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Posts Tagged ‘free web hosting’

Business Webhosting Making the Decision

December 2nd, 2009

Mission critical websites and web hosting. After many and many long hours and meeting the acronym named committee at your place of employment may well have chosen you to do the workup and work through to come up with a good recommended web hosting provider. Always it’s an issue of cost versus benefit – all in line with saving costs, value and keeping budgets in line. This is even truer in 2009 / 2010 with an economic business recession in full bloom. What criteria should you follow in your award or awards?

First of all determine your needs. Among the basic criteria are reliability and speed. Have a host that goes down all the time when you are running an ecommerce site is just plain poor value. You only get one chance for a customer. Even if you are lucky enough to have a bargain unreliable host up and working it sure does not create an impression of care and attention to detail that fosters and nurtures an image of a reliable business that someone half way around the world will submit payment to.

It can be said that part of the analysis and analytical problem and concern in the exercise is a lack of vendor stability. The web hosting marketplace is more than extremely competitive. It’s easy to appear large in this community. Yet many sales groups are simply web space resellers, purchasing space in a “reseller” web host account from a host, whom they chose based on cost or a deal offered to them. Yet when it comes to concerns and problems you are many steps away from the real authorities. On top of that the reseller that you are coordinating with may be simply a marketer or business person lacking real computer, IT and computerized system networking skills.

To some degree where your website is physically and geographically located is of minor concern. Many never know or even care. It is simply a matter of “Does the website load fast?” Yet one consideration by Google of where they place their “data centers” is to be nearby major centers of population or in your case your customer base. There will be a lag in time , guaranteed as your data traverses the world wide web whether it be close nearby in the US or UK, in Winnipeg Canada or to far off Bangalore India . True computerized network switches on the internet “highway” gets faster and faster each and every year and speed over great distances is not such an issue anymore. Yet one thing that you can count on , is the longer the distance traveled for your website loading on a customer’s browser , that you can bet your bottom dollar , that data transmission lag , is always part of the overall mix , and customer satisfaction levels.

In today’s marketplace and business environment the old standby’s of advertising and promotion – be it the newspaper media outlets, or TV and radio are being reduced in stature and effect each and every day. John Heppenstal of Hep Communications, a Winnipeg based media marketing specialists’ states clearly that “the four p’s of marketing are dead”. If your customer cannot reach you or your product with several clicks of their computer mouse, then you dead in the water. The web hosts and web hosting decisions that you make today – lay the very foundation and reputation of your future marketing efforts, plans and ultimate profitability.

Search Engine Optimization Engineer and Winnipeg Web Designers

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Can Free Web Hosting Work for Your Site?

November 19th, 2009

What is the difference between shared (paid) web hosting and free web hosting? This is an important question for those who are interested in setting up web sites. Whether just for blogging or promoting a cause, or trying to make money with a business, the type of hosting you choose can make a big difference in your site and the reaction of your visitors. Just setting up shop on a free social site like Facebook isn’t always a great idea.

On the social sites, whatever content you submit is theirs. If the site decides some day to change the rules, or go offline altogether, all of your effort can be wasted. It is so much better when you own your own domain and have your own hosting. If you own your site, your content is yours and you own it (except for copyrighted material, of course).

With the price of paid hosting down to reasonable levels, it makes sense now to consider it. You can register a domain for under $10 a year, and set up paid hosting for about the same amount per month. These paid packages have plenty of disk space and bandwidth allowance for most average webmasters, usually with room for multiple sites if you’re inclined to create them.

Even with pay by the month hosting being so cheap, some folks still like the idea of free web hosting. If your site is small, strictly for fun, and you wouldn’t mind if it went away suddenly then free hosting might be okay for you. If your intention is to promote any business or sell anything, free hosting isn’t a good idea.

Looking at the bright side, free web hosting doesn’t cost a dime and there is no commitment. It isn’t all wonderful, though, because somebody somewhere has to pay for it.

In most cases, the hosting provider reserves the right to run ads on your site, usually on the top or side margins. This won’t disturb your content, but can make viewing it annoying to others, and make your pretty design and setup look pretty lousy.

Other forms of advertising are often used, including popups and other types of advertising that greet your visitors upon entering and leaving your site. These are perhaps more annoying than anything.

Free hosting is for small sites that don’t get a lot of traffic, and don’t use a lot of video or file transfers. Don’t plan on having more than a small, simple site with these hosts.

A website hosted with a free provider will not be your own domain name. You will pick a name, which will be attached to the host’s name, for example: yoursitename.freehost.com or something similar. You won’t be able have your own unique domain.

Remember that free hosts are counting on making money from the ads on your site. They hope you’ll bring in traffic that will click the ads and buy something. They then make money from the click, or from the sale. It’s a great deal. Problem is, if it doesn’t go well, the host can shut down at anytime and all your work and effort is gone forever.

My bottom line suggestion is to avoid free web hosting altogether. Paid hosting is very inexpensive now, and the features and control you have over your site are more than worth the small monthly fee. If you have nothing to lose, free hosting is okay, just know the downside of going that route.

Publishing your own web site is a great thing to do!. When trying to decide on a web host, you have many different options. Find out if free web hosting is a plan that will meet your needs. Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory

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