Hosting Information

One of the services CyberArtisans offers to our clients is hosting. So just what is hosting?

Very simply, a hosting service provides computers that are attached to the Internet. If you put your website on one of these computers, it will be visible to anyone with a browser and an Internet connection. These computers, called servers, are not set up the same as your desktop computer. Instead of being optimized to serve the needs of someone at a monitor attached to the computer, they are optimized to respond to the requests of remote browsers by sending out the pages of your website.

Most of us use shared servers, which means just what it says – your website shares the server with lots of other websites, thus reducing the cost for everybody. If you have a website that has lots of traffic, the hosting service may insist you pay for a "dedicated server," which means your website is the only website on that server, but very few small-business websites reach that status.

These servers are connected to the Internet by very large pipes, called T3-lines. Each T3-line has a bandwidth of almost 10 times the bandwidth of a typical broadband connection. And just as you can choose an Internet provider, hosting services have various providers that they can contract with. Many hosting services use several different connections from different providers to be protected in case one connection goes down. Hosting services also have to provide air conditioning, heating, back-up power, and technical support to keep the servers happy 24 hours/day 365 days/year.

All this requires a lot of organization and a lot of investment. Some hosting services do it better than others. Some offer different types of servers with different features on the servers. Our job at CyberArtisans is to worry about this so you don't have to. We keep up with the world of hosting and move your website to a different hosting service if we feel that the current service is not living up to its promises. While moving a single site isn't a big deal, moving a batch of them can add up to a long night.

CyberArtisans charges a little more for hosting because we provide "No-Sweat Hosting." Whether you have a website problem or an email problem, it only takes one phone call – to us – to fix it. We handle the rest, doing whatever is necessary, including hanging on hold for extended periods of time, talking "techie" with the tech support folks, or even moving your site, to get your site back up and working for you.