Website Hosting Essentials for Small Business Owners

 

Small business owners without a powerful online presence and user experience may have an uphill battle ahead. How your small business website performs is in many ways one of the most important factors in netting more traffic and increasing conversions (profits).

If your website performance is lacking, it may be time for an upgrade. Issues like uptime issues, poor site speed, server security, and more can all have a negative impact on your bottom line.

If you’re thinking about upgrading your website hosting services for your small business, the following can serve as your roadmap to hosting expertise.

Do You Have Shared Website Hosting Now?

Shared website hosting is the most common of all hosting services. It is the cheapest hosting that allows small businesses to launch an online presence in the fastest amount of time. It is also the most common service offered by online hosting providers.

You most likely have a shared hosting service for you small business site right now. However, if you’re experiencing performance issues, it is time to upgrade from a shared server to one of the following hosting services.

For example, uptime is a big issue when it comes to shared hosting. If a hosting provider has jam-packed a server with hundreds of sites, the server will experience crashes. This is called downtime, and one hour of server downtime can cost a business $100,000 in conversions.

Are you losing money due to shared server problems? Keep reading!

Upgrading to a Virtual Private Server (VPS)

If it’s time to upgrade your small business website hosting service, a virtual private server (VPS) service is the next step up from a shared server. VPS service draws from multiple servers, but acts as a single server.

This is beneficial for your small business, because you’ll get a dedicated slice of server space. Meaning you will no longer be competing for bandwidth and disk space from larger sites with high traffic volume on a shared server.

This is essential for ensuring a high-level of site performance. Depending on how much traffic and how large your site is, you may alleviate site speed and uptime problems.

VPS hosting service is also quite affordable if your small business is netting a decent amount of conversions. You can expect to pay between $50 and $200 for a virtual private server service, depending on what your small business website needs are.

High Traffic? A Dedicated Website Hosting Service May Be Needed

If a virtual private server is not enough for your small business website, it may be time to think about going to the next hosting service and upgrade to a dedicated server. This is the top of the hosting service list without providing your own servers and renting data center space.

Dedicated website hosting services is exactly what the name entails. You get a dedicated server just for your small business site. This allows you to provide the best user experience with complete root permissions control.

A dedicated server provides your website with plenty of bandwidth, disk space, and enhanced security. Security is a big issue these days with all the cyber attacks happening for both large and small businesses. If you’re collecting a lot of user information and sensate data, a dedicated server might be the best option.

However, using a dedicated website hosting service will cost you more than other service options. Hosting providers typically start out their dedicated hosting plans at $200 and up.

Cloud Website Hosting Services are the Future of Hosting

The above are the traditional hosting services that have been in place for quite some time. A new hosting service, however, has emerged. Cloud website hosting is a fresh take on traditional services, but with added features like exponential scalability.

How does cloud hosting work? Essentially, there are a large amount of servers on he cloud that are working together to provide the most powerful user experience possible. This is beneficial for small businesses that need user experience to be unprecedented to compete in their industry and niche.

There are different cloud website hosting types. For example, hosting services provide enhanced performance, ultimate scalability, reliability (no downtime issues), and affordability, since small business owners only pay for the server resources they use.

Private cloud services have all these features, but with even more enhanced security than public cloud servers. Both, however, keep sites free of physical server hacks and cyber attacks due to the cloud nature of the service.

Ready for a Hosting Upgrade?

Small business owners have a lot to think about when it comes to hosting. You want to ensure that your website is performing at its top level to keep engagement high, traffic rolling in, and profits perpetually increasing.

Site speed and performance definitely plays a role in how customers view your small business, so make it a positive, easy experience that keeps them coming back. What hosting service do you love?