Over the past year one of the main complaints we have had from new clients about their old web developer is regarding hosting issues. This is especially true for companies using WordPress as the platform behind their website. The main problems these clients suffer from are:
- Slow hosting
- Frequent and/or prolonged downtime
- Hacked websites causing a malware warning with Google, or full suspension of the website on the host.
- Broken plugins
- Poor email limited to POP3 boxes
- Low email storage
In our experience most of these companies are using a shared web host where they pay a relatively small fee to host as many websites as they want, making a huge mark-up on the fee they charge you.
One of the common hosts we see websites being hosted on is Heart Internet who offer incredible value for money and provide an extremely easy way to set up dozens if not hundreds of web hosting accounts.
Unfortunately, our experience is that the share host normally has hundreds, if not thousands of websites on one single computer. For websites with a more demanding theme or a lot of traffic, the server just can’t process requests fast enough. This generally results in websites taking multiple seconds to load and can cause a loss in both customers and rankings in Google.
More often than not we also find that web designers provide little support once a job is complete, they put the website live and that’s it. Unfortunately, WordPress is the most common platform for websites out there and therefore is subject to constant hacking attempts. Hackers will try and exploit the core WordPress files, the theme and the plugins. Therefore, it is absolutely vital that all the files and folders have the proper security set up, regular updates are carried out, and regular backups. Nearly all the clients that have moved to us have had no regular updates done on their website and the sites are seriously exposed to hacking attempts.
Another issue with shared hosting is the poor quality email that is provided. An example of this is Heart Internet, they provide a basic POP3/IMAP boxes with just 400MB of storage. In comparison Gmail offers 15GB, which is over 30 times the storage and allows you to keep all your emails in the cloud giving you access to them on any device you use.
In the past we have used shared hosting ourselves so we know just how frustrating it can be. We also know how tempting it can be as a web developer to keep using it, as it is cheap and require little technical knowledge to set up.
After months of issues with our own sites we realised we need to rent out a dedicated server which offers far more processing power and speed than a shared server. We also set up various other services and procedures to make sure our own websites and all our clients sites always run to the best of their ability. This does mean we might not be the cheapest provider out there but we are confident out hosting solutions are one of the best in Blackpool.
A summary of the features we offer are:
- Domains managed via Cloudflare offering protection for hacking attempts and providing speed improvements for sites
- A dedicated server using a Xeon Intel CPU, 64GB of ram and 2TB of storage.
- Fortnightly updates for WordPress and its Plugins.
- Daily backups of the WordPress Database.
- Weekly backups of all the website files.
- Regular security scans of the WordPress website to check for malware
- Installation of caching plugins with specific settings to cache the site on a dedicated server, maximising the speed of the site as much as possible.
- Regular updates of our server software, plus installation of custom features to improve performance.
- Uptime monitoring allowing us to identify within minutes if your website is down.
- Up to 10 email users with 5GB of storage and an impressive web based email system, plus up to 5GB of document storage and online tools to manage and edit the documents.
- Basic changes to your website throughout the year (up to 2 hours’ work)
If you would like faster and more reliable storage, then feel free to contact us today. If you pay for a year’s hosting up front we will happily migrate your existing website completely free of charge.
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