Choose Wisely: Leverage Web Hosting Providers With Built-in Security, Storage and Backup

Key Takeaways:

• With more people spending time online during the coronavirus crisis, having reliable, highly functional websites is critical for your organization.
• Finding a good web hosting provider is the key to establishing a safe and secure home for your company’s websites with maximum uptime to better serve your customers.
• Network Solutions’ web hosting services provide your company and customers with secure access to your websites with features that grow with your organization.

With more people staying home and spending a greater amount of time online during the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, having highly functional and reliable websites is paramount to your organization’s ongoing success. As an IT professional responsible for maintaining your business’s sites, you understand the importance of providing a positive and reliable online hosting environment for your company’s customers.

It’s a lot to think about, especially when you’re dealing with an increase in online traffic and keeping a remote workforce well connected and organized. How can you ensure your website has maximum uptime to keep your clients engaged with your company while also protecting customer and corporate data from a record surge in cyber attacks and online hacking schemes?

Establishing a strong foundation for your website begins with a flexible, reliable and budget-friendly hosting provider. Here are things to look for when choosing a hosting plan or upgrading to a better one.

Secure Access

With an increase in business website visits of over 40 percent during the coronavirus crisis, having a reliable website that customers can access anytime day or night is critical. To ensure your site is always fully operational, look for a cloud-based web hosting provider that stores website files across multiple servers. This will help your business sites stay up and running online even if some servers crash and lose functionality.

While perfection isn’t always possible, your web host should be close. Your service should have 99 percent uptime to always provide a positive customer website experience. Also, make sure you have file transfer protocol (FTP) access to your files. FTP is the most common and efficient method for transferring your web pages and other files to the web host and will help to ensure a safe and secure transition.

Speaking of security, millions of hackers have been targeting company websites during the pandemic to gain access to private data. Now more than ever, you need to protect your organization from cyber attacks. Look for a web host that frequently scans your organization’s website data to identify and remove any possible virus or malware files to prevent hackers from compromising your data. Also, with more customers around the world making online purchases, you’ll also want to implement eCommerce security measures and include SSL certificates that protect your customers’ private data and indicate your websites are trustworthy.

Reliable Storage and Backup

Cloud-based storage is quickly becoming the reliable norm for IT professionals. While 40 percent of businesses currently utilize cloud storage, an additional 20 percent plan to do so by 2022. The reason? Cloud hosting provides virtually limitless storage capacity – the type of disk space you’ll want for business sites to always have the data capacity you need. An additional benefit of the cloud is that data can be easily and safely retrieved anytime, anywhere by your team, especially important now with an ever-growing remote workforce.

Your hosting provider should allow you to manage multiple websites for the various divisions of your company within one package. To ensure cohesive communications for your team, you will also want numerous email boxes so that everyone has what they need to connect with customers and vendors while also keeping their email files backed up. Having access to reliable storage and backup is important for your peace of mind and gives you fewer things to worry about.

Scalability

During the pandemic, many companies have not only experienced a substantial increase in website traffic, they’ve also seen changes in traffic patterns in terms of when people access the internet and from where. To keep up with this trend, IT professionals are looking for large bandwidth to expand for present and future needs. This will ensure that your websites are ready to handle increasing traffic and also allow you to keep pace with web visitors as your brand continues to expand.

Also, be sure you have the ability to handle seasonal spikes in website traffic. For example, a swimming pool supplier may see their traffic surge during summer months. For added productivity and efficiency, choose a host that has multiple options with various data packages and storage and backup capabilities so you can seamlessly shift from one plan to another without a lapse in website service.

Support

You work hard to provide productive technology resources for your organization and while you expect as much uptime from your sites as possible, technical difficulties may periodically arise. When they do, the support of an experienced web hosting team can be invaluable. The best hosts will have patient and knowledgeable customer support agents to help you quickly get your websites back up and running.

To maintain easy access to hosting services when you need it most, look for a support team that can be reached via email, live chat and phone. In addition, review your service level agreement (SLA) to clearly understand the level of service you can expect to receive in every situation. By selecting the right hosting service now, you will help to protect your company from unnecessary website downtime while always providing a seamless and positive experience for your company’s customers.

A Proven Source: Network Solutions’ Hosting Options

Backed by decades of proven experience, Network Solutions offers cloud-based website hosting options for all size businesses that feature 99.9 percent website uptime and technical support that is trusted by Fortune 500 companies. We accomplish this through the decentralization of your website’s data, spreading it across multiple servers so your information is always safe and your website is always online for a positive customer experience.

Network Solutions offers website hosting resources that grow with your business, featuring infinite scalability plus three hosting packages designed for the specific needs of your organization. This includes unlimited disk space to support up to 10 websites, domain name registration and unlimited email boxes. To protect your company from cyber attacks, we also offer professional email that allows your team to communicate with customers, vendors and each other in a safe, secure environment and SSL certificates that guard customers’ private data when they make purchases on your business sites.

For added security, all hosting packages include a free version of SiteLock® Lite, a daily malware scanning tool that includes added upgrade options to protect your sites from malware and even remove it automatically. You can also upgrade to Cyber Security Solution for the protection of mobile device applications, which is especially important for your remote workers who access data on smartphones and tablets.

Your Organization’s Websites Deserve a Safe, Secure Home

Especially in times like these, your company’s websites must always be up and running to meet the needs of your customers. Having a safe, secure web host that is designed to grow with your company is critical to your ongoing success – and your peace of mind. Trust Network Solutions to make your life easier with web hosting options that work as hard as you.

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