Every service you choose for your small business should offer value to you, which should be passed down to your clients and customers. In the age of online everything, the hosting service you choose can shape and change how you do business.
Your online shopfront – your business website – needs to be fast, efficient, and have 99%+ uptime like that offered from filemaker hosting. Hosting can be a service that can change how you interact with your customers and how much traffic you can handle.
There is a lot to be said for great hosting – so how do you make the decision?
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Uptime
One of the most frustrating things for customers trying to buy and potential clients trying to find out more about you is a website that isn’t working well. A slow website or a website with significant downtime can seriously impact your ability to work online.
And while users should be the focus, search engines themselves aren’t fans of websites that have considerable downtime or are slow to load.
Traffic
One of the goals for every business is to increase their traffic, and you won’t be able to unless your host offers unlimited packages – or the ability to scale when needed.
If you go over your allocated month visitors, your website will simply stop displaying visitors.
Make sure that you read the information about the hosting packages and how much the extra cost is for additional traffic, and how quickly you can scale up if you need to.
Security
Your website security is something that you can’t take for granted. There are more cyber attacks on websites of all sizes, but most often, smaller websites are now the target. In general, smaller business websites have less security – and the pay portal (often third-party) can be a target.
Your hosting will be one of the lines of defense that you have at your disposal to protect your customers.
Security should come with backups, extra layers of security and help you tackle any unforeseen problems.
Trial
Where possible, see if there are free trials available so that you can see how the service works and if it fits your business. The free trial should be used to test all of the services on offer – and make sure that you also test out their customer services.
You can better view if they are the right company for you and if there are any obstacles to using their service.
Discuss what you think your needs are, and allow them to talk through what they recommend.
Benefits
Does the hosting company you are considering offer any extra benefits with your hosting package? Since the market can be incredibly competitive, it isn’t unusual to find companies with networks of other services that you can gain access to.
Or you may find that they provide a wide range of services that you can get access to in your package.
If you are in the early stages of business setup, you might still be pondering the significance of an online presence – if that sounds like you, then check out this great post: Still Don’t Have a Website? Here’s What You’re Missing Out On – Start-Up Booster.