At this day and age, having a website for your business is no longer an option, but rather a necessity. No matter what the size of your business is, you need to have an online presence.
In the US alone, e-commerce sales are growing at a stunning rate of 10% each year. It is expected that by the end of 2015, sales will be at $1.4 trillion.
This means more and more consumers prefer to shop online. With online shopping, prices are lower, there are more options for products, buyers save a lot of time and gas money, and features and prices can be easily compared.
This number is expected to grow more than ever because of the increasing mobile phone penetration. Even the online business landscape is changing because of this. Mobile devices have even made shopping more convenient as they allow the user to shop while doing something else.
This just shows that without an online presence, you are losing a big chunk of the market.
ONLINE PRESENCE
If you are a serious business owner and you understand the need for online presence, then you know that relying on social media pages alone is not worth it. Though it is great to have a Facebook business page or a YouTube channel, a company website is a more serious approach to business.
FINDING THE RIGHT HOSTING SERVICE
Whatever the platform you are using for your website, you need to build a partnership with a hosting service that has superb quality. Here are the characteristics that I looked out for in a hosting service when I started my website.
Speed – Your hosting service should ensure that your website is fast. The average human attention span nowadays is eight seconds which is lower than that of a goldfish. Your visitors or prospects are so fickle minded that a slow responding website will be buried among dozens of tabs or windows.
Scalability – Your provider should be able to provide you the room to grow. Whether you are a startup or medium-sized business, your hosting provider should be able to scale with you as your business gets bigger. There should be upgrades and different levels of service available based on your expected traffic.
Types – Aside from traffic needs and speed, another thing you need to look out for are the types of hosting the provider offers and if migration is possible. Basically, you want a provider that offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting and WordPress hosting. The type of hosting you need depends on your size, speed, security and platform requirements. Your provider should be able to migrate your site from one hosting type to another as your requirements change.
Uptime Guarantee – Every minute your websites seizes to work is a loss for your business. The same with slow responding sites, non-responsive sites lose customers. You need a provider that has a solid reputation for uptime and redundancy.
Support – There are a lot of technical stuff behind running a website, and you need to have a harmonious working relation with your hosting service provider. Look for a company that offers 24/7 support across all platforms. You cannot afford to have website issues hanging around. Everything needs to be resolved as soonest possible time.
I started with a shared hosting service, and now I migrated and upgraded into VPS hosting. I am so far happy with my relationship with BlueHost which is one of the most trusted hosting companies right now.
WHO IS BLUEHOST?
BlueHost was founded in 2003 by Matt Heaton and has now grown as one of the largest providers of cloud-based web hosting solutions. In a nutshell, BlueHost provides 1st class support, affordable prices, and a wide range of hosting features that cover whatever your hosting requirements are.
In 2010, the company was acquired by Endurance International Group and went through a total revamp and by 2013 was reintroduced to the public through a new website.
As of the moment, BlueHost is powering more than two million websites across the globe. It offers five types of hosting(Cloud sites, shared hosting, WP hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting) which suit various website requirements as well as reseller hosting for the web hosting businesses. It boasts an awesome help and support team that offers phone, email and chat support plus self-help resources such as a knowledge base.
WHO SHOULD USE BLUEHOST?
The company speaks for itself with a clientele of two million websites across the globe. BlueHost offers a range of services for a novice to professional website developers and owners. Whether you need WP Hosting for your WordPress site, shared to VPS hosting for your small or medium sized business, dedicated hosting for your enterprise, or cloud sites built for speed, BlueHost has the right type of product to offer you.
BLUEHOST PRODUCTS
Let’s take an in-depth look at the products of BlueHost:
Cloud Hosting
BlueHost simplified cloud hosting and made it accessible not just for pro users but novice users as well. Site owners need not worry about data integrity as three copies are stored in different locations. This type of redundancy gives you the piece of mind and the assurance that your website will always be up.
You are sure to keep short attention spanned customers hooked to your site. With premium hardware and low-density servers, BlueHost Cloud Sites have an average load time of 151 ms.
Upgrading is as easy as clicking a button. With great traffic comes great responsibility. Either upgrade your plan or add CPU and RAM. Your site will not suffer any reboots or downtime.
