What Is Web Hosting & Which Web Hosting Suits You the Best?

With the increasing trend of online shopping and e-businesses, it is not a surprise that the increase in the popularity of web hosting services is more than ever before. Even more interestingly, the rate at which small businesses are signing up for various kinds of web hosting services is breaking its own record every year. If you are new to online business, this might be a confusing thing to understand. This is why I felt the need to write this article where I can talk about what web hosting is and how you can benefit from its enormous features in order to promote your business and be successful.

First let’s discuss a little bit of history. We live in an era, where door-to-door marketing isn’t really possible in today’s ever-expanding societies and settings. With millions of households in even a small city, you can’t even think of successfully marketing your business unless you use online means. Hence, it doesn’t matter how great is the idea, product, or service that you are trying to sell, you can’t succeed without leveraging the power of internet and social media. You need to have an online presence where you can market your products and service and give them an exposure they deserve. This is where web-hosting services come into play.

There are quite a few services available in the market today to choose from. The question is: which one suits you best. Your business ideas and goals are most likely be different from other businesses and hence not any web hosting service can cater your needs and your demands. Therefore, you need to ask yourself a few questions before purchasing the subscription of any web hosting platform. The first question should be the storage space that is available at your disposal. You don’t want me to struggling in storing the high-quality photos and videos of your products. Hence you should choose a service that offers unlimited storage for your valuable content.

In terms of security of your intellectual property, you also need to ask how secure the service provider is and how long they are in business for. Don’t got for new-comers as they might disappoint you sooner rather than later. Always go with the names that are in business since a long time and hold a good reputation. Lastly, you should be questioning about the bandwidth that a particular service provider includes in your subscription. Bandwidth here is the amount of data your website visitors will be consuming by visiting your website. Once you run of allocated bandwidth, the visitors might face trouble accessing your website.

If you keep these key factors in your mind before buying a hosting service, you should be in good business.

Benefits of Choosing Reseller Web Hosting Services

There are several Web Hosting India services that offer reseller Web hosting services. Reseller Web hosting resells the regular Web hosting plans in wholesale price. If you purchase such a plan, you can use the space to host the Web sites of your customers. Reseller Web hosting provides you with a business opportunity but without any huge investments, infrastructure or personnel support. Plus, the business owner is free from the headaches related to running and securing the server. Well, let us here analyze the benefits of choosing a reseller Website hosting service in detail.

No investment

Every business in today’s world requires significant investment. A major part of this money goes to setting up the facility and other expenses related to infrastructure. In the case of a Web related service, the cost of software is also an important consideration. Many of you think it is not feasible for you to spend your hard-earned money and ‘try your luck’ in this highly competitive environment. Here comes the relevance of reseller Webhosting services. This is ideal for those people who have some interest in doing a business but have minimum resources to make it run smoothly. In a reseller hosting plan, you pay only for the hosting package available to you on a monthly or yearly basis. The rest of the things are taken care by the Web hosting India company that owns the server.

Free from the hassles

Webhosting India services free you from the hassles associated with Web hosting. By choosing the reseller hosting plan, you are able to offer a limited server space to your clients without worrying about other aspects of the services such as server security, hardware expenses or power efficiency. The Web hosting company is responsible for all these tasks. They have the robust server with all necessary hardware components such as power backup units, cooling systems, etc., to support the server. They have the most advanced security software installed that can protect the server from all types of attacks. They have 24/7 monitoring system to watch out for any downtime issues in the server. Their customer support staff is available to customers anytime anywhere to address the concerns of the customers. All these facts mean that you are free from the tension of running the business. All what you need is a PC with sufficient memory to handle your customers’ Web sites’ needs.

The reseller hosting plan is the most suitable business opportunity for those who are involved in Web site designing or related services. By opting for the reseller hosting plan, they earn an extra edge and a new opportunity to make money. This additional service will also benefit their customers. It is better for a client (any business) to depend on one service provider for all related activities such as Web site designing, maintenance, and hosting rather than allotting the services to individual companies specializing in each service. This not only reduces the time and effort, but also improves the quality of the Web site and dedication from the part of the service provider. As a Web site design/maintenance company, you will find the reseller hosting more rewarding.

