Are your website and funnels hosted on a secure and fast web server from a web host company that has excellent customer support?
[clickToTweet tweet="Web hosting services are becoming terrible as big companies take-over the smaller ones to maximize profits " quote="Web hosting services are becoming terrible as big companies take-over the smaller ones to maximize profits "]
There is a lot of misunderstanding about what is happening in the world of web hosting.
There is a conspiracy crafted by large web hosting enterprises that have sucked in influencers driven by greed, taking advantage of consumers.
When you are beginning a blog, building your first affiliate marketing funnel or expanding your authority site, you need to understand how to not be misled by the web hosting industry and what web hosting solutions effectively align with your needs for your long-term business success.
[If you are going through the free ClickFunnels Alternative Course here is the web hosting company used in that training]
Web Hosting Services 101
To gain and maintain audiences on your website, you need to have an excellent web hosting service.
What Is Web Hosting?
By definition, web hosting is the space on a server in a data center that is maintained and managed professionally to ensure your website is online, 24/7.
It is virtual real estate that your website lives on.
For instance, if a person goes to your website at 3 in the morning, they will still be able to access your site because it is hosted on a "computer" that is always online.
Now, these "computers," rented monthly or annually from a web host, are highly efficient web servers.
Web servers store the files and data that make up your website, so people can reach your website 24/7, are designed to be incredibly fast and can accommodate much more data and speed than our standard home computers.
They are not regular laptops or desktops that you would see in your home or office.
These servers fill entire rooms or even entire buildings, built specifically to house these machines.
Differences in Web Hosting Options
There are three leading web hosting solutions that cover the majority of online business needs.
Dedicated Server - one web server whose entire storage (GB or TB) and resources (processor, RAM, bandwidth) that are allocated exclusively to you. With a dedicated server, speed is continuous for your website.
Virtual Private Server - 3-4 websites that split a fixed web server storage space and resources. With a virtual private server, speed is continuous for your website.
Shared Server - 400 to 1,000 websites that share the storage and resources. On a shared server, your website speed fluctuates based on the amount of use at any given time from all sites on the server.
In reading this, you may feel that you have to choose either a virtual private server or dedicated server because sharing a server with 700 other websites sounds like it would suck.
There is a time and place for needing a virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server, but below you will have an exact formula to know when that time is for your business.
The Sad Truth About The Web Hosting Conspiracy Going On Today
If you'd prefer to listen to this content from the video above, play it or download it from the podcast episode below.
In the past, there were many small web hosting providers in the industry.
These small mom and pop providers built their respective companies through great services: web servers that were not overloaded and support tickets being quickly resolved.
As a result, clients HAD great experiences.
Unfortunately, big names in the web hosting world have been buying up all these small web hosting companies.
(Web hosting services are becoming terrible as big companies take-over the smaller ones to maximize profits)
And today, Virtually all web host companies are actually subsidiaries of two big conglomerates – EIG and GoDaddy.
There is an appearance of competition between BlueHost, Domain.com, PureHost, HostGator, iPage, SuperGreen Hosting, and 83 other companies but they are all EIG.
EIG and GoDaddy offer millions of dollars to the owners of these great mom and pop web hosting companies and sadly, most of them cash out when these purchase options are offered.
Once the transaction is done, these big companies move in and initiate three immediate changes.
Three Negative Changes That Occur After A Buyout
I worked for a web hosting company that was bought while I was employed there by EIG. I experienced these three things personally and have seen it happen multiple times since then.
Workforce Reduction
The fastest way for a more prominent company to make more money is to reduce the number of staff.
As a result, the support system – specifically, customer service becomes terrible.
With small web hosting companies, support wait times are typically only a few minutes, and then you get someone that can fix your problem.
After the mega-company takeover, this fast and efficient customer support is the first to go.
Wait times increase to an hour or more for support. When you finally get someone on the phone, they end up only being a call screener and are not equipped for solving problems.
You are then issued a ticket and informed you will be reached out to by higher level support via email in the next 48 hours.
Hence, if your website went down, it would take you an hour to get on the phone with someone, who would escalate your broken website issue to someone that will begin to look at it within 48 hours, if you're lucky!
Overloading Shared Servers To Cut Costs
The second thing that these big web hosting providers do after a buyout is they double, triple, or even quadruple the number of individual websites on every single web server.
This allows them to increase profits because they accommodate more clients with fewer resources.
