In the world of hosting you have hosting companies of all sizes and price ranges.
Many people who want to build their own web site go the route of using a service like Wix or SquareSpace or Webs as they are free to build and host but many soon realize that free doesn’t always come cheap as you often come to a point where you want to extend the functionality of your site and then find out it costs you an extra $100 a year to do it; you then need to decide if you want to keep throwing money at it in order to get what you want or do you toss it all away, secure your own web hosting and build on a tried-and-true platform like WordPress.
Assuming you choose what over 33% of sites use, WordPress, where is the best place to host it? Well, you can do as many do and simply sign up with one of the cheapy shared hosts that cost anywhere from 99 cents to 7 dollars a month and go with them. You then soon find out that their support is not as responsive as you had hoped it would be, or they make changes to your server without advising you and things crash, or you get stuck on a server with 1000 others and one goes awry and brings your site to a crawl and it takes you 5 minutes to make a simple text change.
You can also go for the middle of the road solution which is more costly but gives you a more stable environment. This too is usually with a large hosting company who does not give you any priority support unless you are paying a high monthly rate.
I have spent the last 10 years looking for a host that would make me feel like I am their only client and make sure my environment is sound. Have I found that host? Well, I did, but not in a traditional sense. Since I have reasonable experience with webs sites and their environments, I felt the best solution would be to host my clients myself, the problem was that it was way too expensive to do so and it would not be feasible to pass that cost onto my clients. Last year, I came across a company that gave me what I needed – a way to provide clients with low cost stable hosting environments. And what is that company? It’s mine 🙂 (Well not exactly).
I joined up with the Hosting Coalition. They provide me with the infrastructure I need and back me up with supporting my clients when it is necessary.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I want people to realize that paying low prices on big shared hosting platforms is not the solution for a lot of you. Paying low prices on a shared platform which limits the number of sites hosted per server and provide you with premium support is and you will realize that in the long run in the time savings alone.
So, don’t automatically go for the GoDaddy’s of the world just because they have an advertising budget that exceeds some Hollywood movies, look for the jewels in ocean, the ones that want your business for the long haul and will support you the same way whether you are that mom-and-pop shop or a corporation – these are the small independent hosting companies that will build and host sites for you and maintain them to keep them running smoothly.
So, where do you start? Look to the Hosting Coalition and their members. Contact one today – you will be glad you did.