There are several Web hosting India companies that offer you reseller hosting with private label service, which gives you full control over your customers’ Web sites. You can also use your brand to sell the hosting service, so ultimately you become the exclusive service provider to your customers.

Best Web Hosting Tips for Blogging

Let’s explore becoming a blogger and the proper use of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn advertising on your blog and website. Facebook and Twitter have very specific instructions for using their logos, but it seems that on the Internet, very few people are following those guidelines. If you have any questions, you should ask your attorney. Having said that, there are common practices that webmasters and bloggers are using to promote their brand on these social media sites.

It is not legal to take someone else’s brand and alter it. But the Twitter and Facebook logo are everywhere and that is what has made these social media sites so famous. Facebook and Twitter both have trademarks on their logo and their iconography. For example, Twitter’s trademark is the little blue bird. They have their name and logo trademarked, therefore, you can not alter them.

Their guidelines are important so pay attention to those guidelines in relation to their name and logo allowed use. Legally you can not take their brand or trademark and alter them. Both Facebook and Twitter do allow, however, certain kinds of things. Facebook allows webmasters to use the “F” in a square and use it on your branding and include text, for example, “Fan us on Facebook”. They do not allow you, however, to use the F in a different color or FB in a different color. These are their general guidelines. Twitter, on the other hand, does not want you to put a T in side of a blue square. So what you as a webmaster need to ask yourself is whether or not you want to comply with their general guidelines. If you have any questions, it is best to ask an attorney or read their guidelines on the Facebook or Twitter website.

It is not recommended, for example, to use a little F or a little T on any of your online branding at all. A little T that says “Follow us on Twitter” or a little F that says “Fan us on Facebook” could actually cause your website to lose valuable traffic because all this does is encourage visitors to leave your website. It sends people away from your website to the social media giants. Instead, what is recommended is to employ the widgets that are available for webmasters to put on their site so that visitors can like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter without leaving your website. The old way of doing things is sending someone away from your website. The new way is to keep your hard-earned visitors at your website. By using these widgets, visitors can become a fan or a follower without ever leaving your website. Keep visitors on your website while at the same time encouraging them to be fans or followers. It’s a win-win strategy.

Your Blog and Your Web Hosting Account

Content marketing is a well-known successful way to market a business online without spending a great deal of money on advertising. Blogs are a main way to attract leads and educate prospects. With some companies, all their leads come from their blog and they do not need to do any advertising whatsoever. Instead of spending a great deal of money on advertising, these companies post 500 word articles to their blogs on a daily or weekly basis. Many business owners have been able to leave their 9-5 jobs because of blogging. These companies use blog posts as their number one strategy for advertising. Build a strong following by blogging. It is a great way to start without advertising and spending a great deal of money on a start-up. Blogging is a cost efficient way to build a company online. With your own web hosting account, you will have blogging software that makes it easy to get started blogging and posting your content on your own website or blog.

Traits of Successful Bloggers

What are the traits that someone should have to become a successful blogger? Start with the notion that there are five roles that people play. Every person has at least one of these traits or roles.

Five Traits of Successful Bloggers

  1. Are you a dreamer? You are a visionary and you want to tell people about it.
  2. Are you a good storyteller?
  3. Are you a teacher?
  4. Are you a persuader? Every person has an opinion.
  5. Are you a curator? A collector of ideas is a helpful trait for blogging.

The idea is to take that one trait that you have, recognize it, and build on it. Some people have more than one of the above traits, which is also good. An example is to take your trait and incorporate real-life events into a blog post. Successful bloggers have one trait and everybody does have one of these traits. If you have more than one or even all of these traits, it is even better. Some people have a natural tendency to blog. Ask your friends or family members to tell you which of these traits you have in your DNA. You will get some interesting feedback.

Do You Need to Be a Good Writer to Be a Good Blogger?

