When you are searching for your next Orlando web hosting provider, there are a handful of options out there to choose from. Each company in the Orlando area has a unique specialization and target market for their customers so not every web hosting provider will be a great fit for your business’s needs.
Are you the right customer type for the web hosting provider?
The most important factor when it comes to selecting any vendor is if your business is the right size and fits the vendor’s optimal customer profile. The web hosting provider’s sales representative usually won’t tell you if you are a good fit for their support team since their number one job is to close deals. You do have the ability to ask questions to see where you fit.
One key question from the get-go is, “What is your normal monthly reoccurring revenue for new clients?” Most sales reps won’t put two and two together to establish that you are actually trying to see if you are a good fit as well for them since most are busy trying to establish your needs and how they can close you. If the sales representative responds with something in the range of $10,000 to $20,000 a month on a 60-month contract while you and your team are looking for something in the $1,000 a month range with a 12-month contract, you can see where you might start having issues with getting the contract where you want let alone future support based on your revenue towards their company. It is well-known that when you are receiving service from any service provider, larger enterprise companies that have larger monthly spending receive faster and prioritized support over their smaller SMB counterparts. There is nothing wrong with this from a business perspective and most business owners understand why this occurs, but does it fit with your overall business model and business needs? Would you be better off with a company that specializes in providing services primarily for small and medium businesses? The answer is usually yes as the costs better reflect the services you need without the added expenses that enterprises require from their hosting providers.
One interesting turn in the IT industry is for large and enterprise clients, they have actually reduced physical redundancy requirements for their data centers in the past few years. This is due to the majority of enterprise clients having at least two data center sites in any given region of the world, with usually three or more depending on their business use cases and needs. For an SMB, you rely on the redundancy that would normally be put in place by the data center provider since your IT budget would only allow one site normally with an offsite backup location or even possibly a small reduced capacity secondary site. Selecting the right provider for your needs is critical.
What additional services does the web hosting provider offer?
As an SMB-sized business, you do not have the same amount of IT resources like budget, employees, and internal IT knowledge that enterprises do. You will need simplified IT solutions that fit your internal IT skillsets and not something that is overly complicated. When systems are put in place that are too far out of the business’s comfort zone, it has been proven that the adoption rate of the new IT service drops drastically. The additional expenses that the business is incurring go to waste instead of streamlining the business’s operational needs.
Selecting the right web hosting provider in Orlando will provide you the opportunity to grow your business with your existing web hosting provider as your business scales up in size and revenue.
Having to migrate your IT systems, web presence, and email systems from one hosting provider to another hosting provider is an immense undertaking that costs your business time, money, and additional resources that you could have put toward other issues or goals that would push your company forward. Being clear and upfront when conducting research calls with the web hosting providers you have selected for vendor review will enable them to help build an IT roadmap for your business even if it is just a simple and rough one. This will enable you and all decision-makers in your company to evaluate how long you will be able to work with this company. Secure Packet, for example, can provide the most basic website hosting on cPanel or WordPress, provide dedicated servers or virtual private servers (VPS), while also providing Azure or AWS hyper-scale cloud solutions as your business and business needs grow. The IT life cycle is able to be covered from end to end with Secure Packet and if there is a gap in coverage, Secure Packet utilizes a list of partners to fill in any unique and uncommon gaps.
IT Consulting – A great to have
Small and medium businesses will be required to continue to evolve as technology becomes more and more a part of their everyday operations. The days of accepting only cash have been replaced with most transactions being completed with credit cards and tablet-based point of sales systems. Copper phone lines have now been replaced by Voice over IP (VoIP) systems from internet providers. And internet connections have become a requirement for most SMBs as it controls email, credit card processing, phone lines, and for some direct communications with clients through social media and other platforms.
