So you've visited other sites and now want to see what sort of hosting bundles we offer. You're all set to compare MB of storage and GB of bandwidth, anxious to see how many times we use the word 'unlimited' in the product matrix. We'll let you in on something; the numbers don't mean anything. Case in point: while comparison shopping, we ran across one host that offered a single package. They promised gobs of storage and bandwidth, unlimited email, FTP, everything. They advertised big numbers because they, like others, realize most folks never use all they buy. In a way, they had the right idea: they could wow you with big numbers while cutting down on the confusion to you, the customer. We like the idea of less confusion, but don't take a one size fits all approach. We've tailored our services to fit most businesses. Our design services show what we offer. We've kept it simple and affordable. If those offerings don't fit, we'll get together and come up with something right for your needs. Click on our design link to see a brief description of our packages.

So what does matter?

There are several things you should look for in a hosting provider. Uptime is very important. If the server hosting your account isn't up and running, no one can get to your website. I use servers which have at least 99.9% uptime. Most of the downtime is planned maintenance and takes place in the wee hours of the morning. If you see hosts advertising  stats like 180 days of uptime, ask questions. At the rate security vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited these days, 180 days uptime also means the servers haven't had security updates in the past six months. 

You should care about response time. Nearly all providers host many small sites on a single server. That server is shared among other hosting companies. Sometimes one of those other sites gets a lot of traffic, or streams video, or gets hacked. It uses more than its share of the resources on the server, and all the other sites hosted on the server suffer. I use servers which are strictly limited regarding how many sites can be hosted on each one. If other traffic causes your site to become sluggish, I can move the site to another server. Many other providers don't have that flexibility.

You should care about reliability. Power failures can happen anywhere. Most good hosting firms use server facilities with uninteruptable power supplies (UPS), basically big batteries that keep things going for a bit. The batteries supply power until gasoline or diesel backup generators start up and provide power for long term outages. While this is pretty common to most hosts, one thing that is often overlooked, or left in the hands of the customer, is regular backups of the customer's account. This includes the website, email, and any databases under the account. Dulcimer Designs performs regular backups of your account and checks monthly to be sure we can restore from the backups. Because for many of you, it's more than a web site, it's your business.

Want to find out what we can do for your business? Click here to get started.