When people think of writing, they think of Pulitzer Prize winning books. That is not the case with blogging. With blogging, you need to be a great conversational writer. Do you have an easy, natural way to get your point across? If, for example, you can sit down with a person and have a drink with them and enjoy a good conversation with that person, you can be a blogger. As a blogger, you wouldn’t talk to that person like you are in a board room, but rather you would talk to that person like they were your friend. You need to be able to communicate in a way that builds rapport and relationships.

How Is a Blog Writer Different Than an Article Writer?

A blog writer is looking to start a relationship that is very personal. Your own opinion is infused in that writing. Even the structure of blog writing is different than articles. Your blog articles need to be intimate and give the reader a feel for who you are. It is very personal. Be a conversationalist. Have a dialogue that is easy for people to follow. Speak in every day terms and your blog writing will resonate with people. If you have trouble starting a blog article, you can always talk it out and record it, then transcribe it back into text format.

Technology That Can Help You Write

There are a lot of great technology options that can help you to write. Text-to-speech tools like “Dragon Naturally Speaking” let you talk and have it transcribed. If you have an iPhone, Siri will do it. Use your voice to write the article and save time. This technique is also helpful if you have trouble writing because it makes the task more of a conversation, rather than writing. This is exactly what blogging involves.

It is not just about text. Video blogging is another way to advertise using blogging. Writing is only one way to express yourself on a blog.

How Do You Decide if You Have What It Takes to Be a Blogger?

  1. Do you have an obsession with a topic? This goes beyond with a passion for a topic because if you are talking or writing about your topic every day, you must be borderline obsessed with the topic, otherwise you might not be able to sustain yourself on your topic. You don’t want blogging to be a chore so choose a topic that you are obsessed with.
  2. Are there others like you? If you start a blog about a certain topic, you need to have an audience that is interested in your topic.
  3. Assess whether you have a marathon or sprinter mind-set. Successful bloggers have one of these two mind-sets. In some cases, a successful blogger can take years. Define your craft, take time, put yourself in a zone of kicking out content, refining it, and realistically looking at what your vision is for your blog in two years. Expect nothing to happen for two years because blogging definitely takes time to become successful. In the beginning, don’t expect any re-tweets or comments for a while. For the first three years, you can literally have only one or two hundred visitors visiting your blog. When you finally figure out essentially the kinds of blogging strategies that “work” in your industry, that’s when you will see results. Eventually, it is very possible to have several hundred thousands of visitors to your blog which can lead to a completely sustainable business of your own as a result of blogging. It doesn’t have to take you that long to be successful. In the early days of blogging, no one really knew what they were doing. The good news is that now there are many strategies outlined on the Internet that can give you a head start. No point re-inventing the wheel.

Tips on How to Create Content

Stick with it. Know that you are fighting the good fight. Train your brain to notice potential topics by writing down every idea that pops into your head. It doesn’t matter if you are writing these ideas on post-it notes, index cards, or on your iPad. Just let your brain learn that every good idea is going to be noticed and used in some way.

Turn content creation into a habit. Set aside some time for at least a couple of weeks when you tell yourself that it is your “time” to create content. Make a daily appointment with yourself. If you are a night person, set aside a couple of hours, for example, between 10:00 and midnight. Turn content creation into a habit. Content creation during your most productive time of day will help you to kick out some great material because it will become a habit.

Done is better than perfect. Some great bloggers are such perfectionists and are constantly refining and refurbishing their content, but because they are never done with it, the content stays in their draft folder forever. You don’t want your content to stay unfinished. Just get your content out there. Get leverage with yourself by telling people how much content you plan on releasing. This will give you added motivation to deliver on what you have promised by increasing the frequency of your blog posts. You will feel like you need to follow through. Get content out on a regular basis, but be careful with the word “regular”. Be reasonable. Find your tempo and stick with it.

How Do You Find Ideas for Topics to Write About?

If you are super passionate about a certain topic, your friends and colleagues will ask you questions about it. Take notes of those questions because each one can be a blog post. Every time someone asks you a question, pay attention to it. Look at the news section at local book stores or other stores, such as Walmart, and take note of the headlines. What are the headlines and how are the other writers leading up to those headlines in their articles? Crack open the magazines to see how others are addressing news or general topics. It adds fuel to the fire and gives you quick ideas.

