Finding a landlord for your website
Searching for a web hosting service is a lot like looking for an apartment. How big your apartment should be depends on how many people and how much “stuff” you have. How much rent can you afford? How safe is the neighborhood? Does the building look nice? Is someone keeping up with maintenance? How responsive is the superintendent when your heater breaks? Do you need amenities like a doorman? A gym? Someone to accept your packages, walk your dog, or water your plants?
Think of a web hosting service as the landlord for your website. The landlord provides a physical space, just as the host provides a server. You store your website on the host’s server, just as you store your belongings in your apartment. The landlord, or web host, can offer bare bones security, maintenance and service, or take care of all the details.
Determining the right type of web hosting for your business depends on the size of your website, your tolerance for keeping to a regular schedule of maintenance and updates, and the difficulty of the changes or additions you plan to make to your site. The range of web hosting services available can cost a few dollars per month (or sometimes even free) to thousands of dollars.
Types of web hosting services often used by small to mid-size businesses, and a comparison of their costs and benefits
Basic
- Best For: Non-critical websites; just-for-fun websites; businesses looking for the least expensive option.
- Pros: Shared server, usually on nationally known site.
- Cons: You must regularly back up your site and ensure all software updates are completed. Often: slower connection speeds, outages, sometimes due to hacking, advertising banners may be required. Sometimes domain purchases are required, and sometimes those domain names are non-transferable.
- Range of Avg. Cost: $3-$10 per month
Pro
- Best For: Small and mid-sized businesses who want affordable hosting combined with more personalized support.
- Pros: You and other website owners share a single server and its costs, making the service much more affordable for everyone. This option is the most common for small and mid-size businesses.
- Cons: Security issues can occur when malware attacks the server. If one website on a shared server starts taking up extra bandwidth, the other websites on the server could run slower. Look for hosts who address these issues.
- Range of Avg. Cost: $50-$500 per month
Enterprise
- Best For: High-traffic sites that require a lot of system resources, a high level of security, and the fastest performance.
- Pros: You have the entire server to yourself. An even higher-end option is a Collocated Server, where you purchase (instead of rent) a server, and store it in a host’s warehouse.
- Cons: Cost can be prohibitive for smaller businesses.
- Range of Avg. Cost: $500-$15,000 per month and up
And Now A Word From Our Sponsor
Web Mobile Image’s clients tend to prefer upgrading their hosting services from the do-it-yourself level, so we have a server dedicated to our clients’ websites. We encourage our clients to take advantage of our web hosting packages, yet we still offer hosting services to everyone, even if you have not used our other services.
We keep our clients’ websites secure through comprehensive server-side tools, as well as internal WordPress tools. We perform regular backups and keep all software updated so your site runs smoothly. You will need no special knowledge to administer and maintain your server. Our server’s reliability and performance speeds are much better and faster than D-I-Y hosting services. Our reliability and performance speeds also approach the reliability and performance speeds of a dedicated server, yet our service is much more affordable.
Having a company like Web Mobile Image as your web hosting provider ensures top-notch service and tech support. Instead of reaching a call center with your questions, or being referred to a technician via support ticket, when you call Web Mobile Image, you will reach a person who will listen to your problem and work on resolving it. We value our customer relationships, and work to keep everyone happy. Drop us a line and we’ll get you started!