A Guide to Understanding Hosting

For many 21st century businesses, their online presence is the only thing that matters. Ensuring that both new and existing customers can navigate their way through the company's website with ease and find the desired information at the first attempt is crucial in terms of optimising their online operations.

But whilst the importance of a well designed website cannot be overstated, the back-end system that is in place is equally important. The most attractive, user-friendly website in the world will be of little use if it performs sluggishly or is 'offline' for significant periods of time due to poor back-end network technology.

And this can be a problem for many companies. Knowing what to look for in a web hosting company is crucial and by asking the right questions and performing just a little background research, a lot of hassle and expense can be saved further down the line.

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of any web hosting package is the guaranteed network uptime. This is a promise from the hosting company that essentially states how often they expect their hosted websites to be forced offline due to upgrades or any number of other technical reasons. It's important to remember that even one per cent downtime translates into around four days offline in total over the course of a year, which can cost businesses a lot of money. So it's best to look for as near to a 100 per cent uptime guarantee as possible.

Then there is the level of support that is available. Given how important it is to be online 24/7, having technical support on hand to deal with any server related hosting issues - regardless of the time of day - is invaluable. What's more, if you receive expert support then this can help further minimise any potential downtime through server or hardware issues.

Of course, there are various types of hosting solutions available and knowing which one is most suitable is never easy. An increasing amount of businesses are using what is known as 'cloud hosting' services. Essentially, these are large data centres containing many servers that are load-balanced through being interlinked with each other. The servers are shared by numerous businesses that are allocated as much server power as they need at any one time. This helps to prevent a website crashing due to a sudden increase in traffic and ensures that a company's online portal remains operational when it's at its busiest.

There are also standard managed solutions, which are based on a dedicated server rather than a shared platform like cloud hosting - and these can create substantial savings.

Ultimately, however, it's important to choose the right hosting package to suit the company's needs. There is little point in trying to cut corners and costs in the short term, only to find that the website suffers due to slow speeds or even extended periods of downtime. And by asking the right questions in advance, this can help ensure that online operations are optimised for profitability.

Paul McIndoe writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.