5 Must Haves for your Business Web Hosting

While social media is being used by many to promote businesses, that still doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have your own website. I certainly would recommend that all businesses (no matter how small) have their very own site. And I think most, if not all, experts would agree that having your own business site looks more professional and allows you to promote your products or services the way you want much more than any social media outlet.

So what should you look for in a business web hosting plan? There are plenty of good hosting options available, but there are some critical features that should be included. Though these items are useful to any kind of website, they are especially important for business sites. Always make sure your business hosting package includes the following:

1. Good Server/Network Uptime
Ideally, you’d want your business site to be available 100% of the time. However, unless you invest in some type of dedicated or expensive upscale hosting plan, that usually isn’t the case. Fortunately, there are shared hosting plans that come with a 99.9%, 99.99%, and even 99.999% uptime performance. These business hosting plans are definitely acceptable (and much more economical) for small and medium sized businesses.

2. Unlimited Email
As email has become a mainstream communication vehicle, you’ll want to make sure you have the capacity to correspond adequately to your customers and others as well. Be sure your hosting plan lets you create as many email accounts as needed and that you get unlimited email storage. While you might think you don’t need that much email space, you might be surprised—especially if your business starts booming!

3. Free Backup and Restores
Just about every hosting plan you see states that they give you backup and restore of your data. But be careful. While they will run backups of your stuff, many hosting companies will charge you to restore this data. There are however some business hosting plans that will restore your files without charging you an additional fee. Of course you should be running your own backups and be able to do your own restores. But it’s always good to know (especially for business sites) that if something unforeseen happens on your end, your hosting company will have your back and restore your data for free.

4. Access to Updated Web Stats via Webalizer, etc.
Web analytics are vital to the success of any website. But business websites in particular need their stats analyzed to see what is going on and how best you can grow your audience. While you should make use of tools like Google Analytics, you also need access to your web stats via tools such as Webalizer or AWStats. These tools will give you certain information that isn’t available in Google Analytics. Most web hosts do offer these stat tools, but it’s also a good idea to inquire how often they are updated since you always want the most current data.

5. Optimum Data Center Speed
The speed of your website is becoming increasingly important for SEO as well as for the satisfaction of your site’s visitors. Obviously for business websites, it can mean the difference between a sale and no sale. For that reason, I’d recommend choosing a web hosting plan that allows your choice of data center location. This can be extremely beneficial to local business sites that are targeting a certain geographical area. If you can select a data center to host your site which is close to your target market area, the speed of your website is very likely to be much better. For example, InMotion Hosting’s Max Speed Zone technology is ideally suited for business hosting.