What would you do if your host disappeared?
I’m not talking about your site temporarily going down. It’s likely that you have backup files for your content and images. It’s even possible that you have manually backed-up your theme or template and CSS as well. (You have these, right)?
What I’m talking about is losing your host, the company that owns or rents the server space where your site resides.
The majority of hosting companies are in reality simply resellers of server space… servers they don’t own, or rent or control in any way. So what they do with the websites that reside on them may or may not be secure. There are actually very few physical server farms, and these rent out (or private label) their services, allotting their clusters as they choose. Most are filled to capacity.
And as we’ve seen so much in the news, hosting companies can be bought and sold by other, larger hosting companies, but even those larger hosting companies can’t be trusted to provide service at the same level as the original company agreement, or for as long. For example, HostGator, BlueHost and other hosting companies have been purchased by Endurance International Group, Inc.. Services at the time of transfer changed. And now EIG appears to be in financial distress. There’s no way to know what the outcome of this story will be.
This example serves to underscore the importance of evaluating any company responsible for the serious decision about who gets to host your website. How reliable are they? How long have they been in business? How well do they handle customer support? Most importantly, will they hold your business interests as their top priority?
What About Safety & Security?
Getting The Job Done
Beyond the reliability of the hosting company itself, there are the physical servers to consider. How often does your hosting company maintain and monitor their equipment? What are their backup procedures? Each data center must maintain a constant connection to the internet and serve enormous amounts of traffic (which is why no one should consider hosting a website themselves), but how reliable is that connection? What’s the host’s guaranteed up-time?
For those who host their sites with SiteSell’s SBI!, you’re covered. SiteSell has been hosting websites since 2001. Sites are backed up daily, with backups stored onsite as well as offsite by a third party.
SiteSell also uses a monitoring system that super-protects SBI! sites, completely protecting the entire server in case of attack. Let’s say hackers try to attack SiteSell servers. The 24-hour monitors spring into action and move the sites to safety. Other hosting companies just don’t offer this kind of security.
There are also other cool essential features I’ll discuss shortly.
Playing Well With Others
Comparing hosts for a site? Here’s another great question. Can you afford private hosting? Real dedicated hosting is your site on one server, with no one else’s website or files at that address.
A fully managed, dedicated server can cost well over $100 per month — just for hosting! Want top of the line business hosting? One service costs $23.85 per day! (Obviously, these prices aren’t for SOHO businesses, but I want you to see how big the playing field is).
Why on earth would someone want dedicated hosting for a site? It’s simple, and I’ll explain it in terms just about anyone can understand. Do you have a little brother or sister? Did you ever get blamed for something your sibling did? And you got grounded for it?
That’s what happens when someone on your shared server does something bad.
If you’re on the same server with someone sending out millions of spam emails or running a crime ring, and they get caught, what happens to your stuff that resides on the same server?
Right. You’re caught, and you’re grounded. Only now getting caught is way more severe than that scary look from your mom, and grounded means that you could lose your entire business. You didn’t even know your site was on a server with someone you didn’t want to associate with, right? That you didn’t do anything wrong doesn’t come up until it’s too late.
Toasting Your Success
Another reason businesses choose dedicated hosting is to protect their sites from traffic spikes caused by other sites’ activities on a shared server. Another business on the same server as yours does a promotion and emails (legally) their subscriber list of 500,000 people. Consequently the site’s traffic explodes exponentially for a day or two, and all of the sites on that server are impacted (slowed, or stopped) by that traffic burst.
I was talking with an SBI! customer the other day about this exact issue, and was happy to inform her that we have solutions to both of these problems (the legal and the illegal).
First, SiteSell hosts fewer sites per server (and always have). That feels like breathing room, right? SiteSell leaves plenty of capacity on a server to handle large traffic spikes. This is just part of the technology behind the unlimited power that SBI! owners get. Go ahead and grow your site as large as you want. “It’s Unlimited pages (no spam). Unlimited images. Unlimited bandwidth.” [Check out https://tools.sitesell.com and scroll down to the Build and Host tab].
The second benefit to having fewer sites per server is this (and it goes hand in hand with the types of sites that SiteSell has always been proud to be associated with): SBI! owners are building real businesses, and adhering to a policy of no illegal activity.
Guess who benefits from that policy? (Answer: That’s like the Homeowners Association agreement for people who want to host a business with SiteSell — everyone wins)!
To recap: all hosting is not the same.
On the one hand, if you don’t want to (or can’t) spend $100 to $750 each month just for a safe neighborhood for your site, SiteSell covers that problem handily by being affordable (at $199 per year for the first year) and includes everything you need to build a highly trafficked online business.
On the other hand, you don’t have to just scrape by with what you can afford (or what’s advertised on late night TV), by going through a cheap hosting reseller who stuffs your site onto a server with anyone who has $9 a month to spend for hosting (while they spam their hot email lists).
There’s a better way. Now you know. 🙂
Ready to build your business in a great neighborhood? Get SBI! today!
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