National Web Design

Web site hosting is the service you use to put your finished web site on so that the public can see it. It consists of  hiring either the whole of or part of a computer and internet connection at a secure centre. There are two basic options that are possible.

Shared Hosting

This is the cheap option that many – indeed most – providers offer. It will typically withstand up to 10-50 visitors on a site at any given time. In this option you rent part of a high-end computer for your website from a third party hosting company but you share it with up to 200 or more other sites. The cost of such hosting from a third party supplier is very low – typically a few pounds a month - often free - but the hosting company can change settings on their computer at any time which can disable your web site and typically if you get too many visitors they will turn your site off without any warning. Many companies offer this service to their clients but almost all of them are in some way reselling serives that they buy elesewhere. We have tried and analysed literally dozens of services and recommend that if you want to use such a service that you use our recommended shared hosting supplier.

Dedicated Hosting

In this option you rent your own high-end computer from a third part hosting company to serve your site to your customers. The hosting company look after the physical computer and its Internet connections, but not the software, domain, operating system, configuration, backing up, rebooting etc. A cheap dedicated server is almost identical to a normal budget PC and may actually offer less peak performance than a shared server. However dedicated hosting would typically withstand up to 100 customers on a site at any given time. The cost of such hosting from a third party supplier is approximately £100 per month. On the other end of the scale a High Performance Dedicated Server (like Hostgator's PRO servers) will be similar to a high end desktop computer and will would typically withstand over 500 customers on a site at any given time but will cost £200+ per month. If you intend to advertise or promote their site in a way that may create a surge of demand over a short period at any time in the next 12 months (e.g. if PR generates press articles in national media including magazines, newspapers or TV, or if you get celebrity endorsement or if you promote on cable/satellite TV, Radio, trade shows etc) this is the only option that we recommend. To find out more  look at out dedicated hosting supplier. There is a huge difference between support, reliablity and professionalism of even highly promoted, high profile hosting providers so over fifteen years of experience with dozens of providers in this tells us that it is crucial that you are very careful when you chose your providers.

What else do you need ?

If you have a site that is actually going to be important to your business and don't want to be your own web technician  then from our experience you will needs an additional contract to do all the things that the hosting company does not do - to fully check site security and functionality monthly and to back up the site, stock, customers and transactions monthly. You wsill also need an emergency site recovery and maintenance technician available if problems with the site occurred at any time. We offer this service at a standard one day per month fee. Even the best hosts do lose your site sometimes and bank payment providers often change their systems without warning and without this the chances of losing your site completely or finding periods when you site does not work properly is very, very high.