Which Web Hosting Package Should You Choose?
The web hosting package you choose determines your website, which in turn affects your customers, and creates a chain action of effects.
Suffice to say, choosing the right web hosting package for your business website is a big decision, and it’s one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. The way your website performs can greatly affect your business’s reputation, and in the online world, your reputation is everything.
It’s very difficult to build trust with your virtual customers as there’s very little real-life interaction between them and your company. Trust is the key to building a legion of loyal customers who will part with their own money for your products and services, and in turn, go on to recommend your site to their friends.
Web Hosting Packages for Small Business
For many small businesses and startups, a shared web hosting solution is simple. Your site probably isn’t so large that it requires a lot of storage space on a server, and it’s not likely to be receiving much traffic.
However, as your site grows and your business gains popularity, you should see your site stats soar, with traffic increasing as your customer base grows. A shared hosting platform is not designed to support sites that receive high traffic, and you could risk damaging your reputation and losing out on valuable revenue by skimping on your hosting.
Understanding your Options
Investing in your hosting solution is investing in your customers. Creating the strongest environment for your online business is vital in today’s digital age, as there is some stiff competition out there also vying for the eyeballs – and the cash – of your potential customers.
If your business hopes to compete in this environment you have to be willing to part with enough funds to create the strongest web presence possible, capable of handling high periods of traffic, multiple simultaneous transactions, and the weight of your growing business reputation.
From Shared Hosting to a Virtual Private Server
A virtual private server could be the flexible hosting option your business website needs. Unlike standard shared web hosting, virtual private servers give you allotted resources on a server that is exclusively yours. You’ll get more space, power, and bandwidth with a virtual private server, and you won’t be at risk of having your site slowed down by noisy neighbours.
A weakness of shared hosting is that as all the resources are shared between sites on the server, your site can be bogged down if another site experiences high traffic, which will affect how reliable customers perceive your website to be.
Resources and Room to Grow
The resources on a virtual private server can be scaled up as your site grows (or down if you need less bandwidth), so if you need more space to store your website you’ll be able to upscale your storage allowance.
Virtual private servers are also a cloud-based solution, meaning your data will be stored on a number of clustered machines. This means your site will be kept online even if one machine loses power or malfunctions, as another machine will simply begin serving your data to customers over the internet.
Customers can’t access a site that’s down, and they are likely to take a dim view of any company which is experiencing website downtime on a regular basis. Keeping your site online around the clock will boost your business reputation and your conversion rates.
Next Stop, Dedicated Servers
Should a virtual private server later prove lacking in the adequate resources required to store and serve your site over the internet, a dedicated server hosting solution is the next step.
Once your site has outgrown its virtual environment you can take complete control of an entire server, on which all resources are dedicated to you. With a dedicated server hosting solution your site will be the only data on that machine; all the storage, power, and bandwidth are entirely yours to do with as you please.
Although dedicated server hosting requires some technical knowledge and a bigger investment by your company – you may even need to hire an administrator to take control of your server management – the freedom it will give your site to grow is well worth the investment.
However, the choice is up to you… For help choosing your web hosting package, contact our expert support teams today.
Reasons Why Creating Your Own Website Gets Better Results
All of this analysis is an effort to build a digital presence that helps your business grow. The best way to do so is to create a website that 100% represents your business. Who better to build your site than you?
For anyone who hasn’t created their own website before, the prospect may feel daunting. However, there are tools and applications available to make building your own website a breeze. For example, UK2.NET offers two easy ways to build your website: WordPress and Website Builder.
Which option you choose generally depends on what you plan to do with your website. In addition to web hosting packages, let’s look at each type of website platform to help you decide which is best for your next website.
Whether you are looking to build a personal website, blog, or online store, the benefits of building your own website really shouldn’t be overlooked. This is especially true when it takes almost no technical experience to build a site that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional.
Before we look at the options available, keep in mind that to build a website:
- You don’t need to be a technical genius
- Websites don’t have to cost a lot of money
- No coding is necessary
So, let’s see how to establish a great website without hiring a team of developers, spending a lot of money, or stressing out.
