If you are a work-at-home mom, just starting your home business, or perhaps looking to extend the reach of a local business to a broader online community, small business web hosting is definitely the way to go. But what exactly does a small business website need that’s different from what normal webhosting customers require?

For one thing, technical support. If you are running a simple blog and it goes down for a couple minutes, it’s no big deal. But if you are operating a business online, every minute of downtime means the possibility you are losing sales, money, and customers. Don’t be fooled by “99.9% uptime” though – every web host says they have that. What you need is valuable, trustworthy, knowledgeable technical support available as close to 24/7 as possible. Remember, live chat is great, but live phone support is better and a decent ticketing or email system is best.

Another difference is storage space and bandwidth. While shared web hosting providers can make up high numbers, you really need a web hosting provider who can stand behind those numbers and back you up if you reach them. Choose the best web hosting you can to assure you can run shopping carts, multiple websites and pages, hundreds of emails, and more. Remember to choose the features you need most and worry about pricing second – most webhosts will be affordable these days.

Make 100% sure your webhosting provider has the following features or that you are able to purchase these features at an additional cost:

* Dedicated IP Address
* SSL Certificate
* Shopping Carts
* Blogs (WordPress)
* CMS (Joomla)
* Multiple Parked Domains (redirecting domains)

Small business webhosting can be tough, but with the best web hosting list guiding you every step of the way, you can make sure you are making the right decision.

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