Hosting your site with
the wrong company can cost you countless website visitors and dollars. I learned
this the hard way, but you don't have to....
From the desk of Jim
Daniels, Owner of
BizWeb2000 and Virtualis
Representative.
Dear fellow cyberbusiness
owner,
Many of you reading this
right now probably know that I live and breathe the Internet. I've been making a
comfortable living on the web since 1996. What most of you may not
know is that along the way I hosted this BizWeb2000.com site with a total of
seven web hosting companies; admittedly far too many.
But I am not alone. Most
small business owners continue to bounce from host to host. If you have been on
the web for any length of time, your web hosting experiences may be disturbingly
similar. If you're still new to web hosting, you found this report at the right
time.
So why are all these small business
owners bouncing from host to host?
Simple... With an
overcrowded web hosting industry, at first glance there is no simple web hosting
choice for small business owners. And to complicate matters further, hosting
prices ranges from dirt-cheap to exorbitantly over-priced.
So how do you, as a small
business owner, select the proper web hosting solution for your company? Perhaps
the best way is to learn how not to do it.
Read my little story below
and this will become crystal clear. It may even amuse you a bit, how such a
successful cyberbusiness owner can learn the simplest of lessons the hard way!
My trials and
tribulations with the web hosting industry.
1996: The trial-and-error begins...
During my first 12
months online (1996/1997) I tried three different web hosting companies. They
all fell under the category of "Free web
hosting".
Most of this free web space
came with whatever ISP connection I was currently on. My sites addresses looked
something like www.users.aol/jim and www.netcom.com/?user/.
I didn't know it at the time, but my business was suffering and it took me too
long to learn the following facts about free hosting...
While free hosting is
excellent for personal, family, hobby, and "for fun" webmastering, it
is not effective for business. In order to operate a profitable
business online, a small business owner requires much more than a free host can
offer. (Things like speedy servers, no pop-up ads, ownership of your own domain
name and 24hr. toll-free telephone support, just for starters.)
If you're doing business
online and considering using a free web hosting company, I strongly urge you to
reconsider. When people saw my "free" website URL, my business lost
credibility and instantly had a strike against it. I didn't know this until I
went to the next level of web hosting and my profits immediately increased.
1997: The trial-and-error
continues...
After
moving past "free hosting", I tried three "budget" web
hosts.
Price was my biggest concern
when I stepped up from the free hosting level. This turned out to be yet another
mistake. (Starting to get the idea that I learn things the hard way?...)
After three exhausting
"budget hosting" experiences, the facts about budget hosting finally
became evident. Most budget hosting companies are not a good choice for serious
businesses.
Budget hosts usually charge
between $4.95 - $19.95 per month. While these attractive prices result in lots
of new customers for these budget hosting companies, all three of my budget
hosting experiences ended on a sour note. My small business simply required more
reliability and support to grow and prosper online.
When my last "budget
host" managed to slowly creep my pricing up to $125 per month because of my
rapidly growing web site traffic, I was beginning to wise up. The final straw
was when their server crashed and they left my entire site dead for a week while
losing all backups of my site.
Unfortunately, that
last lesson was a very expensive one. The downtime ended up costing me thousands
of dollars. But one good thing came of it. It was the end of my budget web
hosting days.
My final take on budget web
hosting? The few dollars you think you're saving each month will be
lost to sneaky surcharges, frequent down-time, slow and overloaded servers and a
variety of other budget web host problems. And when downtime is involved, you
may never know just how much your budget web host is costing you,
unless you watch your site 24 hours a day!
I've done the budget thing
and will NEVER go back.
1998: Jim finally learns from his
mistakes...
With 2+
years of trying six web hosting companies behind me, I finally decided that my
business was too important to continue bouncing from host to host. I moved to
the final tier... professional level web hosting.
I contacted a few other
successful business owners and to my surprise they had been through similar
experiences and were happy to steer me in the right direction. I should have
asked for help sooner.
I am proud to say that my
seventh and final web host is a company called Virtualis.
I have been with them since 1998 and simply put, they are the best web host I
have ever had the privilege to work with. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it took
me seven tries to learn this simple fact...
In web hosting, just
like every other area of business, you get what you pay for. Virtualis
is a proven leader in an industry crowded with tens of thousands of competitors.
Here's what sets them apart...
The
Virtualis "human" support team is always standing by
to help you with your website 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can get
assistance via the web, a toll-free phone number or email.
Their
simple website management interface called HiRize™ lets you
manage your site, right through your browser. You upload web pages, add email
addresses, activate "follow-up autoresponders" and more, in real-time.
You'll
never have to worry about whether your site is up and taking orders. Believe me,
this peace of mind alone is worth far more than the little bit
extra Virtualis charges.
Are you starting to
wonder why your site is not with Virtualis? Let me sum up this report and tell you how
you can host your website at Virtualis...
If I could go back to 1996
and start over, I would do many things exactly the same. One thing I would do
differently though is this... I would select a professional web host the first
time around.
After hosting with
Virtualis, I can attest to the "cash value" of fast servers, zero
downtime and innovative webmastering tools. I can also tell you that a company
that stands ready to assist you - any hour of the day, any day of the week is
priceless in today's web hosting industry.
Now that you have the facts,
I invite you to join our growing mass of "web wise" customers at
Virtualis.
Simply put, they offer web hosting services that cannot be equaled. I
wouldn't trust my web site with any other host -- and neither should you.
Best regards, Jim
Daniels
President - JDD Publishing
* Article
by Jim Daniels of JDD Publishing. Jim's site has helped 1000's of regular folks
profit online. Visit http://www.bizweb2000.com
for FREE "how-to" cybermarketing assistance, software, manuals, web
services and more.
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