You can get BlueHost starting at $2.95 for the first month the $7.99 per month after.
Shared Hosting
This is the right option for those who are just building their websites. It has a powerful domain manager that lets you track, transfer, update, acquire and administer all of your domains in one place.
Enjoy creating unlimited email accounts. These emails support third party client compatibility and offer spam protection.
With BlueHost’s redundancy, you can rely on daily, weekly and monthly backups of your account through separate remote servers. You can also restore your data in case you need recovery.
As your website grows and your requirements become higher, you can easily upgrade your plan or move up to VPS hosting in just one click. Here are the features of shared hosting.
| Starter @ $2.95/mo | Plus @ $5.45/mo | Business Pro at $5.45/mo | |
| websites | 1 | unlimited | unlimited |
| website space | 50GB | unmetered | unmetered |
| bandwidth | unmetered | unmetered | unmetered |
| included domains | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| parked domains | 5 | unlimited | unlimited |
| sub domains | 25 | unlimited | unlimited |
| email accounts | 5 | unlimited | unlimited |
| email storage | 100 MB per account | unlimited | unlimited |
| marketing offers | $50 included | $200 included | $200 included |
VPS Hosting
With the next generation VPS hosting that BlueHost offers, you can enjoy virtual private servers built from the ground up using cloud technology. Enjoy extreme performance with open source technology like OpenStack and KVM. With state of the art components, you will enjoy breakthrough speeds.
Your resources are guaranteed, and your site will always perform at optimal levels thanks for to the implementation of KVM hypervisor.
You can increase your server resources anytime you need to. Here are the different pricing plans for VPS Hosting
| Standard | Enhanced | Premium | Ultimate | |
| $19.99 | $29.99 | $44.99 | $59.99 | |
| speed | 2 CPU Cores | 2 CPU Cores | 3 CPU Cores | 4 CPU Cores |
| storage | 30 GB | 60 GB | 90 GB | 120 GB |
| RAM | 2 GB | 4GB | 6GB | 8GB |
| bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| included domains | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| IP addresses | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| support | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 |
Dedicated Hosting
BlueHost offers the ultimate in web hosting performance, security, and control. You can have a server to call your own that will meet all your needs for your enterprise.
If you want extreme speed, instant provisioning, RAID storage, root access and dedicated support, BlueHost offers maximum power for all your server needs.
Here are the prices for dedicated hosting
| standard | enhanced | premium | |
| $74.99 1st Month | $99.99 1st Month | $124.99 1st Month | |
| speed | 4 cores 8 threads | 4 cores 8 threads | 4 cores 8 threads |
| storage | 500 GB 1 TB (Mirrored) | 1 TB (Mirrored) | 1 TB (Mirrored) |
| RAM | 4 GB | 8 GB | 16 GB |
| bandwidth | 5 TB | 10 TB | 15 TB |
| included domains | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| IP addresses | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| support | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 |
WordPress Hosting
Built on VPS technology, BlueHost offers a unique architecture for managed WP sites. You can create WP sites that are secure and easy to use without any coding knowledge. It doesn’t matter how many sites you are managing. BlueHost handles almost all the legwork for you as you focus on your goals.
Here are the prices for your managed WP needs:
| wp standard | wp enhanced | wp premium | wp ultimate | |
| $19.99 1st Month | $29.99 1st Month | $39.99 1st Month | $49.99 1st Month | |
| visits/month | 100 m | 300 m | 600 m | Ulimited |
| storage | 30 GB | 60 GB | 120 GB | 240 GB |
| backup | 30 GB | 60 GB | 120 GB | 240 GB |
| RAM | 2 GB | 4 GB | 6 GB | 8 GB |
| included domains | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| IP addresses | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| support | enhanced | enhanced | enhanced | enhanced |
| security | SiteLock Pro | Site Lock Pro | Site Lock Premium | Site Lock Enterprise |
| backup | Site Backup Pro | Site Backup Pro | Site Backup Pro |
Migration and Quickstart
If you already have a website and you want to move to a more reliable web hosting service, you need not worry because BlueHost offers seamless migration services for $99.99. Also, if you want guidance and support to get your new site up and running, Quickstart is a good option for you at an affordable price of $99.99 as well.
