Picking a Web Host: For Designers

This is a guest post by John from Webhosting Search

If you’re a passionate web designer, the Internet is your life. And if the Web is your universe, then your web host is your house, or at least, your landlord. It’s important to be very discriminating when choosing a place to live, and to find a place that will be just right for you and your guests. It’s true in life, and it’s true when it comes to web hosting.

Unlike the housing market, there are a number of very good options when it comes to webhosting, and you can get good web hosting for a very reasonable price. The problem is knowing which one to choose. You can’t just go for the cheapest one; first of all, you might need a type of hosting, like VPS, that is more expensive than the cheapest plans. Secondly, you’re going to need a level of quality for a successful site that you may not get from a super cheap web hosting plan. The time to figure out which web host you need is before you set up your site, not after. If you make the wrong choice now, moving your pages to another server will cost time and money that you don’t want to lose.

The first thing you need to decide is what kind of a plan you need. The three major types of hosting options that people usually consider are shared hosting, dedicated server or private hosting and VPS, or virtual private server hosting. However, as a web designer, if you’re not going to go the shared hosting route, you should really consider another option, reseller web hosting.

Web Designer Hosting Option 1:

Shared Server Hosting

There are a number of reasons you might want to go with shared web hosting. For one thing, probably the most important thing, it’s cheap. If you’re trying to maintain multiple websites, if you’re trying to come in low with clients to get contracts, this is a huge advantage. For another thing, you don’t have to worry about managing the web host. That’s someone else’s job. Each shared server has an administrator, a control panel and tech support that is provided by the web host. There’s no time lost by you worrying about site maintenance. On the other hand, if there is a problem with the server there’s nothing you can do about it but complain to the web host. That may not always satisfy your clients, and it won’t help you if your own monetized site goes down either.

Web Designer Hosting Option 2:

Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting is an ideal solution for a growing web design business. Essentially it’s like renting out an apartment building and subletting the apartment units. You pay for a dedicated private server and you sell off pieces of it yourself to your clients. Although the startup costs are much greater, this method can have huge benefits for you. First, you have total control. You can administer the server however you want, and when there’s a problem or you need to accommodate a client, you can just do it, without waiting to consult with a site or server administrator. This also makes you a full service operation. You’re not just designing someone’s website, you’re creating it, setting it up and managing it. For many clients, this puts a designer over the top. Finally, it increases your income from site creation. It’s your server now, at least, as far as the client is concerned, and you can charge them as much for web hosting as you want.

If you want web hosting to be your career, you’ll need to be successful. These two options, especially the reseller hosting option, are great steps towards making that happen.