Website hosting is one of the most important, yet most underestimated aspects of a small business website. Your website is the face of your business online and hosting is the foundation it’s built on.  Just like a house built on sand, a weak website foundation will undermine the success of your business.

Website hosting solutions are difficult to compare because they vary widely in quality, price, and features. The cheapest hosting solutions cost only a few dollars a month, but are slow, less secure, and difficult to manage. The higher end hosting solutions are managed for you, secure, have higher performance, and come with extra features, but they’re also more expensive.

Website hosting for businesses

Since we’re talking about small businesses we’ll assume that:

• Your time is valuable
• You have a limited budget
• You’d rather focus on your business and not waste time getting your website to work
• You’re happy to pay a little extra to make sure it’s done right and save time on setup and management

Lastly, there are many kinds of hosting out there. We’ll do our best to group them into easy to understand categories. Honestly, we could write a book on all the types of hosting, the merits of each, and situations where each is worth considering, but that’s well outside the scope of this guide.

Budget/shared hosting

This is the most common type of website hosting. It costs only a few dollars of month and is fairly easy to use. It can run most of the common content management systems (CMS) and is available from a number of companies for around the same price.

The drawbacks are that this kind of hosting is low quality (that’s why it’s so cheap), less secure, can get confusing if you dig into the control panel, and your website will be slower. This kind of hosting is fine for personal blogs and hobby sites, but I don’t recommend it for serious businesses. However, it’s a viable option if you’re short on cash.

This is a general hosting solution, so it supports multiple kinds of website software. This means that you’re responsible for optimizing your website performance, implementing caching, taking care of security, backups, etc. This gets time-consuming.

Managed dedicated/virtual private server (VPS)

This is another common form of hosting. It’s similar to the budget hosting mentioned above, except that it’s much more powerful with more resources. It’s great for a lot of things, but not for business owners who just wants a website. Even if it’s managed, it still requires some technical know-how to optimize it and get everything setup the way you want it.

This is also a general hosting solution that supports multiple types of software. So you’re also responsible for optimizing your website performance, implementing caching, taking care of security, backups, etc.

Premium/specialty managed hosting

Now we’re getting into the real stuff. Specialty hosts are nice because they only focus on one software platform. We’ll use WordPress in this example because it’s the most popular website software in the world.  Specialty WordPress managed hosts will only host WordPress websites. This means higher performance and better support.

These specialty hosts also take care of performance optimization and security (some even guarantee website security) for you. Website backups, performance monitoring, and software updates are included too.

This kind of hosting is more expensive, but it’s definitely worth it. Not only do you get a boost in performance, but it’ll save you hours a month. This hosting typically starts around $25 a month and goes up from there depending on features.

The only drawback to this kind of hosting is that because it’s targeted toward designers and developers, it may still be a bit too complicated for the typical small business owners who wants a hassle-free website that just works. Overall, it’s a better experience than the other solutions listed above, but there’s still a bit of a learning curve.

Hosted platform

This is the most comprehensive hosting category. It takes what the premium managed hosts do (mentioned above) and builds on top of it. These hosting solutions include management of all technical aspects of your site, website design, security, optimization, and more.

These hosting solutions are also much more specialized than any of the others. For example, we fall into this category and only serve small businesses, Shopify only serves online stores, and HappyTables only serves restaurants.

These solutions are by far the easiest to use and the most optimized, but they’re also more restrictive. Because they take care of everything for you, there are fewer choices. So if you’re trying to do something unique or have special requirements, this may not be the solution for you. But if all you need is a normal website, this the right choice.

Questions?

Do you have any questions that we didn’t answer?  Ask us!

If you hire someone to manage your website for you, why do you need to know the basics?  A simple reason: some people are dishonest.  Not most, but enough that you should keep your guard up.  Especially online where, due to the anonymity, people tend to be less honest.

Dishonest vs. illegal

The problem is that dishonesty isn’t always illegal.  A common example is when companies sell domain registration for 400% what it typically costs.  This is not illegal, but they’re taking advantage of the your ignorance because you don’t know any better.

Domain registration is a minor example, but it’s common on the internet.  Is it illegal?  No.  Is it dishonest?  I’d say so.  If it’s something a customer would be upset about if they found out, it’s dishonest.

Protect yourself & your business

Since most of us small businesses are in low-tech industries and unfamiliar with internet norms, we’re vulnerable.  The example above isn’t significant, but other issues are.  Here are a few examples:

• A marketer you hire uses illegal techniques and your website gets blocked from search engines like Google.  How much revenue would you lose if people stopped coming to your website?
• A web designer charges you thousands for a sub par website and you have to pay someone else to redo it.
• Your developer fails to secure your website, it gets hacked, and Google removes your website because it’s infected with malware.

These are just a few examples, but you get the idea.  You’d be surprised how often these things happen.  The more you know, the better you can protect yourself and your business from scams and illegal practices that could harm your business.

What’s the purpose of your website?  This seems like a silly question to ask, but most small business owners don’t have a solid answer. To succeed, we need a clear goal.

