Finding the right company to look after your website and emails can be a huge task. There are a daunting amount of factors and each has its benefits and drawbacks.
Saving money might cost you long term and over-spending on services you don’t need will draw your cash flow from areas where might you need it, such as marketing.
Here are 6 tips on what to look for.
1. Are they local?
Nothing worse than having to chat online or call overseas when your website is down. I always recommend you look for a local company thats easily contactable.
2. Speed
Check if their current websites are fast or slow. Ask if there actually hosting the fast/slow websites themselves or if its hosted elsewhere.
If the host is based overseas the speed will be much slower. Milliseconds count when it comes to customer conversions and also how Google treats you.
3. Cost
Check their pricing. Is it in line with most others? If it’s overseas then its probably cheaper. Which brings us back to point 1 and 2.
4. Contactability
How contactable are they? Do they offer 24/7 support? Is it via phone or chat box on their site?
5. Backups
Some hosts have no backups or you have to manually do this yourself. At Cultivate we have daily backups and they are also stored off site separately.
6. Viruses, malware and hacks
Do they run weekly, monthly or yearly scans? Or do they do none at all? What happens if you get hacked? Do they help or shoot you off to your web designer?
