How much does Web hosting cost for a small-sized business?

How much does Web hosting cost for a small-sized business?

Before getting a website, a small business owner needs hundreds of questions, going through his mind, to get answered. It all starts with checking for a business plan. Then, determining the budget and how much the web hosting will cost. The main point is to decide what kind of hosting platform will suit your business requirements and if you need some assistance from a web developer.

It’s completely incorrect to jump in at the deep end and later notice that you are a non-swimmer. But, not to worry. I’ll be explaining the sequence of actions which will save your time and money, and dreams from being sabotaged before you get an opportunity.

1. Create a business plan

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While looking at the booming industries, you have come up with the best business ideas. Certainly, these ideas have made you excited and, you are just about to make it official, pay for relatively low-cost hosting, and get it off the ground. Am I right?

This approach is completely wrong.

It is pointless to worry about the web hosting cost when you haven’t created a business plan yet. A great business plan is crucial for business success. This plan acts a guide which specifies what and when to do, where to go, and which approach is appropriate to achieve the goal? To put it another way, you wouldn’t set off on a journey without deciding a destination.

Your great idea to invest time and money intelligently can make your business reach the highest level.

If you are looking for some wonderful tips and suggestions before creating a business plan, then you should go for the Small Business Administration.

Actually, if you do not know at all how to establish a business plan, there are various templates available at SBA for your help.

2. Determine your budget

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Once establishing a plan for your business, you then need to determine your budget. Here we break down it into distinctive parts:

• Determine income sources – First step is to find out your present monthly income and how much amount can you invest in your new business.
• Determine fixed costs – There are some costs that remain constant for a significant period of time. This aspect will make determining the budget easy. For this, gather your past bank statements and check your expenses.
• Determine variable costs – Business expenses that show fluctuation from time to time are known as variable costs. Such costs can be considered as a profit and, you can determine it after paying out all the monthly expenses.
• Determine one-time costs – When you finish figuring out the expenses in the above parts, this one is going to be simpler. You need to check the residual amount that whether it can be used to cover the additional expenses such as software/hardware maintenance or the unexpected business scenarios.

This whole thing can be divided into further more parts, and you can get there with simple research. Note that web hosting cost can ranges from hundred dollars to thousands of dollars and it changes with every passing year. Thus, the web hosting cost totally depends on your business needs. So, if you stint on in this portion, you are not going to have good end-result.

After settling your budget, you should move on to the next step which is hosting plan selection for your business.

3. Choose a web hosting company

Image source: Godaddy

You have plenty of hosting companies around you, each offering a unique experience. There are some companies which initially offer low and basic rates for their services and, then they increase their prices when the time for renewal comes. While others assure to offer above the rest services and rates, but they fail in the long run. Besides, there are a few great hosting platforms, but they don’t offer much products and services.

Undoubtedly, these are important concerns which should be considered during the selection. But, at first, you need to figure out that who is really going to be interested in your success? You can take the example of GoDaddy which aims at the progress of small-sized businesses.

When you are about to choose a web hosting company, you need to envision their forthcoming premium pricing strategy and not just consider the initial charges.

Only for this article, I’ll be using GoDaddy as a source. But, if you are not happy with this selection, you can go for some other provider. If you do so, it is suggested to check its features and good points more than once as every source is different from each other.

Here I have divided the hosting platforms by GoDaddy into various kinds. To help you make an intelligent choice of platform, I am breaking them down into different categories based on their costs and capabilities. Due to emerging changes in the hosting domain, I am going to address this once again to increase your knowledge.

4. How much does web hosting cost?

While selecting a plan, the first thing that comes to your thought is the total cost of hosting. You should know that the hosting cost is entirely dependable on the scope of your business. If you aim for the sky, it is understood that it will cost you a highly substantial amount. And, if you have standard goals, then you’ll pay considerably less amount for hosting. To sum up, you’ll get what you’ll pay for.

It is recommended not to make decisions based on only money for getting the hosting solution – irrespective of the providers.

In all probability, the annual costs for hosting ranges between low hundred dollars and a half thousand dollars. Remember that prices, as well as services, tend to vary from company to company.

4.1. Low-priced hosting solutions

With GoDaddy, you don’t have to pay good money to get more features. If money is your main concern, then there are great options available for hosting solutions at fair prices. Following are some hosting solutions with significant features that will not go outside your budget for sure:

– Shared Hosting: People who look for more versatility than the GoCentral can find great options at GoDaddy. It offers two types of hosting on their Shared hosting platforms: cPanel Linux and Plesk Windows. To choose, you should have some knowledge about hosting and its working, but that also doesn’t require you to be a Software Engineer by education or profession.