Having a trusted IT consultant is an invaluable piece of your business operations and having that option with an already trusted vendor like your web hosting provider is a win-win. Using Secure Packet as an example, we do not offer internet connections to your office building, however, we have connections at every major internet service provider (ISP) that are in the United States and most of the smaller ISPs as well. In this example, it matters because sometimes the larger telecoms simply do not care whether your new internet connection gets installed in the 30 days you have requested and can turn into 180 days or more. With an IT consultant with the proper connections, the IT consultant can insure that the new internet connection is installed on time while speaking to the proper teams at the telecoms. Throughout the whole process, the IT consultant can also help navigate you through pricing, contracts, and negotiations that can be had that you simply might not be aware of unless you have the 15-20 years of experience our IT consultants at Secure Packet have. This can be the difference between getting a high return on investment for your IT budget or overspending on pieces which leads to you being required to make hard decisions on which pieces will fit in your budget.
In Orlando, the location highly dictates which ISP you are able to get service from so understanding all of your available options will place you in a better position to negotiate and get the best service possible for your business.
Experience Matters
With your SMB, you do not have the time to fight with new IT solutions or waste money and stress on ones that do not work for your business. This is where experience comes in. A truly experienced IT professional and web service provider will be able to steer you in the right direction due to prior experiences with businesses in your same industry and business that are the same size as yours. With experience comes those bumps and bruises along the way. Secure Packet’s CEO was a former Vice President at a global hosting company so you can be assured that he has faced some of the most complicated business issues out there while also tying them directly to IT solutions that your business may face. He was tasked with also finding solutions for the sales team for new and existing customers that might be facing those tech hurdles that are unique just to their company. Without this experience, one might not be aware of the true cost of bandwidth in the market or what Microsoft licensing should really cost you.
Another prime example is what are the true risks for your business? It is hard to really put percentages on what could or could not happen to your company, whether that is a natural disaster or something as common as a server hardware failure. Knowing the real-world examples of these types of issues you will face will help guide you through whether or not you need that extended warranty through Dell or if you need to allocate a higher amount of the IT budget to disaster recovery services based on your company’s needs. Tying these unique experiences with what risks and current issues your company faces will ensure you are utilizing your IT budget in the right spots to provide the maximum amount of ROI.
Support Levels
Support levels and support availability are critical to ensure your business is covered during the times you might require assistance. With enterprise companies, they have multiple teams working on IT around the clock so their reliance on their web hosting provider’s or other vendor’s support is usually limited unless there are large projects underway. An SMB, on the other hand, is quite different. Understanding where your internal IT knowledge is limited and if your vendor of choice is able to fill in the gaps is critical to the overall success of your business.
When reviewing which Orlando web hosting provider to choose, it is critical to ask example support questions that you have faced in the past. If you are able to come up with some questions that you might see in the future as well then you can get ahead of any support shortcomings.
Just because the vendor’s support level doesn’t exactly fit your needs doesn’t mean they aren’t a great fit. You can ask if they provide professional services to fill in the gaps. Professional services are usually based on an hourly basis and they will provide support and project-based support outside of the current scope of support for the services you currently have. When reviewing the vendor’s product scope of support, keep the price in mind because there are hard choices a vendor has to make on support levels to ensure their pricing stays competitive. If one vendor stands out with five times the support but they are the same price as the rest of the vendors then this should be a red flag. This usually means one of two things, the support staff is overworked so there are mistakes, dropped tickets, and product failures or this could mean that it simply isn’t true and when asking for those levels of services not supported by the rest of the vendors will be met with delays and incomplete work. Secure Packet has been able to acquire many new customers with our truth and honesty when it comes to our level of support since most businesses only look for a new web hosting provider when their current web hosting provider fails them.
Next steps in your search
As you continue your search for your new Orlando web hosting provider, keep these different tips in mind. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and demand answers where there aren’t. If a sales representative doesn’t know the answer, this is perfectly acceptable but they should be able to follow up shortly with an answer from their team. If you have any questions about selecting the right host, Secure Packet is here to help with IT consulting and we would also appreciate it if you checked out our Orlando web hosting options as well. We offer a free IT strategy call with no strings attached. Give us a call and we will be happy to help explore your needs and find the right solution for you.