Now it is vital that you choose a hosting provider that can cater to all your needs, as well as being affordable, so in this case, just like many other things in life, the cheapest is not necessarily the best, and FREE websites are completley out of the question if you are using it for your business.
Why Not Free?
Why is it a bad idea to choose a free webhosting provider for your small business, I hear you ask? Have you ever been to a free hosting website? If you have ever had the pleasure to come across one, you will almost definatley have seen a whole host of flashy things blinding you as the page displays, along with that you may encounter those annoying pop-ups. Not very professional, and definatley not something that will encourace visitors to come back!
Additionally many free website hosting providers arent equiped for high volumes of traffic through their free websites, there is limited space, and not always a good uptime guarantee. But what do you want for free? Dont get me wrong though free websites are great for other things, such as personal pages to display photos, poetry,and have fun with.
Cost Effective, But With All The Features
Ok, so free is out, which means that you will have to shop around for the best deal, as well as all the important features for your website hosting needs. So lets take a look at some of the important things:
- Customer service, this is really important, I promise you that at some time or another you will come across problems, glitches, or things you dont understand while setting up your website. When this happens you need professional customer support on hand to assist you.
- Uptime, again another really important thing. Uptime is the promise of the amount of time the hosting company will have your website available for. Make sure that it is around 99.9% and if the gosting company has less uptime than that, ask them if you are compensated for down time.
- A free domain name only seems fair, so make sure that the hosting provider that you choose, offers you a free domain name along with your package. Remember that domain names must be renewed each year, or you will lose them. Many hosting providers can notify you when your renewals are due, or debit your account if you choose, that way you dont run the risk of losing your business domain name, and your traffic.
- Email capabilities are important, so make sure that there are large amounts, or unlimited email accounts, along with this an auto responder comes in very handy, to let your interested visitors requesting information know that you will anser their queries shortly, spam blockers are also good to have, so make sure you look out for them in a hosting package.
- Shopping carts are essential to small business owners that wish to sell their products both online, and in their bricks and mortar stores. Having a secure shopping cart, means that you no longer have to manually process customer requests, and take their money, its all done for you.
- Easy to use control panel, for loading new website pages which is secured by a password is essential, as well as web stats to help you assess what is happening in your website, visitors movements, and how well advertizing attampts are going.
- Forums, counters, guest books, blogs, site builders, billing software, and search engine submission tools are also handy to have.
Ok did you get all of that? Finding a webhosting provider can be a little daunting at times, as well as confusing, so follow those tips above and you should have a fair idea of what a good hosting provider will offer you. Now how much should you be paying for something like all of the things I have just mentioned? Good question, and the answer is least as possible of corse!!!
I think that more than $10 per month is too much! Aim for something under $10 per month, and remember that you can claim your website hosting on your taxes. I have a personal favorite web hosting provider, that has all of these features, plus many more. Their pricing is very reasonable at around $6.95 per month, if you are interested check them out here
When looking for a good web hosting provider make sure that you have taken into consideration all of your small business needs, and what you anticipate you will be needing in the future.
Talk to you soon,
Jade :)
P.S Next week we will be looking at how to juggle your bricks and mortar business, as well as your online website effectivley, and with minimum time. It will be a good one, so dont miss it :)
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