Web hosting for your small business - a buyer's guide

A good website is now an essential marketing tool for every business. Without one, you’ll be viewed with suspicion – like you’re not a real business!

Getting a website made is simple enough, no matter what your budget. But one important factor that’s often overlooked is the web hosting. Every website sits on a powerful computer called a server. When someone types in your website address, this server sends the files to their computer. Whoever owns and maintains this server is known as your web host.

You need to make sure you get the right kind of web host for your business. These are the main issues to consider:

Cost: As with many things, you get what you pay for! There’s plenty of free hosting around, but there are downsides, such as lack of support and contact numbers. Speaking generally, you’re better off paying a professional web hosting company for a proper service. Your fee will vary depending on the size of your site and how much traffic you get. Some UK hosts start at £10 a year.

Storage space: This dictates the maximum file size your website can be. Each web page is made up of a number of files, including things like photos. Add up the size of all of them, and that’s how big your site is. Basic web pages are quite small, and the storage offered by most web hosts is more than sufficient (unless you are planning to host lots of massive files like video or MP3s on your site).

Web Hosting Types: Depending on your requirements, you will usually be able to select the hosting type for your website. Either "shared" (it resides on a server with other sites), "dedicated" (you rent an entire server from the web host and you are responsible for maintenance), or "managed" (like dedicated, but the web host maintains the server). For most small business sites, "shared" hosting is by far the most economical and simple way to set up on the web - you should be able to get an annual shared hosting package for under £150.

Bandwidth: This is a limit on how many times your web pages can be seen. Every time someone clicks on a page, it’s another part of your bandwidth gone. For most businesses, the standard monthly bandwidth offered by web hosts is more than enough. You’d have to have many thousands of visitors a day to use up your bandwidth… and that traffic would be a good thing, right? It is worth checking with your chosen host what happens if your bandwidth is exceeded – will they stop people seeing your website, or instead email you to notify you of any additional charges?

Initial setup: Will your potential host make it easy for you to start your website with them, or move your existing site over? Do they have clear and simple help pages written in English, or gobbledegook techy speak?

Who owns the domain name? Your domain name is the address people type, like www.bytestart.co.uk. If you’re setting up a brand new site with a web host and they buy the domain name for you, double check that you will own the name. If they own it, you may have to pay a big fee to take the name away from them in the future. If you own it, you’re in control.

Email accounts: Most web hosts sort your email out for you too. But they may have a limit on the number of email accounts you can have. In most cases, you will be provided with more email accounts than you can ever use, but check the hosting details before signing up.

Longevity: Be sure your chosen web host has been around for a few years. The last thing you want is for them to go out of business, taking your website down (and probably making it a hard process for you to reclaim your domain name). Google your web host to see what people are saying about them.

Easy support: If you ever have problems with your hosting, you’ll appreciate being able to contact the company quickly and easily. This is the biggest downside of free hosting… they’re not losing money if your hosting goes down, so there’s little incentive to get it fixed quickly. Live chat is popular and a good way for reputable companies to speak to customers quickly, but cost-effectively. Very good hosts will also make a phone number easily available to you.

Technology: If you have any specific technical needs for your website (e.g. a MySQL server, Windows rather than Linux hosting, multiple FTP accounts), make sure these options can be provided as part of the package (or for a small additional cost). Most hosts provide these type of options anyway, but some are more than aware of the revenue gains to be made by providing them as "optional extras".

Backups: If your host company’s building burns down, is your data safe? The best hosts have copies of your data safely secured in different places across the world.

Downtime: You’ll know you have a great host when you don’t notice them. Which means every time you type in your website address, your site is there as expected. If it’s not, then the server is down. That’s bad for your business. No server can be up 100%, but 99.9% is possible. Ask your host for their average uptimes over the last six months.

Leaving: Times change, better offers come along, and at some point you may want to leave your current hosts. Reputable firms will make it easy for you to leave and readily co-operate with you. Check for proof of this before you sign up.