Small Business Web Site Hosting: How to Choose One

If you own a small business and you are searching for a hosting service for your business website, you have come to the right place.

In this article, I'll guide you in choosing the best hosting provider for your needs based on pricing, speed, and reliability.

This article is not intended to promote a provider, because it has been chosen according to needs, according to price and reviews.

To understand your needs, we need you to answer a set of questions. To begin with, you need to decide whether you want to use a CMS or static pages.

CMS vs Static Pages

CMS, or content management system, is software, usually a separate website, from where you can manage your website content. This CMS is connected to a database, and each access to the website will query the database, producing or being involved in the production of browser interpretable code (HTML code).

Static pages are HTML codes and are pre-generated once. These are served to users with the same content regardless of their requests. Static pages load much faster than those generated by a CMS, which must query a database to generate the content.

Do you want to create a business website or an online store?

Online Store

To create an online store, you will need a CMS.

Business Website

A business website presents the business, services, or products. It usually also contains contact forms and a variety of widgets such as Google Maps or Chat Online.

Does the Website Contain a Blog?

Blogging can help you tremendously in improving your search engine rankings. If you choose to incorporate this functionality, you will need a CMS.

Do You Personally Modify Your Website or Would You Like It Modified Frequently?

A CMS is a special tool designed for non-technical individuals, but many website owners are hesitant to manage their content themselves.

You have to answer honestly. Are you really going to modify the content of the website yourself, or do you want a lot of changes to it? If the answer is yes to one of these questions, then you need a CMS.

I hope these questions will help you identify your type of content generation. If you don't need a CMS, then it's clear that you can use Static Pages.

Now, let's choose a hosting provider.

Local or International Business?

Local Business

This type of business is limited to the country. I recommend that you look for a hosting provider that is based in or has expertise in that country.

If you're using Static Pages, you can choose a cheaper hosting option since you don't require many resources.

For instance, if your business is in Germany, you can utilize AWS's S3 service in the Frankfurt region. Typically, this type of service is free up to a limit, and then you pay. In my experience, hosting a static website on this kind of service typically costs less than 1 US dollar per month.

If you use a CMS, a web host or VPS is sufficient, but the specifications also depend on which CMS you use, how much data you have, and the traffic on the site.

Big Cloud companies like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform generally offer the most affordable prices. However, it is crucial to thoroughly examine the geographic regions they support. For instance, if your business operates in France, you'll discover that AWS does not have a dedicated region there.

Furthermore, if you utilize WordPress, there are often custom packages tailored for this CMS, which tend to be more affordable.

International Business

For this section, I need to explain in advance what a CDN (Content Delivery Network) is. I will try to explain simplistically with an analogy.

If you had the choice of going to a store 15 minutes away and one 1 hour away, buying the same thing at the same price, would you choose the closest one? If you are a man who values his time, you will choose the closest one.

Imagine that the store is the physical place where your website is, the CDN tries to provide a "store" as close as possible to each user.

The primary goal is to ensure that your website loads as quickly as possible. This factor significantly impacts your search engine rankings.

Static Pages

In this scenario, as with Business Local, opting for a cost-effective hosting plan is viable. However, you'll also need to incorporate a CDN-based service to complement it.

Typically, Cloud services offer a CDN. For instance, using AWS services, you need to select any region for S3 (which manages file storage) and integrate it with CloudFront (which serves as the CDN).

Content Management System

In this case, you will require a VPS from a provider that offers CDN. Personally, I would not recommend using different providers for CDN and VPS, but rather a single provider for both services.

And on top of that, the CMS must be configured to work seamlessly with the CDN.

Conclusion

Selecting a hosting provider is significantly influenced by your specific requirements. The clearer you understand your needs, the more effectively you can optimize costs