Don’t Be Cheap with Your Hosting Company

I had a client whose site went offline for a few days through no fault of their own. They called me one afternoon in a panic, wanting to know if our developer had taken down their site for some reason. I assured them that my in-house developer would never pull a site down for any reason—your website is your business and your livelihood! As a business owner, I understand the damage that can be inflicted from having your site offline for a few hours; a few days can be disastrous! It turned out my client’s hosting company (a cheap, overseas service) had suspended their site for what remains an unknown reason. It took days of phone calls and emails before we finally got in touch with a human representative from the company and got my client’s site back online.

While your hosting company may not directly impact your SEO, choosing the wrong company to host your website can indirectly harm your SEO. Think about it, your website is the center of your Internet marketing. If your website goes offline, no matter for how long, your entire inbound marketing campaign collapses on itself!

I’ve spoken with plenty of site owners over the years that want to pay as little as possible for hosting services and I just don’t understand why. Sounds penny wise, pound foolish to me! How much money does your website bring in for your company each month? $1,000? $10,000? $50,000? Can you really not afford $500 a month for a great hosting company that is going to give you a dedicated server, protect your site from hackers with a strong firewall and anti-virus software, and backup your site in case something goes wrong?

With the holiday season just behind us, the reports of how much consumers spent in the last few weeks are pouring out. Imagine if you owned an e-commerce site and it went offline at any point in the last month because your site was hosted through a cheap hosting company. How many thousands in sales did your site lose because you weren’t willing to pay the extra hundred dollars for a secure, US based hosting company?

I understand the need to meticulously manage a small business budget, especially in these economic times. Companies are looking to pinch pennies wherever possible, but some things are worth the cost. If you ran a brick and mortar business, wouldn’t you be willing to pay a little more in rent to set up shop in high-traffic, affluent neighborhood? Why aren’t you willing to do the same thing for your website?