In 2018, one-third of businesses did not have a website.
Your website is your single biggest marketing tool, right next to your social media channels. It’s where your customers find your brand, read your content, and they can even shop and order products.
If you’re on the path to website creation, you’re probably weighing out your website hosting options.
Investing in web hosting ensures the most inexperienced person can have a well-functioning and secure website. However, web hosting can be expensive. This is why many business owners opt to host their own website.
If you want to host your own website, you may be making a big mistake. Here’s why.
When you invest in professional website hosting, the software will inform you when you should update your website. Many hosting companies and CMS platforms may automatically update your software so you don’t have to.
Why are software updates so important? Software updates ensure your website performs well and will run into fewer issues. It also ensures your website is safe so hackers can’t compromise your system.
You have to choose your own software and keep up with the new software updates. Then, you have to implement the updates yourself.
This takes more skill than you’d expect. Installing software is difficult as it is and it’s easy to make mistakes.
To install necessary updates, you’ll need to have a good understanding of how the software works, how it can be improved, and have the technical knowledge to install the updates.
Updates aren’t the only worry you have…
Regular updates aren’t the only form of maintenance you have. To keep your software up and running, you need to regularly maintain your servers.
First off, you need the correct type of computer and hardware. It’s difficult for an amateur to know this and you likely can’t use your traditional computer or laptop. Only an enterprise-level computer can handle this task.
An essential computer needs to have the right RAM, processing speed, and operating system. Not only are these hard to find but they’re also expensive. They need to handle your constant website traffic and run 24/7.
Many experts also keep backup devices in case something occurs to their existing devices. This means you’ll need to buy extra computers, software, hardware, and servers.
In addition to purchasing the right system, you need to maintain it so it doesn’t fail.
This includes keeping spare parts and repairing the system in case something bad happens. Time your website isn’t up is lost profit — so you have to act fast when you experience website issues.
Most businesses only use local internet or internet from a major company. However, this isn’t good enough to host your own website.
Enterprise-level internet is essential when hosting your own website.
This type of internet service ensures you’re always connected and you’re connected globally. The service itself is more reliable, comes with the necessary bandwidth and the internet team will repair any issues immediately.
However, this service is far more expensive than your consumer-grade internet providers.
And there’s no guarantee the enterprise-level internet will provide any benefits. You may have to jump between different internet providers, wasting money in the end.
As a business owner, you’re already shuffling many tasks. While hosting your own website is cost-effective, you likely don’t have the time to satisfy all of the responsibilities.
You may not have time to maintain your website. But can you hire someone else? Sure you can. But at that point, you might as well invest in web hosting.
A professional requires a salary and benefits. And hosting a website isn’t a job for one person — you’ll likely need to build a team to oversee your website. This will cost you way too much money, even if you stick to outsourcing.
While the team members look great on a resume, there’s no guarantee they’re the most skilled people for the job.
Web hosting companies know the ins and outs of websites. They only hire the best and will handle all of your website tasks for you. The only responsibility you have is to update your content, products, and services.
All businesses shouldn’t only have a website, but they should emphasize on having a well-functioning and good-looking website. As mentioned before, time is money with your website.
If your website loads slowly, has constant downtime and is constantly crashing, your customers will quickly leave.
In addition, good web design is also essential. Your web design will showcase your products well, will have an aesthetic yet minimalist look, and will display your brand well.
A website requires expert coding. This code not only contributes to the function of the website but also its appearance and the way your content is displayed.
Bad coding doesn’t only mean your site won’t look and function well. Google is smart — it can detect incorrect code and broken links. This will seriously affect your SEO performance.
When you invest in web hosting, you’ll receive different website templates and themes to make the website creation and design process easy.
If there are any performance issues, a hosting company provides troubleshooting and other maintenance services to get your website up and running.
Let’s take a look at what we already covered in this article and what materials you’ll have to buy. You need an enterprise-level computer, hardware, software, and internet.