Multi-purpose your content. If, for example, you give a presentation somewhere you can take that presentation and multi-purpose it into two or three blog posts, possibly even more. Metaphors are important. If you like to do something, you can use metaphors and write about them in many different ways. You can talk about a topic many different ways.

How Do You Draw People to Your Blog?

To get more readers, you need to be relevant. The daily news is your friend. Look at what is being talked about and find a way to connect it to your topic. This draws people into your blog. Tap into the trends of the moment. Hang out at the watering hole, like forums or other blogs and find out what the audience is being fed. Find out where the audience is hanging out and join in. Be helpful to that community and a fixture in that space. See what people want and jump in. Find out what people want, then write about it. People will see your advise and eventually, people will notice you and come to your blog.

Content hubs are websites that collect a certain type of content and use that to attract an audience. For example, SlideShare is a content hub that collects presentations. They have a really large audience of people looking for presentations. Re-purpose your content and put them on those content hubs and your audience will grow exponentially. You will bring in readers from many different sources.

When you write special reports and package them up in PDF format, take them and turn them into online special reports. Every page can be a blog post. Because the pages are interlinked, Google will see it as relevant and not only index it, but list it higher in searches. That type of content can become very successful. Drip the content out over time and Google will take notice of your interlinked content. If the content is focused on one theme, it will do really well.

Email and Blogging

The connection between email and blogging is very important. Email is critical to a blogger. If you have an email list, you can get people back to your blog on a regular basis. When people join your opt-in email list, you should email those people to let them know whenever you have a new blog post. When things are on your mind, email the people on your list. It builds a relationship. Building a maintaining an email address list is absolutely necessary to build your success over time. If you have a blog, get an email opt-in form on your blog immediately. Most of the people that come to your blog are new after a new blog article is posted because RSS (really simple syndication) has a pull and draws people in. So, the advantage of capturing those visitors’ email addresses is that you can re-seize those peoples’ attention and mobilize them. Write a special report and a good piece of content and people will join your email list. By capturing names and email addresses, you can build a loyal following. When you have something to sell, your email list makes all the difference in the world. Some bloggers say that their email list is what feeds their family. Create a product and offer it to your subscribers.

Your voice is unique. Everything that you have to say is important. There are a lot of bloggers out there, but you owe it to yourself to try. With all the blogging tips and strategies online, you can get up the learning curve very quickly and become a successful blogger.

Web Hosting and Blogging

Which software should you use for blogging?

WordPress is currently the most popular blogging platform. In many cases, you can get it for free with your web hosting account. And it is easy to install. For example, some web hosting providers offer WordPress installed with just a few clicks of your mouse inside your web hosting control panel. Don’t be intimidated by the technology. WordPress is easy to use and easy to learn. There are no barriers that are holding you back. So, start blogging and start today building your email list to build a loyal following. And when you ask yourself why you are working so hard to crank out content. Well, it’s because you are a blogger.

A New Breed of Web and Email Hosting Services

What comes to mind when you hear about web hosting or email hosting? Most likely you will associate that with your website or the email services that you are currently using. If those are the only two services that you are currently using or you have come across, it is time to get yourself updated with the new breed of web and email hosting services.

The latest breed of web and email hosting includes back office applications such as your corporate bulletin or forum, web-based meeting/chat room, calendar sharing with webSMS reminder, online storage with secure file management, and Internet scheduled backup service. These are services that you normally need to pay separately to use on your domain; now, however, they are all available within the latest breed of web and email hosting.

The user basically will login through a login page which is linked from your company homepage. Once the user login, he or she will have access to the web mail and all these applications, depending on whether the admin of the back office has put them in the group with access rights granted. For example, the topics on the bulletin board are accessible by different groups based on the access rights given by the admin. There could be a financial forum which can only be accessed by the people under the group of say ‘Financial’. Other groups like ‘Sales’ or ‘Marketing’ might not be granted the access to the financial forum.

