

We’ll get the recommendations over with now, and then go through some of the details later.

Best web hosting for bloggers:

WordPress

WordPress is the daddy. It’s been around a very long time and has not only stood the test of time, but aced the test and got top marks.

WordPress is the best platform for blog hosting. From a tiny one person readership, to a million unique visitors a day. WordPress will take it in its stride.

You can use the pre-built wordpress themes to solve your inability to design something more than square boxes and black and white colouring (I may be projecting there).

WordPress hosted sites account for 43.4% of all websites on the internet. I’ll repeat that. 43.4% of all websites are using WordPress!

You may want to be seated for this next fact.

I’ll wait.

Ok, you’re sat down. Good.

43.4% of all websites on the internet are hosted on WordPress.

I find that mind boggling.

As you may imagine from that statistic, all of the problems to have been had, have been had. You’ll find answers of how to make your background shade of white one shade whiter. There’ll be answers for it all.

If the statics about how much of the internet is made up fof WordPress sites didn’t shock you, this might.

There are 59,600 plugins for WordPress. Nearly 60k.

Making that background shade of white one shade whiter, there’s probably a plugin that does it.

Plugins include:

• Image Compression
• On Page SEO
• Performance Analyser
• Sitemap Generation
• Many many many more

WordPress has many hosting plans. Entering at the lower end, WordPress offers a package for $5 a month.

If you look at the top end, you’ll be paying $63 per month (before you reach the managed hosting services).

You can easily update with WordPress too. I’ve done it with this blog. Twice.

The upgrade process is quick and easy and you can start off cheap and pay more for more services when needed.

You can turn your blog or site in to a money earner through plugins like WooCommerce. It’s quick and easy to set up and as long as you get traffic, you’ll earn money.

WordPress is fast, populate, safe, scalable and reliable.

Best web hosting for small to medium e-commerce sites

Shopify

As the name implies, Shopify is designed to sell. Of all of the hosting solutions, Shopify is the best for e-commerce.

Shopify is to e-ccomerce what WordPress is to general web hosting. 16.36% of all market places online are hoste by Shopify.

Top level stats:

• 4.8 millions stores
• 700 million customers a year
• Total revenue across all stores of $444 billion

It’s hard to argue with numbers like that.

Shopify offer three forms of package. Basic, Shopify and Advanced Shopify

Basic is all you need if you are a small business and has all the tools you need for a website builder, free ssl certificate and 24/7 support.

Basic gives you great support, fast page load times and security features expected for online stores.

The Shopify plan gets you small team features and better reporting. This is best for companies who are growing.

Advanced Shopify plan gets you more in the post sales space.

The best two features of the Advanced plan are:

• Professional Reporting
• Journey Tracking

Best web hosting for small businesses to advertise services:

BlueHost

BlueHost has been around almost as long as the internet. I’d wager that the first website on the internet may have been hosted on BlueHost.

Setting yourself up with a provider that’s been around for a large number of years is advisable for any company of any size.

BlueHost is simple and affordable. That’s all you need for a website focused on advertising.

BlueHost has a host of plans available and great website builder.

Ranging from their Basic plan which offers a single website for $2.95/mo up to their Pro plan for $13.95/mo there’s a web hosting package for everyone.

The plans move up from cheapest to cheap. $2.95 to $13.95.

Even if you don’t need all of the features in the top tier, for $13.95 per month you could probably justify it.

Uptime, Speed and Security all come as standard with even the most basic plans.

Even on the most simple plan, you get everything you need including a free ssl certificate.

BlueHost offer a money back guarantee within 14 days if you decide you don’t like it.

There isn’t much more to say here. KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Best web hosting where virtual private servers and Managed Servers

BlueHost

BlueHost again.

BlueHost is a winner twice for good reason.

I’ve used their VPS and Managed services whilst working in start ups and they’ve all been smooth journeys (even if the Start Ups weren’t).

You will get a specialist to help you onboard and a dedicated client manager for the day to day.

Drupal Web Hosting UK

Drupal is another large CMS (Content Management System).

Drupal hosts some of the largest sites in the world, including government websites in the USA, UK and France, as well as the BBC, MTV UK and NBC.

One of the biggest players in the Drupal Hosting world is Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean has been around for a very long time. Like the others on this list, it’s a behemoth in it’s space.

Choosing the Right Web Hosting Service for Your Small Business

Features to Consider

From starting your own blog to providing complex financial services, you need the same basic set of standards.

Security

You need to find a provider that has a full suite of security features.

The humble web browser can tell people these days if a site is unsecure.

Your customers will not trust you unless you have SSL certificates.

Those same customers will run away if they find you don’t have firewalls or malware protection.