The important thing about shared hosting is that you have complete control of hosting but not of the parent server. Also, you need to dedicate a certain amount of time for your product’s maintenance. You can get Godaddy hosting coupon for a discount starting as low as $1.00/month

– GoCentral Website Builder: GoCentral Website Builder is the best option for people having very little technical knowledge and understanding. With Website Builder, you can get the quick online presence for your business as it is capable to get a simple website up within an hour. There are around 16,000 templates available which can be customized according to your website and based on statistical research, they ensure to offer visitors the professional appearance and functionality. The security should not bother you as it is greatly handled with encryption methods on the backend.

There are different Website Builder plans which can be chosen as per your site’s requirements. No need to purchase extra products as the plan includes everything you want.

Read more: GoDaddy launches GoCentral – A professional and fast solution for web design

– WordPress Hosting: WordPress is widely used as a website building tool worldwide. It has several free themes and plugins to offer which is used by websites to add more powerful features to it. As per Forbes, it is the most famous open-source Content Management System (CMS). Around 75 million websites use WordPress globally and, nearly 25% of them are powered by it. The percentage of its usage clearly indicates that it will never go away. It is indeed a good option as it lets you focus on creating an amazing site for your business while GoDaddy’s WordPress Hosting takes complete care of the hosting setup and management. With this, you have more time for content creation and customer relationship management than dealing with the maintenance of your hosting.

Useful resource: Godaddy WordPress hosting coupon – Just $1.00/mo + Free Domain

4.2. Mid-level hosting solutions

There comes a time when money is no object to you. You certainly wouldn’t want to lose business when there is huge traffic on your website just because of slow management and load times. At that point, your current platform will fail to handle the high traffic volume. To avoid such situation, you need to upgrade your present hosting solution.

– Business Hosting: If you are a fan of cPanel hosting environment but not ready to share your resources like CPU or RAM, then GoDaddy’s Business Hosting is the right option for you. You will get to enjoy the server-level performance without the need for management. You should select this panel in the beginning if you wish to manage a CMS like Magento or sudden traffic fluctuation. Business Hosting, together with GoDaddy’s Website Security, powered by Sucuri and an SSL certificate, cannot be provided elsewhere.

4.3. High-priced hosting solutions

When your business has achieved a certain level of success, you need more reliability, speed, and security. At this point, you should consider upgrading to a more comprehensive hosting plan if you don’t want to affect your site’s performance. That’s pretty obvious that your highly successful business generates much revenue now and a team of administration and web development must be working with you. GoDaddy presents high-priced hosting solutions for business in three tiers.

– Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting:  VPS hosting is a virtualized server. Basically, it mimics a dedicated server and is considered as a more stable and reliable hosting solution than the shared hosting. VPS hosting gives you the affordability as well as more power. With VPS, you have control over everything and, nobody has the authority to control your installations.

Read more: Why to choose VPS hosting for your business?

– Dedicated Server Hosting: As its name says, dedicated hosting is where you have the server all for yourself. In this, you have more control over your data’s privacy and, you don’t have to share the server with others. You can choose equipment including memory size, processor, and type of hard drive for the server. GoDaddy handles the responsibility of the hardware side while lets you take care of the website and its related stuff. To use this product, either you should be a server admin or have employed one.

Following are the three management styles which can be selected either for the VPS or the Dedicated Server:

• Self-Managed: The provider is not responsible for the management and maintenance of the server, including the installations of any software. The higher level of freedom lets you manage the server entirely and give you complete control over everything. The only contribution that GoDaddy makes is the accessibility of the functional physical server.
• Managed: To make the management of the server much easier, GoDaddy installs a Web Hosting Manager (WHM) in the managed hosting solution. The software will get updated automatically after a specific time interval. Other than this, it is almost similar to the self-managed solution.
• Fully Managed: In this, the provider manages the server completely and, you can focus on your site without worrying about technical details behind the server. And to avail premium services, you have to pay some extra amount for sure.

5. Important considerations

If you own an eCommerce website, then higher bandwidth is required to let more people enjoy the peak experience you offered them. It even becomes difficult for a normal site to support the high volume of traffic when it gains some popularity online. It is suggested to select a hosting plan for your website having at least a dual-core processor.

Recommended hosting solutions:

• GoCentral Online Store
• Business Hosting
• Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
• Dedicated Server Hosting

These days, the online safety of a website has become a necessity so, you should secure your site with SSL encryption and malware protection. If you are looking for rankings on Google, you should get an SSL in case you don’t like flagging as a probable unprotected website. GoDaddy provides Website Security, powered by Sucuri which is an effective way to secure your site from malware without costing you a heavy amount. So, stop worrying about site security and build your productive yet secure website!

Useful resource: Godaddy SSL Coupon – Save up to 35% On Domain SSL Certificates

Good luck to you!