Website Builder
Each year, more and more users turn to website builders to create their next website. The drag-and-drop functionality quickly converts your vision into a real live website. In less than an hour, your idea can be online and ready to go. Website Builder from UK2.NET offers three package sizes that vary from personal website to booming online enterprise.
Simply choose a template from the 160+ options and start adding your content. With built-in SEO support, Website Builder can help you focus on organic traffic and on-page social media buttons. Each package includes a domain, professional email, and 24-hour support. Our technical experts are a call or chat away to help you solve your website issues, should they arise.
Online Shop Builder
If you are looking to quickly and easily open an online shop or ecommerce website, UK2.NET has a Website Builder especially for you. Our Online Shop Builder features convenient drag-and-drop functionality but also includes inventory management, a payment portal, store analytics, and SEO support. Simply choose the size of your store and add your products to open up shop.
WordPress
WordPress is a world-leading content management system (CMS) and is currently used to support 75 million websites. Estimates say that 30% of published websites use WordPress. That’s a lot of websites!
WordPress is so widely used because it supports such a wide variety of purposes. From blogs to portfolios and businesses to forums, WordPress can help get you online. WordPress is just a quick download away and features thousands of templates. Because WordPress is open-source software, tech geniuses from around the world are busy at work building templates and widgets to support your WordPress adventure.
While many available templates found online have an extra fee, the functionality available is well worth the money. WordPress Hosting from UK2.NET includes the 24-hour support our clients love, as well as a free domain and additional security. Simply choose the package size that meets your needs and you will be on your way to having an amazing, professional website up and running.
Advantages of Building your Own Website
Simply put, building your own website saves you money. Successful websites don’t have to be run by a team of developers. Anyone with the desire to build can find the tools and software necessary to create an aesthetically pleasing and fully functional website. Once built, you will understand your website inside and out. Easily make changes and improvements without an additional fee or frustrating waiting periods. Once built, your website will truly belong to you, and you will be a completely self-supporting digital enterprise. What could possibly hold you back
Why Choose UK2.NET?
Creating a website is an exciting process. Deciding what to include and what to leave out, sourcing images, writing on-page content…it’s easy to get lost in the details.
Amid these debates over fonts and background images, many people overlook the practical aspects of actually hosting a site. After all, that collection of HTML and JPG files won’t be publicly visible until it’s stored on a web server. This is where companies like UK2.NET step in, with banks of secure servers capable of storing every file and folder needed to display a website. We have data centres dotted around the world, so your data is close to your website visitors. And thanks to effectively limitless bandwidth, we can seamlessly distribute each web page to anyone entering its address into their browser bar.
However, that’s not the end of the story. Web hosting requires dedicated servers in secure facilities, diligently managed around the clock by IT professionals, and kept online via ultrafast fibre internet connectivity. That’s a lot of hardware and industry expertise – so how much should you expect to pay for it?
Choosing your UK2.NET Web Hosting Package
UK2.NET offers three web hosting packages, and we’re confident these packages will cater to pretty much everyone’s needs. That’s true whether you’re a private individual launching a hobby website, or an employee of a multinational company requiring complex ecommerce websites:
Essential Hosting
This is our most affordable web hosting package. Host up to ten websites for less than a cup of coffee per year. We set aside 10GB of email storage for those all-important marketing messages and customer enquiries. Site editing is handled through the world-leading cPanel interface, while Essential Hosting is compatible with both WordPress and Drupal. As with all UK2.NET hosting packages, you also get access to our 24/7 support and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Business Hosting
As our best-selling package, UK2.NET’s mid-range Business Hosting plan is hugely flexible. It builds on the Essential plan’s specifications, adding a free SSL certificate for secure ecommerce transactions. Or simply the protection of sensitive client data. It’s possible to have an unlimited number of MySQL databases powering an equally limitless number of websites. Business Hosting provides the same 24/7 expert support as every UK2.NET web hosting package.
Business Cloud
All websites are created equal, but some consume more resources than others. Our Business Cloud service is designed for complex websites where performance needs to be optimised. Reliability and speed are maximised by using UK2.NET’s robust cloud servers, and a dedicated IP address benefits SEO and security.