The admin also has the right to create or delete as many users as required besides granting the access rights to different groups and assigning the disk space for each user. With the owner of the business being the admin, he or she can easily add or remove a user to or off the company portal and control the access rights of the staff for the company’s applications and information.

The access control is particularly useful when it comes to the online storage and the secure file management system as it only allows groups with required access rights to see certain folders, read the content or change the files within the folder. The user can also save attachment from the webmail to the online storage. The online storage is accessible from anywhere with Internet access via a web browser. It also makes file sharing so much easier within the company or with customers and vendors, especially when the size of the file is huge, or the number of files to share is big.

Along with the online storage is the Internet backup service, which is essential to your personal or office data protection and disaster recovery. Data loss has always been one of the most critical factors that affect business continuity, and therefore data protection should not be taken lightly.

Why QuickBooks Hosting Is a Real Big Thing for Accountancy

QuickBooks accounting software is a popular name for accounting professionals who value the technology along with the services. QuickBooks has provided exceptional work support for small and mid-scale businesses, which is the significant reason for its popularity. QuickBooks offers a streamlined process for computing financial reports as well as creating invoice charts for the customers. It provides simplified processes to avoid the complexities of financial accounting, involving cost-efficiency to reduce the additional costing in accounting operations.

Although cloud computing is still running in the race to attain the peak of accounting software, QuickBooks has already made its remarkable way towards this race. Virtualizing and ease of accessibility from any mobile device is becoming a necessity of businesses in this rapidly changing technological era. With the enhancement of productivity scale, work from home, you can’t ignore the business expansion. Also, you will require facilities like mobile devices like tablets, laptops, and smartphones so that it won’t be a restriction, irrespective of the geographical locations.

QuickBooks analyzed this benefit relevant to the hosting. So, QuickBooks is ready to make future accounting easy and productive. Here are some reasons that clear out the reason why QuickBooks is becoming a remarkably influential thing for accountancy:

1) Device compatibility and collaboration –

Hosting of QuickBooks is available with PC, tablets, and smartphones. It offers support to all topmost browsers and operating systems. You can access your account from your mobile devices and can work conveniently from anywhere and any time. You don’t require to take your hard drive everywhere to access the financial information. Quickbooks hosting allows you to access your data via the internet.

It also provides collaboration capability while working. It indicates that various users can access the same work or data without any device constraints. Although the number of users accessing the file depends on the subscription, your business opted for your business.

2) Easy and simple interface –

QuickBooks is famous for delivering the best accounting functionalities with a simple user interface. It provides existing features with minimum flaws in the system. Its simple user interface gives easy access to the new user to avoid hurdles in his learnings.

It offers the choices like dedicated server service based on need, timely upgrades in the backend, automation of executing server internet issues, etc.

The automation of maintenance saves your staff time and improves productivity, as they can work without any delay or struggles.

3) Higher data security –

In every business, whether it’s a small or medium, or big scale business, data security is a critical aspect and, it becomes more sensitive when there is financial information involved. Accounting professionals and business owners get concerned with issues like various users access the data from multiple devices, it is prone to data theft.

QuickBooks focus on providing the utmost data security. QuickBooks hosting uses security options like dual backup, password protection, and 128-bit secured encryption for the user’s data. In this way, your data is much safe in the QuickBooks hosting than the on-premises software. Also, the data security and privacy-related information get listed in the contract signed by the user electronically.

4) Updated technology –

QuickBooks keeps on updating its technology at regular intervals of times to maintain its optimum performance levels. Automatic updates ensure well-maintenance of security checks. Swift and systematic updates manage the latest security measures to safeguard the user data.

5) Options of third-party hosting –

The owner of QuickBooks, Intuit, gives authorization to third-party application hosting providers for QuickBooks hosting. Specific rules and regulations need to be followed by the hosting providers to attain the permission, which ensures there is no modification of application performance get delivered.

6) Exceptional support –

It’s easy to use and work comfortably on QuickBooks. However, numerous users are accessing the software, including accounting professionals and business owners. Hence there is a possibility that you will face some issues that may seek technical support. QuickBooks hosting providers ensure that the users will get exceptional technical support round-the-clock. It gives assurance to the users that they can work on QuickBooks with hassle-free access.

