How Hands-Free Hosting Boosts Productivity
When you became an entrepreneur, you probably predicted you would be busy, that you would wear a lot of hats, that you would have control. Exciting! But you may not have expected the onslaught of new and not-so-enjoyable tasks and skills you’d have to juggle as you scale your business. Sure, you’d need a website, but how tough could it be to build and host your own site, right? (*crickets*) You may be ready to delegate the time-consuming, unenjoyable and/or technical aspects of running your business — we all get there eventually — so you can focus on running the show. When outsourced, managed web hosting services have the power to positively impact your business in unexpected ways. Let’s talk about the differences between traditional hosting plans and managed website hosting options.
What are managed web hosting services?
When you hire an agency like CTMH Group to build a new website, you give them the reins to install, design and launch a website. Some agencies will then require you to host the website with them and charge an ongoing monthly fee for that service. But that’s where CTMH stands out from the crowd — we do not hold websites hostage. You have options.
If this isn’t your first rodeo and you prefer traditional/economy hosting (GoDaddy, DreamHost, BlueHost, HostGator, etc.), CTMH will launch your new website on the host of your choosing, optimize it for search engines, hand over the login information and leave you to manage your website (but we’ll miss you). That means you’ll be responsible for managing your ecommerce shop and software updates, updating content, maintaining the performance and optimization, troubleshooting future website issues and more.
If that leaves you feeling overwhelmed, we get it. You’ve got a million things on your list. Learning how to be a web designer and developer isn’t likely at the top. With managed web hosting services through an agency, you can sit back and relax knowing all those things are their responsibility. At CTMH Group, we enhance our hosting service by including SSL certificates, 24/7 site monitoring, unlimited storage, access to our paid plugin library, access to our video training library, by being a resource to our clients and more.
Ultimately, if you have the time, bandwidth and expertise to manage your website, then taking the most economical route may be worth it. But if the idea of honing your webmaster skills sounds miserable and you’re looking for a brand and business partner, CTMH managed hosting is the right next step.
Does your choice of web host impact the performance of your site?
Yes, your hosting provider and plan can impact the performance of your website. With large mainstream web hosts, you are one of the thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of websites on their servers. That means that the processing power, bandwidth and memory will be shared with, and impacted by, the traffic to other websites. If one site has a huge influx of visitors and sucks up the resources, that could slow down your website.
Feel free to call or chat customer service for help… “Your call is important to us, a representative will be with you shortly. Your wait time is approximately 1 hour and 35 minutes.” (*sigh*) Or you could find yourself chatting with a virtual agent. It’s not an ideal situation.
With managed hosting services offered by CTMH Group, your site is hosted on our dedicated servers. Instead of hosting thousands of websites, we host our private clients, allowing for faster page speeds, lightning-fast response times (typically within 24 hours, sometimes within 24 minutes) and much better customer service.
How often do you back up your website?
When you self-host your website, it’s up to you to create routine website backups — add that to your short list of to-dos as an entrepreneur running your own business. (*eye roll*) So instead you pay extra for automated backups as an add-on service.
The easier and more cost-effective option? Our managed hosting service. With automated daily backups and 30 days of backup storage, our customers can rely on regular site backups that can be restored if the site crashes or is hacked. Without regular backups, your site isn’t protected and you could find yourself scrambling to rebuild if something goes wrong. That’s not a risk most businesses can take when their brand and ecommerce operations are on the line.
Finding managed website hosting can be intimidating at first, but the stress it relieves is worth the effort of partnering with an agency. The return for your investment is not only fast page speeds, 24/7 site monitoring, software updates and killer customer service; it’s peace of mind too. When you sign up for a CTMH website, ask about our managed website hosting and other digital marketing services.