Jun, 2015 : Finding the Right Hosting Partner for Your Small Business

📅 June 17, 2015 - You've no doubt heard before that the only two absolutes in life are death and taxes. Well in the entrepreneurial circle, a third would have to be added to that mix – namely, that starting a small business can come with a lot of headaches.The decision to venture out on your own and chart a path to success is no doubt exhilarating and liberating, and that goes double for small businesses that are the offspring of the business owner's passion (most of the best ones are). But that doesn't mean that the nitty-gritty aspects and logistics of starting a business can get tossed by the wayside.One of the first and most basic tasks in today's business climate that will surely be on your new small business checklist is getting a functional and engaging website up and running. You'll be faced with important decisions when creating your businesses website, but lost among fonts, images, layout, navigation trees, and other design choices is one that can make or break your fledgling site – finding the right host.There are a bevy of hosting options out there – seemingly as many as there are websites on the Internet itself – so how to choose? What tools and methodologies can you utilize to separate the wheat from the chaff and find a truly fantastic web hosting provider that will meet the needs of your (hopefully) fast growing business?The operative word in that last sentence is “fast” – not all hosting providers are created equal when it comes to speed. And as any Internet user can tell you, speed is key. After all, if a potential customer has to wait 20 seconds for your page to load, but can get your competitor's up in 5, who do you think will be more likely to get the customer's business?That question doesn't require very fast thinking.Here at PickaWeb, we pride ourselves on dovetailing speed with reliability and affordability. And while there are definitely things you can do on your end to speed up your website (https://www.pickaweb.co.uk/blog/35-rules-to-speed-up-your-website/), you'll need to pair those tips provided with a hosting company that has a reliable track record of providing small business owners with big business web speed. And with over 20,000 businesses and numerous five-star reviews and testimonials, PickaWeb has that in spades.There are many reasons why we've been a popular choice for small businesses looking for a hosting partner, but perhaps the biggest is that when CEO and co-founder Pilar Torres Wahlberg (https://plus.google.com/100041704600385502627/posts) was looking for a hosting company that was willing and able to do everything in their power to help a small business like hers succeed, she came up empty. Finding a fast, reliable, affordable, secure hosting company that provided excellent customer service was nearly impossible back in the web's early days, and it was this frustration that led her to create PickaWeb.The web has evolved so much since then that it would be nearly unrecognizable to folks in 1999, but the relative dearth of hosting companies that are tailor-made for small businesses still exists. When starting a business, you have so much to worry about – making sure that your hosting and website issues are few and far between should not be one of them. Your business and your livelihood depend on your website running fast, smoothly, and issue free – and when the seldom issues do pop up, you want 100% assurance that your hosting company is moving at light speed to rectify them.PickaWeb has truly been a pioneer in the hosting customer support space, especially when it comes to offering 24/7 support with real, talented tech experts via phone and live chat, the latter of which was a relative novelty back in the late 90s. As one of the first companies to provide expert live chat and lighting fast response times in the hosting space, we knew it was something that was both needed and desired, especially from busy small business owners.We centered our entire business model around the concept of always-on, excellent customer service, and that has been without a doubt the single biggest factor in helping us grow into the company we are today.And speaking of growth, we want to help you and your small business grow as well! Take a look at some of our extremely competitive web hosting packages (https://www.pickaweb.co.uk/web-hosting/) to get started, and feel free to chat with one of our online experts (https://www.pickaweb.co.uk/contact-us/) for help – that's why we're here!On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 8:13 AM, Dan Virgillito wrote:That looks great. Only one very small change. At the bottom, could we change the anchor text from “web hosting plans” to “web hosting packages” – this links to https://www.pickaweb.co.uk/web-hosting/