People in the UK love using the internet!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2018,\u00a090% of UK adults reported recent use of the internet<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition,\u00a087% of all UK retail purchases were done online<\/a>, with an average purchase of around \u00a333 per transaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It goes without saying nowadays that every small, medium or large UK business needs to have an online presence & at the very least will need\u00a0business email hosting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, relying solely on third-party shopfronts like eBay & Amazon isn\u2019t a good long-term solution for your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They can shut your online shop down at any time & often without recourse or notice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This can be because of a change of terms, complaints, delayed shipping, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The effect can be devastating to your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus you should always ensure you have your own, actively promoted, business website hosting<\/a> in place, so you\u2019re not totally reliant on a 3rd party for your online digital presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are also some proprietary online eCommerce shopping solutions such as Shopify, Weebly, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the catch with these services is the very fact that they are proprietary & expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re therefore locked into their service & will find it very difficult to move to another provider if they increase prices, provide poor service, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Choosing the right hosting provider & technical solution for your requirements is critical to ensuring the long-term success of your online business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When choosing a web & email hosting<\/a> solution, the main areas of concern for your business, in order of importance are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, price is the least important!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most small to medium business hosting solutions don\u2019t vary much in price & aren\u2019t very expensive when compared to other business expenses such as rent, business rates, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As with any other service or product, the cheapest solution often seems irresistible, but no doubt comes with drawbacks with regards reliability, performance, compatibility & support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reliability<\/p>\n\n\n\n For reliability, small to medium businesses should be looking for some type of cloud hosting service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This normally implies that the hosting provider has multiple servers configured in what is known as a cluster, with resilient, multipath networking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a cluster, multiple servers can perform the same tasks with some taking on the roles of compute and others for storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This ensures there is no single point of failure for the services provided & offers maximum availability for your business website & email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You should always check with your provider\u2019s technical team exactly what they mean by \u2018cloud hosting\u2019, as this term is much abused in the hosting industry & can mean different things to different providers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Farbyte we provide industry-leading clustered cloud hosting services, with separate compute and storage clusters, ensuring maximum uptime and availability for all hosted services including web, email & VPS hosting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your website needs to be online & doing its job 24\/7. Take any doubt out of the equation by choosing Farbyte cloud hosting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Performance<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your website runs slow, it causes two major issues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both of the above will cause you to lose business!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although not many hosting providers tell you this, the main hardware components that will affect the speed of your hosting service is normally disk storage access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Traditionally, disks are the slowest component in the server, with access times 1,000\u2019s times slower than RAM. Slow disks will affect your sites ability to read files, emails, database information, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With shared & VPS hosting you won\u2019t be the only one wanting to access the storage. There can be many other websites also requiring access at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A hosting service should at least be using some sort of SSD & RAM caching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Farbyte we use enterprise-class Intel Optane disks & CEPH distributed storage cluster across a dedicated Infiniband network for maximum performance. This really is enterprise-level service at small business prices!<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also employ servers with huge amounts of RAM (around 128GB on average). This means we can cache more of our client’s data, pushing performance even higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Farbyte, we outperform other hosting providers by a long way in every aspect. For example, our average shared web hosting client enjoys a Time To First Byte (TTFB) of 88ms, which is 24x faster than both the 2018 UK & USA hosting industry average!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Compatibility<\/p>\n\n\n\n Getting locked into a service providers \u2018system\u2019 is a scary prospect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If they suddenly decide to increase prices, change their terms, go bust, get bought out or provide poor support\/performance, there is little you can do, other than start all over again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Farbyte our hosting is based on industry-standard services such as PHP, MySQL, Apache, etc. so you\u2019re never locked into staying with us if you\u2019re unhappy\u2026 but that should never be the case, as we strive to make sure you\u2019re always happy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n We recommend that businesses use industry-standard, open-source solutions for their website systems that are based on & compatible with the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some examples are of web software are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The above is just a small selection of software that can be used on Farbyte\u2019s industry-standard, non-proprietary hosting service & all can be hosted on any standard hosting LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We even offer specialised WordPress hosting<\/a>, that automatically updates your website, takes backups, uses high-performance server caching & much more!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Support<\/p>\n\n\n\n A service provider’s support is something you hope you’ll never need, but invariably will at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A good support system should include at minimum the following ways to contact them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A support ticket system is preferred, as it\u2019s more secure than others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We don\u2019t recommend phone support as it\u2019s time-consuming, difficult to audit & keep secure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s essential that staff know what they’re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having experienced support staff available when you need them is something that we excel in at Farbyte.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Farbyte\u2019s support staff are experts in the industry, with many years my experience behind them providing support via our email, ticket & live chat service throughout the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Price<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, we come to the item that many customers seem to focus on first\u2026 price!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although we all want value for money & to pay as little as possible for something, we believe price should only be considered after you\u2019ve ensured that a hosting provider satisfies your requirements for reliability\/availability, performance, compatibility & support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this point, you should have a shortlist of suitable hosting providers & you can then sort them by price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully, Farbyte being at the top of the list!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shared vs Virtual Private Server (VPS)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This really depends on the following criteria:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you answer \u2018yes\u2019 to any of the above, you should probably consider getting a VPS, otherwise, a shared hosting service should be fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re not sure which would be best for you, try talking to your preferred hosting provider to find out what they suggest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you don\u2019t have the skills or time to administer the server yourself, you should go for a managed VPS<\/a>, where most of the admin work is done for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regards to both shared hosting & VPS there are some common features you should also consider:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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