Small Business Web Hosting

Just how economical? "Basic hosting plans, which are the most common ones, should be less than $100 per year. If you have a website that is less than 100 pages then you should not be paying more than that." There’s no doubt, however, that features such as guaranteed uptime and ability to handle huge surges in visitor numbers will cost more. "Dedicated hosting solutions need to be scalable, and the more space the higher the price," Manzoori says. He suggests basic business-oriented hosting options at this level can range in price from $40 a month to hundreds or even thousands of dollars, especially if the site attracts lots of traffic.

While contracts for basic hosting often run month-to-month, larger operations usually seek a longer deal. This can have benefits, however. "The last thing people want to do is put their IT infrastructure into a hosted environment and then move it 12 months later," Thomson says. When choosing a provider, ensure you ask for references from existing customers, and information about the company’s qualifications. "Accreditations are of paramount importance," Thomson says. "You want to make sure the infrastructure is audited. You want to make sure that everything is tested." "A hosting provider should have very good data centre services behind them," Harvey says. "They should have proper licensing relationships with providers. They should understand what you want to achieve for your business and work with you in partnership to deliver it."

Calculating overall return on investment is also a vital step when selecting a hosting provider, but the calculation isn’t always as obvious as it may seem. "To calculate the ROI you must understand how much you are spending on IT, not just hardware, software and support, but also upgrades, backups, risk management and security," Harvey explains. "Start by identifying the objectives of what you are hosting," Manzoori advises. "Work out what the objectives will save your business or generate in sales, and link this to a dollar amount. Then, identify what the cost of hosting your website is. Finally, compare the cost of hosting to the estimated generated sales or cost-saving amount, and you should get an estimated ROI." Hosting brings some immediate accounting benefits. "One of the things we do through the managed environment is spread the capital cost over the life of the contract," Thomson says. "It all becomes an operational expense cost as opposed to a capital cost. It’s relatively easy to do the ROI."

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