You may be the Usain Bolt of your space on the Web, but if people don’t trust you to store their full name, let alone their credit cards, you will not win.

Uptime

If your website or service is down, people will move to a competitor rather than wait for you to be back up. It’s as simple as that.

Downtime can kill your business. The moment a user can’t login the word will start to spread.

It’s bad enough if users can’t access your site because of errors that you caused, but if they can’t login because your webhost has made it mistake. Well that’ll make your blood boil.

Your site being down could not only cost you pysically through lost sales, but also it’ll cost your reputation.

Make sure the host gaurantees 99.9% uptime or walk away.

Load Time

I’d be surprised if I still have your attention, but in general attention is in short supply these days.

The faster you can transition a visitor from clicking on your site to actively participating, the more successful you’ll be.

Make your site load as quickly as possible. Once you have it loading as fast as you’re happy with, sit down and make it faster.

Look for buzzwords like:

• SSDs
• High Speed CDNs
• Fast Caching
• ddos protection (Distributed Denial of service protection)

Price

Not too cheap not too expensive.

You need the warm and fuzzy feeling that a long standing web hosting provider can give, but don’t lett them sell you the world.

Pay for peace of mind, don’t pay for what you don’t need.

Can you make it harder, better, faster, stronger?

You may be a small company now, but one day you’ll be big (keep that positive mental attitude going!).

How quickly and painlessly will the hosting provider let you move up to a new web hosting plan when you expect high traffic?

Don’t pay too big too big too soon, but ensure that when you want to hand over your hard earned cash to the hosting provider that they will take it quickly and painlessly.

Support

Website hosting and good service need to go hand in hand

The more affordable options typically offer support through email and public forums.

The response time for these methods can vary greatly, from no response at all on public forums to a 24-hour turnaround via email.

Depending on your technical proficiency, this may or may not be an issue.

However, if you or a team member lack expertise in this area, investing a little more in support is crucial.

The more highly used hosting providers will usually have great FAQs as they will have seen all of the problems before.

If somehow you do have a new problem, you want someone at the end of a phone that you can trust.

Specialized Web Hosting for Small Businesses

Managed Web Hosting

This is for the big boys.

This would be the best web hosting services for startup.

Start ups need a large company who can host their services that’s powered, managed and upgraded in someone else’s data centers.

If you have reached the level of needing manged web hosting, you’re business must be doing well.

You will get a dedicated team of specialists, onboarding consultants and all other forms of job title buzzwords.

The cost wil be anywhere from multi hundreds to tens of thousands a month depending on your particular need.

Take a night or two to think about it before signing up for managed web hosting though. You may be fine with a lower tier.

There are several good options for managed web hosting and they’ll all have appropriate support, uptime and security measures:

• GoDaddy windows hosting
• Mejor Hosting
• BlueHost Web Hosting
• Host web Server on Google Cloud

Cloud Hosting, Virtual Private Servers (VPS) and Server hosted

If managed web hosting was for the big boys, VPS is for their older brothers.

This will be for those who have in IT department, but don’t want to maintain real machines.

The whole hardware lifecycle is expensive and time consuming.

With a VPS, you can either get a dedicated server in a rack of web servers, or just rent a portion of a server. If you get a portion of the server, this is called shared web hosting.

A shared hosting plan is a cost effective way to get high performance and be able to create your own server spec at an afforable (ish) price.

Another hosting option would be Google. Google lets you host a web server on google cloud. Google have a bunch of pre-configured options to choose from you can spawn up a machine in no time at all.

Google also have almost unlimited storage (if that really matters).

Hosting with Google may be good for you if you’re already in the Google ecosystem with Google Workspace etc.

Letting someone else care about failovers and network whilst giving you full access to the control panel with root access, will free you up to work on your business.

Again, there are several good options for VPS, much the same as managed web hosting:

• GoDaddy Web Hosting
• Mejor Hosting
• BlueHost Hosting
• Host web Server on Google Cloud

Frequently Asked Questions About Web Hosting for Small Businesses

FAQ

Does managed web hosting come with a free domain?

Certain web hosting providers tailored for small businesses provide complimentary domain names when you sign up for their services. However, these free domains often consist of less popular TLDs like “.co,” “.org,” or “.blog.” If you prefer a more prestigious “.com” domain, you may need to make a payment for it.

If your web hosting provider doesn’t include a free domain, you can easily get one from companies such as 123 Reg.

What do i do once I have my website?

So state it simply SEO.

Once you have your website set up, you want it be seen.

Getting an SEO expert that specialises in small businesses to run reports and guide you in improving your visibility to the big search engines is vital for growth.

Being on page oene of Google vs page three of Google could be the difference between survival and failure for small businesses.

I hope this has helped you find the best smart web hosting services for small companies.

FAQ

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