Website Hosting

[marcandal]

Hi everyone

I need some advice please - I currently host my website with the people who designed it for me - I got 1 year feee hosting included but I had to start to pay for hosting monthly with them from last month. Last months bill (which covered Dec) was £35 now I have just got the bill in for January and its £56 for 1 months hosting - does this sound right? I thought it sounded expensive. I have had a quick look on google but I am not very good at the technical side of it! If I decided to move my website and host it with another company (please can anyone recommend a good one?) would anything change? Would my website stay the same and also would the 'behind the scenes' stay the same i.e the way I load items on and process orders?

Sorry about all the questions!

Alison

[Ravenfire]

What sort of hosting do you have? If that is for shared hosting only then I would say that is quite a lot of money.

If you decided to move webhosts (and providing your site is not tied to that company) then all that happens is the files and database move across and it would work in much the same way.

[partybabe]

I use www.qiq.co.uk but you need to know how to transfer files and make changes yourself if you use this. My site is a zen cart site and I found it quite easy (mostly) to get it set up and make all the changes.

[MrTempleDene]

Sorry, I replied quickly without really reading your post, xilo do great hosting, and if you wanted assistance with moving your site and future maintenance PM me for a quote, it looks like an oscommerce or derivative site so should be easy.

Your web site design company claim it's a bespoke ecommerce system but I doubt that.

[marcandal]

What sort of hosting do you have? If that is for shared hosting only then I would say that is quite a lot of money.

If you decided to move webhosts (and providing your site is not tied to that company) then all that happens is the files and database move across and it would work in much the same way.

Hi
I am going to call them tomorrow to check on what sort of hosting we have - not to sure at the mo!

[obscure]

Hi Alison,

£56 for one months hosting sounds incredibly steep! Even if that included SSL with a unique IP address it would still be very expensive. I am assuming you are not using a dedicated server for your website (though that would be cheap if you were). The other thing to check is what bandwidth your website is using. If you are having a LOT of visitors and they charge you for excess bandwidth that could be why your charges are higher - though I'd be suprised for it to warrant costs that much.

MrTD mentioned that your cart is advertised as the companies own ecommerce system - if this is the case you will need to find out what is needed to run the shopping cart. If its one unique to your designers it may be a standalone (in that if you have the database & files you will be able to run it), but it may need some core files that reside on their server to run - in which case transferring it will be much harder. Did they give you the option of taking their hosting or finding your own when you setup? If they did then you should be safe to transfer as it should not have dependancies on their server.

- The above also has an affect on updates to the cart, but if you are happy with the general way it works and it will mainly be content updates then you should be ok - it all depends on the protection on the files.

If you can run the cart on new hosting then everything would remain the same in your cart admin panel unless you changed the coding. Do you have access to a hosting control panel with a file manager etc? If you do and you would like me to take a quick look at the files then let me know. You should also be able to do a backup from within your hosting control panel.

Unfortunately I cannot recommend a specific webhost as its been a few years since I used standard site hosting - we run a series of dedicated servers for our clients website.

HTH....
Sadie

[Powerlines]

Wow £56 sounds to me like an awful lot of money.

What do you get for that money?
Does it include site managment, email accounts etc?

On average I have never paid more that £50 - £60 per year for hosting for a basic site but the cost of hosting for an E-commerce site can climb depending on your package.
Having said that £56pm does sound a little steep if it is just for hosting. I tend to charge my clients £40-£100 per year depending on there content.

If you are thinking of moving, Obscure has given you some good advice. You need to find out if the Cart and E-commerce side of your site are tied to your host or can be moved easily. I tend to advise clients not to use systems that are tied for this very reason.

If you do hit problems with any of the info feel free to email or post here and i will help if i can.

Good luck

J

[marcandal]

Hi

Thanks for your advice everyone, well I did call them and don't feel any further forward! - I explained that I felt it was very expensive for hosting and they said it is not just for hosting but also for 'training' they can give and advice - I am going to go in on Wednesday to have a meeting with them and I will ask them again what it is actually for. They also said with other hosting companies if anything goes wrong you normally have to send an email, where with them I can just give them a quick call and speak to the direct and they will sort it out for me.

Alison

[Ravenfire]

With my hosting company I can email them and they normally get back to me within 10 minutes but definitely within the hour. I still think thats very expense hosting and would definitely ask them for a better breakdown.

[obscure]

Thanks for your advice everyone, well I did call them and don't feel any further forward! - I explained that I felt it was very expensive for hosting and they said it is not just for hosting but also for 'training' they can give and advice - I am going to go in on Wednesday to have a meeting with them and I will ask them again what it is actually for. They also said with other hosting companies if anything goes wrong you normally have to send an email, where with them I can just give them a quick call and speak to the direct and they will sort it out for me.