7) Managing client’s data conveniently –

Accounting professionals manage an enormous amount of client’s accounting data. The paperwork culture of handling the client’s financial records is usually challenging to manage. Also, there is a possibility of losing the data with the printed documents.

QuickBooks assists accountants and firms in storing the data in a well-defined format.

8) Enhanced productivity at work –

Previously, accountants use to work manually, whether generating the reports, creating invoices, processing the bills, etc. Processing these tasks takes a lot of time and resulting in lower productivity.

Evolution in technology changed the processing of accounting, and now QuickBooks accounting software is there to assist the CPAs to reduce their routine work accordingly. You can conveniently accomplish your regular financial work with some clicks using the software.

The accountants can save the financial data or records in the software and can access it as per their convenience or requirement. It helps to minimize the repetitive work, time-saving so that you can take advantage of other productive tasks.

9) Focused on core accounting –

Situations like repetitive workflow, loss of files, lower productivity may lose the concentration of work for the accountants. It is necessary to handle these situations in time to reduce any hurdle.

With QuickBooks, accountants can reduce the possibility of troublesome events to some level. Handling this situation can help the accountants to focus on managing the client’s data, preparing the profit/loss statements or balance sheets, etc., without thinking of any other disruptions.

As a result, it helps the accountants to analyze the business performance and make appropriate plans for growth.

Finally, we can say that QuickBooks offers a lot of benefits to the users. You can access QuickBooks hosting service at any time without any geographical constraint. Some people think it might be an expensive model, but the users who adopted this model say this is a comfortable and cost-efficient solution.

Appropriate investment in this software will ensure business growth. There are various other options too for accounting software, but as compared to the pricing, QuickBooks provides all the advanced and required features at nominal pricing.

6 Great Reasons to Avoid Free Web Hosting

When it comes to web hosting, there are a lot of options available. With so many alternatives to choose from, you might be tempted to consider one of the many free web hosting services out there. However, there are some common pitfalls related to that approach that can end up costing you and your business a lot of money down the road. Therefore, it is important to know what these red flags are so you can avoid them.

Here are 6 great reasons to avoid free web hosting:

  1. Lost Credibility. Your web site will often be the first impression your potential customers have of your business. With free hosting, you may be stuck with a very long domain name such as http://freehostingservice.com/~yourbusiness. A domain name like this is an instant signal to your prospects that your business is still in the minor leagues. It is very difficult to build trust and credibility when your web presence appears to be fly-by-night.
  2. Banner Ads. The main reason these services are free is because you agree to allow banner ads on your site. So you invest the time, money and energy into driving traffic to your site and the free hosting service profits by directing that traffic away from you. Clearly not the best way to build a successful, long-term business.
  3. Limited Features. Free hosts usually offer a limited number of services. This lack of flexibility can seriously hinder your ability to conduct and grow your business online. For example, if you select a free service, you may have limited or no access to email, FTP accounts, content management systems or ecommerce options.
  4. Lack of Portability. When you pay to register and host your own domain, you have the option to transfer it. With free hosting services, this is usually not the case. So, if you spend a year or two building up your site and driving traffic to it before realizing how beneficial it would be to have your own domain name, your hard work may be out the window.
  5. Overcrowded Servers. This leads to slow load time for pages and increased downtime for your site. Of course, both of these issues can have a serious negative impact on the growth and profitability of your business.
  6. Poor Customer Service. Another major issue with free hosting services is that they offer little to nothing in the way of customer support. If there is a problem with your site, you will have a very hard time contacting anyone to help resolve it. Every minute your site is down carries with it a huge opportunity cost in terms of frustrated customers and lost sales.

Based on this list, you can see that “you get what you pay for” with free hosting services. Instead, consider quality web hosting an important investment into your business – one that will continue to yield positive results for your business long into the future.

Tips to Choose the Best Business Web Hosting Platform

Are you thinking of taking your business to more potential customers rather than confining to the walls of the shop? Websites are the fastest and easiest way to reach a larger crowd. But to start and maintain one, you should approach a business web hosting company.

