A website will be about as useful as business cards that never leave your wallet if it doesn’t have web hosting making it available on the World Wide Web. Even the best of them won’t be visitable if the site isn’t being hosted, and that’s why the web hosting industry in Canada has been a big and burgeoning one since about the mid-90s. Every single website that’s come into existence since then has someone paying for web hosting behind it and one of the things we always stress is that there is real value in having a local provider with your hosting. This is as true as it is for Ottawa web hosting as it is for any big city in Canada.
First and foremost with these advantages is faster page load speeds for your website, and when you go with local web hosting the reason you gain this advantage is because the data centers handling server requests from local potential customers are going to be closer by. That’s something you’ll have when you choose 4GoodHosting for affordable web hosting for Canadian businesses, and it will be true for either Eastern or Western Canada. We have data centers in both Vancouver and Toronto, and it’s a big part of what makes us a solid choice.
Lower prices on the service are something you won’t be guaranteed of by going local, however, but many of the providers in Ottawa may be able to offer other benefits and one of the ones that we always have for our customers are free domain name transfers. This is a very standard offer that most providers will offer to customers who are moving over from another provider. And of course the primary reason that someone will be moving over in the first place is as you’d guess – more affordable web hosting.
So it can be a multi-level gain, and there are other reasons why local web hosting is better. Some of them may be more pronounced for Ottawa, and that’s true here in much the same way it will be for Toronto. We’re going to look at those advantages with this blog entry, and what you’ll find is that most of the paths will be pointing you towards a provider like us here at 4GoodHosting. Your business deserves the best – host your website with a local Ottawa provider.
Get Guarantees
All of this is set on the backdrop of the fact a business’ online presence IS going to factor into that business. As we talked about the start here, that site needs to be accessible to prospective customers 24 / 7. Most web hosting providers are able to give customers their uptime guarantee where they are able to darn-near promise that the website will never be down. That’s not an assurance you can give casually, and if you’re not able to meet those expectations it’s going to be common knowledge among people quickly.
Hosting providers are going to be able to keep up their end of the bargain more often than not, but there can be other factors on the site’s end that make a site inaccessible with it having nothing to do with the provider. Instead it will have more to do with the types of web hosting those webmasters choose to go with. The biggest failure point is going to be traffic spikes. Having more people visiting your site is ALWAYS going to be a good thing if it’s for your business or online retail interests.
But if that means traffic spikes and you have your site on shared hosting then that is where the wheels may come loose as it relates to Ottawa web hosting. Shared hosting doesn’t offer much in the way of bandwidth for sites hosted on it, and this is why you may want to choose an Ottawa provider who has good prices on VPS web hosting too. That’s because moving to a virtual private server is the standard fix if those big increases in traffic to your website are the new reality.
Before we go further with that and the other consideration people will have with getting web hosting it may make sense to start with explaining what is web hosting. Most people will have a functional understanding of it, but others may not and yet are still about to find affordable web hosting for their website.
Hosting Explained
Web hosting is the means by which individuals, businesses and organizations have their websites accessible to anyone wishing to visit via an Internet browser. Without a web host users won’t be able to visit and browse its pages. And while it’s possible to obtain and operate your own web server, it’s not something most people will have means of doing or even the desire to do something like it that will be expensive and time consuming.
What should come next here is an understanding of how the Internet and web servers work. With the creation of a website the texts, images, videos and code of the site are saved on a web server. A web server is a file hosting service for all a website’s data. Then the Internet exists as a big network of connected computers and web servers. In the event a person wants to visit a website they will enter the URL on their browser. Their devices request the web server to send that data to that user’s computer and the code created then determines how that data is presented on their computer. Then finally the intended website users are searching for is displayed to them.
We talked briefly about why data center proximity is a good thing with Ottawa web hosting, along with what is an uptime guarantee and why’ll you want to have one when considering a provider. When a server is offline users can’t access server data, and they are prevented from visiting your website. There will also be instances where servers are slow, resulting in slow-loading web pages that frustrate users and drive them to click away. As we also mentioned, this can detract from SEO and usually you’ll have lower conversion rates because of it too
Workings of Web Hosting
It’s to be expected that some businesses will need specialized web hosting solutions based on their industry or business type. An example might be a business that handles patients’ medical data on a website and needing Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA-compliant web hosting. Then there’s the way that small eCommerce websites may prefer budget-friendly web hosting solutions such as shared hosting. Alternately, larger organizations with more data may require a dedicated server to meet their needs.
Web hosting services offer various features and technologies that could benefit the website’s performance. Some common services generally include server management, storage, bandwidth allocation, security measures and technical support.
Moving on with this look at affordable web hosting for Canadian businesses we can detail the different types of hosting to a greater extent. Whether or not any of them is a fit for your website will depend in part on the size of your site and whether it features dynamic multimedia content, but the bigger factor is going to be in what you expect to see with your website moving forward into the future. Is it likely going to be a situation where the numbers of visitors jumps considerably?
If so it may be a wise idea to skip an inevitable process and go with a virtual private server (VPS) right off the bat. Try to have some type of idea of your expected traffic volume, performance requirements, budget and technical expertise as you make this determination. With all that said, what options do you have?
