With the still growing popularity of the Internet, more small businesses are building websites to promote their products and services. Apart from having a professional website design, the most critical factor for succeeding on the Internet is to have reliable web hosting. After all, having an amazingly designed website will be of no use if it cannot be accessed due to server downtime.

Studies have shown that people will only take a business seriously if they feel that the people behind it are one hundred percent professional. There’s a lot of competition out there, so it should be fairly obvious why even a small mistake will have a price tag associated with it. This has always applied to business services in general, as well as on the Internet.

A lot of people make the mistake of trying to save the proverbial buck when it comes to hosting; they tend to forget about common sense when they see advertisements that promote all sorts of “bargains”. Unfortunately, the “you get what you pay for” principle is as valid when it comes to web hosting, as it is for any other industry.

Of course, the thought of establishing an online presence by simply paying less than ten dollars for a domain name and less than ten dollars per month for hosting seems quite appealing, but by going for these bargain-basement offers, your company could be putting more at risk than it should be.

How Much Do You Value Your Brand?
If a person visits your website and notices that it is either down a lot or loading painfully slow, you will have a lot to lose when it comes to the “first impression” factor right off the bat. Even more so, word of mouth can work against a brand just as it can work in its favor. Reputation management is something you should pay a lot of attention to and, if you work with a less than professional web hosting company, people will notice, at one point or another.

Once people notice an unprofessionally established website, there is a strong possibility that will effect overall traffic to the site. There is also the chance that those who visit the site may let at least one other person know – given the viral nature of the Internet. After that happens, it’s fairly easy to predict that the website will not have much success. At the end of the day, there are all sorts of fairly unimportant things that can wind up costing hundreds of dollars, which has already proven to be the case for many brick and mortar businesses.

For that reason, it would make sense to spend a couple of hundred dollars extra on powerful hosting. Think about it this way: having a professional website which manages to attract even just a few several long-term clients per year, could automatically turn your hosting investment into an extremely profitable one.

Cheap Hosting for Low-Traffic Websites?
First of all, one must see things from the perspective of a small business owner who is only planning to use a website as an online business card. A lot of people assume that if their website only receives a small number of visitors each month, a cheap web hosting company will do.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. A lot of people think that if the website isn’t receiving a lot of traffic, the server can’t go down, but that is a fundamentally flawed way of thinking. Web hosting companies all want to be profitable, and understandably so. And how can a company which provides cheap web hosting services become profitable? Quite simply, by hosting an extremely large number of websites on the same server. It is called overselling – and this is a common practice in the web hosting industry.

What does that mean as far as your website is concerned? Simply put: it means that even if your website is not receiving enough traffic in order to place a burden on the server, at least one or two of the other hundreds of sites hosted there is most likely doing just that. In other words, your server can and probably will be down a lot, even if it’s not your website’s ”fault.”

Small Business, Exponential Growth and Hosting
If you are running an online business or are, at the very least, planning to expand your business online, your ultimate goal should be to receive as much targeted traffic as possible. For that reason, wouldn’t it make sense to establish a partnership with a web hosting company that is able to support that objective for you?
As time passes, your needs will end up changing. A website which is receiving a few hundred monthly visits has totally different requirements than one which is receiving millions of them. But here’s the interesting part: even a site which currently has millions of monthly visitors has probably started out with next to none.

There are basically two possibilities: you can either keep on endlessly switching from one web host to another or you can choose a company which is able to be there for you as you grow right from the start. Time will always be more valuable than money: you can make unlimited amounts of money, but the day only has so many hours.

Does the thought of wasting numerous hours researching and moving files sound appealing? If not, why not spare yourself the hassle and choose a reliable web host? If you establish a long-term partnership with true professionals, you can be certain that:

• You won’t have to worry about your website being down while you move between hosts: once you outgrow a certain hosting plan, the company in question will be able to switch you to another one in a timely manner
• Even more so, the people behind a web hosting company that values the business you send their way will be glad to transfer the files for you. This means more time for you to focus on expanding your business
• Once your website starts receiving too much traffic for conventional hosting plans to handle (which should always be the goal of any serious business owner), a good web host will always manage to come up with custom solutions

At the end of the day, working with professionals tends to be worth it. Trying to save a buck when it comes to hosting is rarely the smart thing to do, so why not stick with the proven fundamentals?

What about Support?
It’s extremely rare to find an experienced webmaster who can say that there have never been times when the web hosting company needed to be contacted for support. When things go wrong (and at one point or another, they probably will), it’s always good to know that your partners are watching your back.

You can only ask for so much when it comes to support if you’re paying a couple of dollars monthly on hosting. If you are interested in 24/7 support, you should know that there is a price tag associated with this service. The web hosting industry is well-known for its discrepancies.

On the one hand, there are countless companies which pride themselves with the fact that all tickets are answered in less than an hour. On the other hand, there are just as many (if not more) examples of companies that only reply to them within several days (if at all).

One Size Fits All?
The thought of one hosting company which represents the universal recommended solution for all websites does sound appealing but, unfortunately, it’s highly unlikely that such a company will ever exist. At the end of the day, the business owner who is interested in establishing an online presence is responsible for choosing the web hosting provider that has the best plans for that company’s specific business model.

If you simply want a website which acts as an online business card and do not plan to do anything in order to generate a lot of traffic, a web host that is well known for not overselling (for not accepting too many users on the same server) would probably represent the smartest choice.

On the other hand, if you are starting an online business or expanding and want your website to play an important role as far as your business model is concerned, you will want to make sure that the hosting provider you have in mind is able to keep up. Don’t hesitate to send an email or even pick up the phone: explain what you have in mind, be honest and ask what they can do for you once you start gradually outgrowing certain hosting plans. Don’t hesitate to refer to as many potential scenarios as possible and make sure that you will always be covered.

Reliable Web Hosting – Close to Priceless
As any successful business owner will tell you, reliable web hosting is probably the closest thing out there to being priceless. Just thinking about how much money a popular website (one with a seven figure number of monthly visitors at the very least) would lose if that website were to be offline for about one week due to hosting issues, makes it clear why.

This doesn’t mean that going dedicated right off the bat is the best solution as that wouldn’t make all that much business sense either. Finding a reliable web hosting provider basically means finding a company that will be able to grow with you, once your business starts expanding.

Your aim should be to be treated with respect and not just given an account on a server which hosts hundreds of other websites. In addition, you want to know that your web hosting provider is reachable at any given point. Also, being secure in the knowledge that a team of true professionals is behind the company you are partnering up with is essential. These are all important features that require a higher fee than the most inexpensive web host will charge.

As with any other kind of business partnership, it’s impossible for things to work out in the long run if both parties aren’t satisfied. And that will only happen if you acknowledge the true value of a quality service and do not hesitate to pay it accordingly.

And as the old maxim goes, when it comes to price, quality and service; you can only choose two. When it comes to web hosting, it makes a lot more sense to choose quality and service over price. Since the growth of your small business will depend so heavily on web hosting as its foundation, it only makes sense to use good judgment and utilize the best, most reliable web hosting that you can afford.

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