Whether you own a big business or your business budget is low, creating your own online platform is considered as the basic promotion nowadays. Most of the potential customers love to shop at home, where they can get their needs delivered to their doorsteps. So the website plays a vital role in the growth of your business and to get great customer satisfaction you should maintain them properly. This job is done by a business web hosting company.

Web hosting is a service provider for your website, where they store and maintain your files, documents, etc. There are diversified options for selecting a web hosting for your business. But basic thing to keep in mind is the type of business you own. Whether you own a big business and can afford good budget web hosting or you are in need of a more affordable choice. Also, consider what you expect your website to provide your customers with.

Commonly found types of web hosting are; shared, dedicated, VPS and cloud hosting. Shared hosting is the cheapest and has less disk space. As the name suggests, more than one website share a single server. They are better for new websites, as they are cheap and such websites may not expect a larger customer traffic.

Dedicated hosting offers a single server for your website and thus provide a larger disk space. They cost big than shared and other types, so it is best for big-budget businesses. They can handle customer traffic and better website tools as they have greater ranges. VPS and cloud type are a combination of both shared and dedicated hosting.

While choosing the web hosting company, check out whether they provide the following features.

  • The bandwidth and disk space they can provide for your budget: All your documents, website pages, your expectation of the number of customers who approach your website, all depends on the space your host offer. For customers to access every element of your website without any lag and traffic, you are going to need a decent range.
  • Compatibility and reliability: Make sure that the web hosting platform you approach has a higher availability rate which can also be termed as uptime. You don’t want to upset your customers by keeping your website unreachable or unavailable at times.
  • The security they offer is also important to keep your website away from malware and viruses.
  • 24*7 customer support is a vital feature of a reliable business web hosting company can offer. Customers may even search for their need at late night, so it is better your website is available the whole day.

Shockingly Good Support From a Hosting Company – Worth Shouting About

In 1998 I started a small (miserably so) online business and had my first experience with selecting a hosting company. Back then it was really no big deal because mine was way too small a business to have many hosting needs and in those early times there was less competition amongst hosting companies. About all I was concerned about was having adequate storage space. Traffic wasn’t even an issue. Still, I ran into unexpected difficulties and soon learned that even very small businesses have to be concerned with more than just disk space. Support was the detail I hadn’t considered.

That first experience soured me somewhat because I learned that it can be like pulling teeth to get support from a company that doesn’t take this aspect of business seriously. The company I first hosted with turned out to be located in someone’s home — a fact that was never divulged in the advertising. The man was nice enough, and he tried very hard to accommodate me as long as my support questions came about on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., his time. Even then, he did not impress me with his level of expertise.

I have since been through no less than six moves, and until this last one, not one of them were easy to tolerate. If I remember correctly, the second hosting company I tried had a penchant for going offline way too many times, and attempts to get support were frustrating. An eCommerce site cannot afford to be available to customers only on occasion. By this time my business had grown somewhat and I had become very sensitive to this aspect. It was a sour experience and I remained with the company for less than a year.

Next came a well publicized hosting company that had received some good reviews — though I’m still a little suspicious of so-called reviews one finds online — and while the initial move went well, I had ongoing problems with connectivity and, again, a horrible time getting support. For one thing, there was no phone support at all. Everything had to submitted via a support ticket. This is fairly common, I’ve found, and there is nothing inherently wrong with support tickets, unless they are slow to be addressed and there is no alternative route to Support. Also, there was a most obvious language barrier which led me to believe “Support” was located off-shore. I am certainly not racist, but I believe it is mandatory that both parties are able to understand each other for anything constructive to happen. It was ugly.

The next experience was awful, more so than any other, because after a few months of reasonably adequate hosting the company I had moved to simply went out of business, with absolutely no prior warning. This was so bad word spread throughout the Internet and it became a well known debacle.