Business websites will generally have one of the following primary goals:

• Generate leads, gain readers, or build subscribers:  You want users to enter their information and sign up for something to facilitate future interaction.
• Establish credibility for a person or organization:  You want to increase the reputation and make a good impression of a person or organization.
• Sell products or services:  You want to sell a product or service to the customer.  This includes buying a product, booking an appointment, or subscribing to a service to name a few.

What’s your goal?

You can have more than one goal, but most small businesses focus on the last one and use their website to sell products and services to customers.  As a secondary goal, some (the smart ones) will ask customers to sign up for a newsletter or something similar to make more sales in the future.

Know the goal of your website, it shapes everything your business does.  If there’s something on your website that doesn’t move customers towards that goal, get rid of it, it’s a distraction.

A content management system (CMS) is software that makes it easier to update and manage the content on your website.  Most small business websites use a CMS because it makes updating and managing a website as easy as using email.  If you want to update and manage your website yourself, you’ll want a CMS.

If you decide not to use a CMS, you’ll likely have to hire someone to make even the smallest changes on your website for you unless you know how to code.  This gets really expensive, which is why using a CMS is a smart decision.

A CMS is also valuable because it takes care of all the heavy lifting for you.  For example, search engine optimization (SEO) is hard, but the right CMS can make it painless by adding all the HTML tags and structured data markup for you.  This brings in more business by helping new customers find your website.  Just make sure you choose the right CMS, because some are better than others…

What CMS should I use?

There are hundreds of CMSs out there, but WordPress is by far the most popular.  It’s used by Fortune 500 companies, most of the top 100 websites on the web, over 75 million websites worldwide, and it powers 1/4 of the websites on the internet.  Pretty impressive right?  We even built Just Add Content on WordPress and modified it especially for small businesses.  It’s the best CMS out there, and you should be using it too.

You can decide to host WordPress yourself (complicated) or use a hosted website version based on your needs like our Just Add Content (small businesses), HappyTables (restaurants), or WordPress.com (blogs and hobby sites).

Most small businesses feel overwhelmed when thinking about websites.  There are acronyms, code, technology, marketing terms, developer terms, designer terms, and it all changes so quickly.  Every year there’s  something new.  You’re busy running your business, so how do you keep up and stay competitive?

Focus on the concepts

Focus on the concepts, not the specifics.  The web moves so quickly that even the “experts” have a hard time keeping up.  In fact, there are many so-called experts teaching outdated techniques that can hurt your business.  If you try to focus on the details, you’ll drown.  The concepts will always stay relevant.  If you’re ever confused just take a step back and look at the big picture.

Concepts to consider

For the rest of this article we’ll cover some of the major concepts to keep in mind when thinking about you business website.  This isn’t a definitive list, but it’ll get you thinking in the right direction.

Is this valuable to users?

If you’re talking to a marketer or SEO “expert” and he’s recommending a technique that’s supposed to raise your rankings, but it won’t create anything of value for users or customers, it’s probably not worth it because there are no shortcuts.  Creating value is the only real long-term strategy.  It’s expensive and time-consuming, but it’s the only thing that works in the long run.

How easy is it to use?

If it sounds complicated, you should probably pass.  You want things to be as easy as possible for your customers.  Things should just make sense.  If you’re getting fancy you’re probably doing it wrong.

This is also a key way to tell if someone is pulling the wool over your eyes.  If they can’t explain to you in clear terms and plain language how they’re going to help you, they’re either 1) lying, 2) don’t know what they’re talking about, or 3) using a shortcut or scheme that’ll end up hurting your business.

Will it get the job done?

How well does it carry out your business goals?  What’s the purpose of your website?  Is your goal to have customers book an appointment?  Order a product?  Request an estimate?  Subscribe to a newsletter?  Figure out what your goals are and make sure your website is focused on making them happen.  A pretty website is worthless if it doesn’t do its job.

How easy is it to keep up?

You’re a business owner, not a website developer.  You should be running your business, not searching Google for how to do X or trying to get a hold of an absentee web designer to fix something.  Make sure it’s easy.  In fact, you shouldn’t even have to think about it.

Is it secure?

This is your business website, not a personal blog.  It’s a business asset and it matters, so protect it.  There should be a security guarantee so you’re not left on the hook if something happens.  At the very least, ask what kind of security measures are in place to protect your business website.  As a small business, managing risk is essential.

What are the upfront and long-term costs?

How much does it cost to have your website designed, built, and maintained?  How much will it cost to make it work on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets?  How much are design revisions?  What about future changes?  Can you update your website yourself or do you have to pay someone?  How much is tech support if you have a problem?  Websites should be redesigned every 2-5 years depending on industry, so how much will that cost you?  If it costs as much as the initial design, it’ll cost your business another few thousands dollars.  As a basis for comparison, at Just Add Content all the above is included in our standard plan and entire redesigns are only $99.

Do you feel comfortable?

In the end, listen to your gut and do what’s right for your business.  If you feel uneasy about something, maybe you should think twice and a solution you’re comfortable with.

Any new technology, technique, or feature must answer the above questions.  If it doesn’t pass the test, skip it.  Your time and money are too scarce to bother with anything that’s just a gimmick or a passing fad.  Focus on what matters.  With this you can sift through 99% of the nonsense that people try to sell you.