27 May

Why Choose Us As Your Web Host?

I think the first question to look at is – what is a web host and how do you tell if they are a good one?

A web hosting service is the business that makes your web site avialable on the Internet. It’s one of those things that you don’t usually know about until you ask – but web hosting and web design are two very distinct areas of expertise.

Web designers are the people who create the ‘look and feel’ of your web site – the visual aspect. They are usually very arty types who are really into colours, images and most things that you see on a website. Web hosts are very different. They’re quite often computer geeky types who are really into motherboards, World of Warcraft and they usually don’t see much sunlight.

As you can see, these are two very different types of people. Sometimes a web designer will try to be a web host and a web host will try to be a web designer. That’s a bit like a hip hop dancer trying to do ballet. It works, but it’s not very pretty!

Now that we’ve explained the difference between a web host and a web designer, the next question is – how do you tell if a web host is good? Here’s a short list of things to look for:

  • 99% uptime – that means your website will be online 24/7 except for the occassional Internet glitch.
  • Windows or Unix – some web designers prefer Windows servers and some prefer Unix so your web host should provide both.
  • Control Panel – to have full control over things like your email addresses you need a control panel. CPanel is the industry standard and Plesk is also a good control panel.
  • Technical know how – yup… it really helps if your web host has some technical smarts rather than just re-selling web hosting accounts.
  • Passion – this is a rare one… a passion for helping and working with local business.
  • Telephone – if you can’t phone your web host because you site is offline, or if you have to rely on your web designer to phone your web host because you don’t really know who your web host is then that’s definitely going to cause you some frustration.

That’s a fairly good short list of things to look for. I could have gone into all of the technical aspects such as bandwidth, disk space etc but at the end of the day if you can find a web host who you can talk to then they will help you choose the right hosting account at the right price to suit your business.

Give us a call today!