Skip to my most recent forced move. The host company I have been with for the last three years, I will say, has been a good host. It shall go un-named because I have no malice toward it. I had to move because, as an eCommerce site, I am compelled to show that I am PCI compliant in order to continue accepting credit cards via the Internet. This fairly new security measure is one I applaud, as it goes a long way to giving the buying public the kind of hard and fast security that has been lacking up to now, but because my hosting company was either unable or unwilling to provide a PCI compliant environment I was forced to find a new host. I imagine there are thousands of businesses scrambling to find hosting companies that will meet this need, which is one of the reasons I decided to write this article.

I found TVCnet.com as a result of being referred to them by McAfee Secure, a well known company that provides online businesses with security scanning and certification. They told me TVCnet.com was one of the very few hosting companies they felt comfortable recommending. When I looked at the available packages this hosting firm offers, I have to say I was not blown away. The packages are fairly small, but the pricing is also very affordable. The BIG plus was that they obviously put themselves forward as the leader in striving to be, and stay, PCI compliant for the sake of all their eCommerce customers. I decided to give them a try. My expectations were low until I called the phone number on the TVCnet.com home page . . . and got the owner!

Not only did Jim Walker answer my questions, he did so with candor, amicability and enthusiasm. He did not over sell. In fact he went out of his way to make sure I knew exactly what the company could do and what not to expect. There was precious little of the latter. I didn’t keep him on the phone, he kept me on. For over twenty minutes he spoke with me and would not hang up until he knew every one of my questions and concerns had been answered. Result was that I signed up an hour later, via the online process. Still . . . I knew not to expect an easy transition. There was a shopping cart that had to work, a Linkpoint gateway that had to work, and several other site functions, including installation of my privately owned SSL cert, that had to go well. I crossed my fingers and waited, while Jim and his support team handed everything. I didn’t have to upload a single file. My entire site was moved from the current host to TVC and every script and application was handled with care and concern.

Yes, there were problems. My payment gateway to Linkpoint refused to install properly and I fully expected this to take days to fix. But Jim, himself, stayed at it on into the weekend without interruption until it was done and working flawlessly. We exchanged dozens of emails (less expensive than phone time and email affords a record of the process that can be saved), and all I had to do was provide him with access information to various sources where he knew he could find the information he needed.

Jim does not know I’m writing this article. I am doing this because, quite simply, I am blown away by the seriously impressive support — no, let’s make that Support with a capitol ‘S’ — that TVCnet.com provided to me. Others need to know about this company. Hopefully, this article will make the road less bumpy for others who are compelled to find PCI compliant hosting, and for anyone with any sort of web site who would like to be hosted by an intelligent, helpful and friendly company.

VPS Hosting – What Is Web Hosting?

Have an established business? Considering starting your own website to help promote your product? You also should start to consider finding a web hosting service. Before you take the dive it is important to know what exactly web hosting is. Web hosting is basically the leasing of space on a web server. A web server is set up with software that sends and receives files stored on it. When web hosting is purchased, it is basically for a monthly maintenance fee and upgrading along with multiple other things. If you are starting your own web page, it is important to decide which will best suit your needs: a shared server, a dedicated server or would you be better off with VPS hosting?

Most websites are run on a shared server. The server is split among clients which helps keep the cost down. This is the most cost effective way to start a website. Each client is allowed a certain amount of resources depending on the package they purchase. Those with websites that are more powerful mainly use dedicated hosting. These are the websites that generate a lot of traffic or are more powerful than the smaller web pages. The shared server is less expensive but it is “shared.” For those that require a bit more out of their server but not quite ready for a dedicated server may choose VPS hosting.

VPS hosting is an intermediary between the shared server and the dedicated server. It is still a shared system but it has been partitioned which gives each website more individual control over their page. This type of hosting is more expensive than the shared hosting but less expensive than the dedicated hosting. If you are ready to have more control but not technologically advanced enough to have total control this might be a good option for you.

When you are looking for a web hosting service it is important to consider what exactly it is you page needs. Consider the amount of bandwidth you will need as well as how much memory capacity you will need. If your business is growing then you should grow your business to accommodate your viewers or customers. Change is a good thing especially when it is moving in the right direction. Business growth is definitely a positive change so if your business is moving in the right direction VPS hosting just might be the accommodating upgrade you need.

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