Many professionals keep backup servers on-hand in case there’s an issue to their current server, which will cost you even more money.
You’ll have to learn code, so you’ll likely need to invest in coding courses.
Depending on the type of website you have, you’ll have to invest in other specifics such as bandwidth. This is essential if you host a high-traffic website or you own multiple websites.
When you realize you don’t have the skill and time to host your own website, you’ll hire professionals. Those are salaries and benefits you need to pay for.
Even if you outsource, that’s another cost on top of all of the expenses you already have.
And what if something goes wrong? That’s even more money towards repairs and replacement. You’ll likely need to hire an expert to do this task, costing you even more money.
You can get quality hosting for £35 a year. Even upgraded hosting costs as little as £60 a year.
These type of plans come with space, traffic, a domain, subdomains, email account, a control panel, and even the ability to create multiple websites on one plan.
This may seem like a lot at first. But once you compare the costs, 35 pounds a year doesn’t seem bad at all.
As mentioned before, you’ll have to control the maintenance and updates for your website. What if your website crashes and you don’t know what to do? You can’t call support, the way you can with web hosting.
Website crashes happen more commonly than you think, even with reliable web hosting. This usually happens when you experience a major increase in traffic, are running on old software, coding errors, and running too many scripts.
Professional web hosting comes with support services that can look into your website and discover any issues. These services may even be open late at night to ensure any downtime doesn’t take away from your business.
Without a support team, you need to know how to get your website back online.
And if you don’t? You have to call a computer technician or your IT team. And there’s no guarantee they will want to solve your website issues in the middle of the night.
30,000 websites are hacked every day. That’s because website hackers are skilled and can compromise even the most efficient website security system.
They will find any flaw in your security and will use that to their advantage. Some may even be skilled enough to attack your servers, and that never turns out well.
Even huge companies have been victims of a website hack and ransomware. Who says hackers won’t go after your website?
How do you ensure your website security system is up to par? Do you remember us discussing software updates? This is the biggest factor in protecting your website.
There are other pieces of information and advice amateurs don’t know. For example, what if a hacker steals your data? Did you back up your data and invest in a backup server, fully preparing yourself for this kind of attack?
A web hosting service can supply you with regular software and security updates. They’re the experts and they know how to protect your website and prevent these kinds of attacks.
Now that we covered some of the main issues with hosting your own website, you probably know by now that website hosting requires significant experience. Something you likely don’t have and requires a serious investment to learn.
The experience required includes software and hardware experience to maintain, update and protect your technology. Other skills include coding and security knowledge.
If you’re just using this experience to host your own company’s website, why even bother going through the ordeal to learn website hosting? Put your money toward a company that can host your website for you.
Yes, you can hire a team to host your own website. But you’ll end up spending a lot of money and there’s no guarantee your team will be reliable — especially if your website crashes late at night.
Do you know how much website storage space do you need?
Many amateurs don’t immediately know the answer to this question. You’ll likely sign up with a minimum space the hosting service provides and will increase your space as your website grows.
First off, what is website space? Website space is a term used to calculate the space needed to hold your data and support your traffic online. Websites need more space than you expect.
The amount of data and your website traffic aren’t the only factors that contribute to your space. You also need to keep in mind data transfers and the number of web pages on your site and their sizes.
What happens if you host your own website, only supply the amount of space you need during that time, and later realize you need to increase your space? This task will become more complicated than it needs to be.
When you invest in web hosting, you can easily upgrade your account in case you need more space. Some web hosting companies even offer unlimited space for an affordable price.
Now that you know why you shouldn’t host your own website, you should know the benefits of web hosting companies. Here are a few web hosting advantages.
So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for web hosting!
Do you want to host your own website? It’s never a good idea. You should invest in a powerful web hosting company that will work with you.
Are you looking for web hosting? Are you based in Ireland? We offer different types of hosting for all website types. Contact us if you have any questions.