Shared Hosting
This will always be the most affordable option with Ottawa web hosting. With shared hosting there will be one server with multiple websites on it. It makes sense that this is going to be a popular choice for smaller businesses due to it being cost effective. However, the practicality is not going to be there for high-traffic websites that require more space, bandwidth and processing power.
Sharing resources really can result in performance issues for a site, and particularly if other websites on the server experience high traffic. And the same will be the case for them if you have a website traffic spike. The last thing we need to mention regarding shared hosting is the increase in security risks that are unavoidable. Sharing a server with other websites can increase vulnerability to security breaches.
VPS Hosting
With VPS and dedicated server hosting we start to move away from what will qualify as affordable web hosting for Canadian businesses. You will need to pay more, but if you foresee your site and customer base growing alongside each other then it may be an expense that’s very much worth it. VPS hosting provides each website with its own virtual server within a larger physical server, and with that space comes better performance and scalability for the site and a better fit for even sites that currently have moderate traffic.
Keep in mind that with a VPS users are responsible for more server maintenance and security with this type of web hosting, and the initial setup and configuration can be more complex.
Dedicated Hosting
With dedicated hosting in Ottawa your website has an entire physical server dedicated exclusively to its data. The reason people will choose this more expensive type of hosting is because it offers maximum control, customization and performance and is often the best accommodator of high-traffic websites, eCommerce stores and applications that require more resources.
We believe your business deserves the best – host your website with a local Ottawa provider and if that means you need to pay more for dedicated hosting it may already be clear that’s an investment worth making. It will mean full control over server configurations, software and security settings and dedicated resources are always going to mean consistently strong performances from the web pages and they’ll always be loading super fast.
Security is better with a dedicated server, and that will go for customization and reliability too. The one thing we’ll mention here about them that you may want to be cautions about is the way website scaling may require physical hardware upgrades and there may also be some complexity to setup.
Cloud Hosting
Hosting a website in the cloud is very similar to having a file hosting service, and that’s because cloud hosting uses interconnected servers to distribute resources and handle traffic spikes more efficiently. As such it is ideal for websites with fluctuating traffic and demanding resource needs. Cloud-hosted websites are easily scalable with resources to handle traffic spikes and growth, and the nature of cloud servers means this type of web hosting is nicely reliable too.
You may also like the way it allows for flexible resource allocation based on real-time needs, but if you need to be managing a site in the cloud there is more technical know-how required. Another consideration is vendor lock-in, where there is more of a chance of being locked into a specific provider’s ecosystem and switching to a different provider will be difficult.
Managed Hosting
Those who need a webmaster but have no desire to be webmasters to any extent are going to choose to pay for managed hosting. In return for it the provider will manage the various aspects of your server and be responsible for operations, maintenance, security and performance. Managed hosting is often a cost-effective solution for small businesses that want to avoid hiring someone to handle the technical aspects of web hosting.
You can count on optimized performance with the way you have server management covered for you by your provider, and support will always be better too. Security is better with managed web hosting as well, but you will have limited control over server configurations and settings and the nature of the arrangement means you’ll be reliant on the hosting provider for all technical aspects.
Consider Managed WordPress website hosting in Canada too if you have a WordPress eCommerce site and you’re happy to pay more for the peace of mind of knowing everything is taken care of with your website at all times. You’ll get enhanced security measures tailored to WordPress vulnerabilities, but again there can be scalability limitations if you need to configure a WordPress site differently and you’re on managed hosting.
Choosing an Ottawa Web Hosting Provider
The reason that selecting the right web hosting provider is a big deal is because that selection can affect your website’s accessibility, user experience and overall success. For all of the different types of website hosting services listed above it’s important to keep the comparison points for each in mind when selecting a service provider:
But there are some expectations that you can have for any provider that will be independent of what type of web hosting you go with for an Ottawa-area business. First and foremost is that uptime guarantee we talked about way back at the beginning of this blog entry, and the recommendation is going to be that you look for providers that guarantee at least 99.9% uptime and offer fast loading speeds.
This will ensure that your website is accessible to visitors at nearly any time, which is essential for growing traffic and user satisfaction. And if there’s a host that claims to have an uptime guarantee but really doesn’t it will be something that you can easily discern if you read reviews of Ottawa web hosting providers.
You will want to have at least a fairly solid set of security measures that will apply to your website too. Ensure any provider offers SSL certificates, firewalls, malware protection and regular backups, as these are often standard security measures that most services provide. If data privacy regulations are part of the picture too then you should ensure they can accommodate those needs as well. Available customer support that is available through more than one channel should be there too, and as we also talked about before it should be possible for you to scale your website if you’re going with a VPS or dedicated server.
Being in the business as long as we have been we also know that backup and recovery options are very much needed too, and they’re not ‘nice to have’ features if you are serious about ensuring your website is at no risk of becoming non-operational in the event of hacking or accidental data loss. Check to see if the hosting provider offers automated backups and easy recovery options with processes that ensure that you can restore your website quickly and minimize downtime in the event of some type of incident.
These types of decisions are always going to have a greater magnitude to the when you’re choosing a web hosting plan for the first time. Here at 4GoodHosting we can assist you at any point and we do have the options you want plus the reliability and additional features / services you need. Your business deserves the best – host your website with a local Ottawa provider that’s proven for reliability and affordability and get in touch with us here for web hosting plans that are going to meet your expectations.
