Web Site Hosting for Businesses
Web hosts provide space on their servers for clients to place their websites on. A huge web hosting industry has been created to sell space on their servers for other companies to run websites from. The majority of websites nowadays are hosted by third parties and not the actual company promoted by the website.
Different features are available from the vast selection of web hosting companies i.e. Templates, Emails, Shopping Carts etc.
Before deciding on which features you require it's best to start be identifying which "flavour" of web hosting you require:
Shared web hosting
Most businesses start with shared or virtual web hosting. Shared web hosting means that several web sites run from the same server. Shared web hosting has several advantages such as:
- Cheapest option for web hosting, with costs approx £20 per year
- Standard scripts are normally available
- Simple to get website up and running
However there are also disadvantages:
- Your website is located on a server that runs multiple websites
- You don't have access to server software or configuration
Dedicated web hosting
With dedicated web hosting your website resides on its own server. This has several advantages such as:
- You technical staff have full internet access to the server
- You decide exactly how it is configured
- You can run several websites from the one server
However there are also disadvantages:
- Costs start from approx £30 per month
Managed web hosting
Managed web hosting, as with dedicated web hosting, allows your website to reside on its own server. However with managed web hosting the hosting company will physically install and configure the server for you. This has several advantages such as:
- You technical staff have full internet access to the server
- You decide exactly how it is configured
- You can run several websites from the one server
However there are also disadvantages:
- Costs start from approx £750 per month
Size of website
After deciding on which flavour of hosting you'll require the next step is to determine the amount of space your website will need. Web hosting companies generally split their shared hosting into three categories:
- Beginners - up to 50Mb
- Small business - up to 100Mb
- Professional - 1Gb and above
Websites containing a small number of pages and graphics will be best served by the Beginners web hosting package. If your aiming to sell a large number of products via your website then you'll probably want a professional package which has significantly more web space.
Remember that your website should grow overtime with new content being added frequently, therefore it might be worthwhile thinking about buying slightly more space than you initially require.
Website Extras
When buying web hosting you should also consider:
- Whether the web site address (url) is included in the price
- The number of email addresses you'll require
Whether you'll require:
- Databases
- The logs for the website to be analyzed
- A shopping cart
- Web page templates
Which web hosting company?
SeyeneCo Web Design use Compila Ltd for their own web hosting and that of their clients.
If your based in Scotland and are considering a website for your company then contact SeyeneCo for a quick chat about the benefits a website can bring you.
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