Why you need professional web hosting now more than ever

What is web hosting?

A great website is clearly at the heart of any successful modern business, and for that reason you simply can’t afford to skimp on a good hosting service if you want a worthwhile digital presence.

Web hosting makes your website’s data and files available online by storing them on servers which remain permanently connected to the internet, so that your pages are always accessible. In essence, you’re renting digital space to accommodate your site, including files such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, videos and pictures. When your website has a visitor, their browser asks for the files from the host’s server, which returns them to show the page requested.

In a nutshell, all the code and content making up your website are stored in files on a physical server.

Why you need it

Here are just some of the many sound reasons for investing in proper web hosting:

Speed

With good hosting, your website will load promptly. This is crucial at a time when people are more impatient than ever. Users expect web pages to load briskly, with many just clicking away if a page takes longer than five seconds to display. So don’t let your site slip into amateur slowness. Google also uses how quickly your site loads as part of its ranking factors, an even more important reason to use as good a quality hosting server as you can afford.

Uptime

This refers to the length of time for which a site is operational online for users. Typically expressed as a percentage, this crucial metric has a significant impact on search engine rankings and user experience, as well as your revenue and reputation more generally. An industry standard is 99.999% uptime, while most organisations aim for 99.9%. Again, good hosting maximises this and ensures people can always get on your site. If your site is often down, visitor numbers will drop off.

Scalability

As you grow, you’ll need your website to be able to grow with it. The right hosting provider has the resources to give you this scalability, being able to increase your servers resources when needed is essential.

Tech support

You’ll have access to proper support if any technical problems arise, something which is not typically available with free hosting services.

Back-ups and security

Hosting does not mean your website is automatically backed up, finding a good hosting provider that includes daily backups in their service is essential so that, whatever happens, your data stays safe and you can restore information after an attack or similar problem. At the same time, with professional hosting you get security features including HTTPS encryption, plus advanced solutions for keeping your site safe from hackers and malware so that you protect sensitive or personal information.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Without the right hosting, you can see your website slip down the search engine rankings, since site speed, general reliability and uptime all have an impact on where your site sits within the search results. Therefore it’s in your interests to invest in professional website hosting to secure the best possible rankings with all the major search engines.

Expert web hosting from SWSweb

At SWSweb, we’ve been helping all kinds of business with their websites since 2012. And we could help yours, too. We host websites for hundreds of clients, providing an affordable managed service for WordPress and Joomla.

Let us get your hosting up and running, freeing you up to focus on what you do best, running your core business, safe in the knowledge that your company’s website has 24/7 protection and monitoring. And while our prices may seem higher at first than those of some of the bigger hosting providers, their fees often soar after the first year. Meanwhile, their performance may not turn out to be as attractive as their initially low charges.

We take care of back-ups, updating server software and more, including setting up email addresses.

Get in touch today to tell us a bit more about what you need.