The web hosting industry is evolving rapidly these past several years. New hosting services and the technologies behind them are being introduced on a regular basis.
The same goes for the companies behind today’s web hosting services. New players are offering a wide range of hosting options for customers to choose from. In many cases, working with small hosting companies are better. I’m going to show you why in this article.
Personalised Web Hosting Plans
We often take the size (and, naturally, the history) of web hosting companies into considerations when choosing a hosting service to use. This is not a wrong approach at all; in fact, you should always find out more about the company behind web hosting services you are comparing in order to get a clearer picture of what to expect.
However, going for bigger service providers just because they are big is not always a good idea. A web hosting company may already be catering to thousands of clients and have multiple servers under their roof, but they are not always the best when it comes to offering the best service packages.
Smaller companies, on the other hand, tend to go for specific niches. As a result, the service packages they are offering can meet specific demands perfectly. With hosting for specific apps like WordPress for instance, smaller service providers can offer better server optimisation, more storage space and WordPress-specific features to their customers.
Personalised Customer Service
Another thing I really love about working with small web hosting companies is the time and energy they invest on their customer service. Large hosting companies may offer live support the way smaller companies offer them, but you are most likely dealing with an automated response for quite a while before you can actually speak to a technical support officer.
Small web hosting companies reverse the approach entirely. They often know their customers by name and put a lot of time into making sure that their customers are happy with their hosting accounts. Getting good customer support, speaking to a person that actually understands what you need and getting issues resolved quickly are all very easy to do.
Here’s another thing that you will certainly like: on-site customer support. Yes, small web hosting companies don’t really outsource their customer support to someone in another country. The scale of their operations means they can easily handle customer support on-site. When you run into problems with your hosting account and you contact the customer support of your web hosting company, you are reaching out to someone working at the company’s office. Issues and problems can be resolved quickly since everything is done on-site.
Realistic Offers = Cost-Efficient Hosting
I always maintain that web hosting companies shouldn’t charge for the server resources I don’t really use. This is why I don’t go for unlimited hosting plans unless I really need the unlimited features.
When working with smaller hosting companies, you can expect their service offers to be much more realistic. You get a set of features you can actually use, including a sufficient amount of hosting space and monthly data transfer, databases, FTP accounts and many others. As a result, web hosting plans from smaller companies are usually more cost-efficient.
Yes, you can find a lot of special offers and discounts from large companies. However, those discounts may not affect your long term cost since they usually apply only to the first billing cycle. With affordable plans, on the other hand, you can keep the cost of hosting your websites at minimum.
Smaller web hosting companies focus more on relationships. They treat you as valued customers and want you to stay with them for an extended period of time. I find service packages from smaller companies to be more scalable in general.
Low Overhead Costs = Cheaper Hosting
Who doesn’t like cheap (affordable) hosting, right? In the recent years, small web hosting companies are beating their larger competitions when it comes to offering affordable hosting services to customers; by quite a large margin too, I must say. This is due to the fact that small web hosting companies don’t have thousands of employees to feed. They work efficiently and have very low overhead costs.
Since the costs of offering you the best services are low, the service charge they bill you can also be lowered. If you are looking for a web hosting service that is reliable, user friendly and affordable at the same time, then working with a small web hosting company that has good track records is the best option to go for.
What do you think? Which web hosting company do you like the most? Be sure to tell your stories by leaving a comment down below.
I love tech things, especially the way they infiltrate our lives without us even realising. I don’t like having to explain how a gadget works to every member of my family though!
