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Paid hosting, also known as professional hosting, is the way to go for the small business
person. Why?
It's cost effective. You usually get more features for less money than
from ISP hosting.
They're more focused on the business. When all you do is host
Web sites, you better make sure you do it well, or you'll be out of business.
You have better things to do. Even if you know how to run your own
webserver, this is one area where it's well worth it to spend the money for someone else
to do it.
For your reasonable monthly fee, you get a high-bandwidth 24/7 connection, file backup,
email hosting and forwarding and plenty more
The challenge is choosing the right company. If you were a large corporation, you
could go through a formal evaluation process and request proposals from prospective
webhost providers.
A small business person, however, doesn't have this option available, especially if
you're looking to spend under $30 a month for service!
Why all the changes?
My Company #1 was a reseller and actually was fairly trouble-free until
they were cracked and had about 1000 domains erased from their
servers, mine being one of them. To make matters worse, they were not backing up the
Web site files! However, I had a complete copy of my site on my computer and was able
to upload it after they got the domains restored.
But the thing that gave me the most problems with this first company was that the only
contact with them was via email (no phone numbers were provided) and tech support had a
one to two day turnaround.
Lesson Learned #1: Don't do business with anyone who doesn't provide a phone
number, especially for tech support! Companies that don't provide
phone numbers are usually reselling space on someone else's server and you're better off
dealing directly with the company who is really providing the
service.
My Company #2 experience looked like it was going to be great.
Nice big ads in multiple trade magazines, good features, low price, 24/7 toll-free tech
support, they'd move the domain for free, etc. etc.
Well, to make a long story short, I stayed with this company about 10 days, and my site
never really ran properly. The things that went wrong with my site make me wonder
how Company #2 can even stay in business, if what happened to me happens to others.
But I didn't hang around long enough to find out.
Lesson Learned #2: Even if a company can afford big ads in just about every trade
magazine you read, it doesn't guarantee success.
My final piece of advice is to check out whatever company you're considering in
the newsgroups. Do a Google
Groups search on your prospective company's name. Post a message asking
for feedback about specific companies. Followup privately via email with people who
provide thoughful, informative answers. The basic idea here is to get as much
information as you can before you host your domain with someone.
Remember, your domain is your company's identity on the web. You want it always
available, fast, and trouble free.