Increasing the number of websites on a server is good for their business but not for yours.
In shared web hosting, the most substantial portion of the industry, you are sharing resources with others, based off of usage demand at any given time.
Overloaded web servers mean slower speeds which will negatively affect your website.
Affiliate Commissions Increase to Influencers
Influencers are promoting "sub-par" web hosting companies because they can earn increased affiliate commissions from lousy products.
EIG is overpaying people like Pat Flynn (who is reportedly earning over 30 Thousand Dollars a month from BlueHost alone!) to promote and recommend sub-par products that are not in your best interest.
These affiliates promote them, over other better products, because they pay-out vast amounts of commissions.
A large list of EIG subsidiaries you want to avoid are listed here.
With most of the web hosting companies being owned by these two huge corporations, you may be thinking it’s quite difficult now to find which providers offer the best website hosting service.
Fortunately, there are still companies that deliver exceptional services.
What Is The Best Website Hosting Service For You?
When choosing a web hosting provider, we want excellent customer support and to know that the server our website will be on is secure, reliable, and fast.
To accomplish these needs, you can spend as little as $6 a month up into the hundreds of dollars per month.
How do you determine the amount you need to spend?
Traffic
If you have less than 100,000 web visitors per month on your website AND you are not appearing on the Dr. Oz show next week to promote your website, then a simple and inexpensive shared hosting plan (with a privately owned and reputable hosting company) is all that you need in this stage.
When you are consistently seeing more than 100,000 monthly visitors or 400 simultaneous web visitors after every email you send, you need to bump up to a dedicated server or virtual private server.
Shared Web Hosting Service - The $6 a Month Plan You Should Start From
Shared web hosting is where I started and is where you should start too. The benefit of shared web hosting is that it is incredibly inexpensive to start.
The shared web hosting company I am using on my DIY-Sales Funnel site, because my traffic on that site is currently below 400 users at one time, is A2 Hosting.
A2 Hosting is one of the few remaining good guys in the shared hosting world. And that is why I use and recommend them.
They are a cheap WordPress hosting service but really fast!
At around $5 a month, they will install WordPress for you, host your website on one of these behemoth computers, are available 24/7 with great support, include a free SSL and SSD license, and do all of the security patches for you.
Note that you only need their swift version and you can always upgrade with a phone call in the future.
A2 provides an included Cpanel subscription that will give you simple backend access to your server.
In Cpanel, you can view and edit your files, create and restore backups, set up an unlimited amount of email address at your domain, set up email forwarding, and more.
You can look over my shoulders step by step on how to do all of this in this DIY Sales Funnel Post.
Although I've got an affiliate link, I am not promoting them just for the financial incentive. If that were my goal, I would be recommending BlueHost too!
I am choosing to endorse A2 Hosting because they are in your best interest.
Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Servers
A virtual private server will cut the shared number of websites from hundreds to only three or four. A dedicated server is when your site is the only site on your web hosts supercomputer.
My main website reaches 15 to 20 million views per year. It has thousands of pages, a membership section, online shopping cart, and a TON of plug-ins which makes it a cumbersome site.
I am using a dedicated server with BigScoots. But I grew into this!
When you are receiving visits over 400 users at one time you need to upgrade to a virtual private server.
Then, when you are unable to achieve excellent load speed times or are experiencing other limitations because of the size or traffic of your website, move to a dedicated server.
BigScoots specializes in virtual private servers and dedicated servers and will cost from $55 per month and more.
Personally, Melanie and I ran on shared web servers for over 4 years until we started getting server errors every time we mailed our list with an offer to our website.
The rush of 500 visitors to our site at the exact same time was more than the shared server could handle, and this is the point when we updated to a virtual private server with Bigscoots.
Today, we run on one of their fully managed dedicated servers that costs several thousand dollars per year because we manage millions of visitors per year…
The big key takeaway here is that you can thrive on a simple shared WordPress hosting package for years and years before needing to upgrade!
Get A Great Web Host And Build A Successful Business
I hope you understand now what web hosting is, which service you need, and the difference in the good and ugly of the web hosting industry.
It's saddening and frustrating that there are only a few companies left that still deliver great solutions in the web hosting world.
Be watchful of these as the success of your website, and ultimately your business, can significantly depend on your web hosting selection.
The web host you choose is what stores and delivers your website, the most stable foundation for a successful online business.
Get yourself a great hosting company and build a successful online business!