Are you taking advantage of any training? To be honest if they say its for training for your shopping cart then it seems like it must be a majorly over complicated affair and they need to write better documentation :P

We're in the process of creating a series of videos to guide through our ecommerce admin panel, and also offer help and assistance to our clients whenever they need it. We don't charge ridiculous amounts per month for this. If the cart isnt easy to use for people so they need help then tbh we should have written it better!

With many hosting companies yes you will have email only support - but not all by any means and not always with that kind of premium. Our ecommerce hosting package (non SSL) for example is £9 per month and we offer phone (office number and mobile) and email support. A long way off 50 odd pounds!

It might be worth finding out if they are bundling in maintenance with that amount too - perhaps you get a certain number of hours of work on your site included in your hosting (maybe unknowingly).

Hope you manage to get the problem sorted.
Sadie

[blush]

My honest opinion? Ditch them fast, they are ripping your eye out.

[Powerlines]

With many hosting companies yes you will have email only support - but not all by any means and not always with that kind of premium. Our ecommerce hosting package (non SSL) for example is £9 per month and we offer phone (office number and mobile) and email support. A long way off 50 odd pounds!

It might be worth finding out if they are bundling in maintenance with that amount too - perhaps you get a certain number of hours of work on your site included in your hosting (maybe unknowingly).


I agree with Sadie, for that much i would be expecting to get a couple of hours a month worktime out of them (at least) but this needs to be quantified not just them saying "Oh we did 4 hours last week upgrading your Ecommerce package".
Also if that level of training is required it does seem to be a rather complicated system. As for the assistance, that is a little bit of an old ploy most companies offer email assistance and most offer a phone contact as well. I offer (as Sadie) email, landline and mobile. I would insist on a break down of what your £627pa pays for.

How much Maintance if any (total hours that you can get them to do stuff).
Training and how they notify.
Package size (I.e. amount of space on the server, bandwidth etc).

Good luck

J
SSD

[Laura@FYP]

Wow yes I agree with the others, that is far too expensive.

When I set up I was advised by many people to run a mile from being hosted by the same people that designed the site. I think generally they all tend to over-charge when done like this, and the hosting is where they can make the real money out of you (so Im told).

I didn't even use the year free I would have got as I wanted to avoid the hassle of having to move over once that year was out.

Don't let them bully you, or blag you into staying where you are. That really is way too much money to be paying.

Sure, I only get email support with my hosting package (although I have been known to phone up in crazy panics before and was always helps out! lol) but even with the emails I get a response within the hour.

My advice is that if you can, just bite the bullet and get moved asap. That is of course if you are not tied in with your ecart solution and can gain access to your ftp etc. Fingers crossed!

Good luck x

[obscure]

When I set up I was advised by many people to run a mile from being hosted by the same people that designed the site. I think generally they all tend to over-charge when done like this, and the hosting is where they can make the real money out of you (so Im told).

I totally disagree with this statement. As a web designer I host my clients website at pretty much cost - we run top notch dedicated servers based in the London docklands for our clients websites. Infact we probably run at a loss on the hosting services due to the support services we offer to our clients. I run the hosting server as a useful addon service for my clients rather than to try and profit or fleece them.

I guess the difference being that we are totally transparent about our prices in advance and do not lock customers in for lengths of time (they pay month by month and can cancel at anytime). We also don't insist our customers host with us - they have the option to host elsewhere if need be.

I can see that companies like the one the OP refers to can put a black cloud onto some hosts, however don't tar us based on their performance.

Sadie

[Dino]

Well said Sadie!

[Laura@FYP]

I totally disagree with this statement. As a web designer I host my clients website at pretty much cost - we run top notch dedicated servers based in the London docklands for our clients websites. Infact we probably run at a loss on the hosting services due to the support services we offer to our clients. I run the hosting server as a useful addon service for my clients rather than to try and profit or fleece them.

I guess the difference being that we are totally transparent about our prices in advance and do not lock customers in for lengths of time (they pay month by month and can cancel at anytime). We also don't insist our customers host with us - they have the option to host elsewhere if need be.

I can see that companies like the one the OP refers to can put a black cloud onto some hosts, however don't tar us based on their performance.

Sadie

No offence was intended, that was just what I was advised by a few people on a business forum when I was starting my site. It was of course an over generalisation, and not applicable to all, or even most, designers- but in the instance of the OP it sounds as though it certainly applies.

[Bag Crazy]

Wow that seems so steep. We only pay £34.99 for a year and get free advice whenever anything goes wrong. I create a support ticket and usually have a reply within minutes. I've even sent support tickets at 10pm and had an immediate response. Good Luck with your meeting.

Bag Crazy (http://www.bagcrazy.co.uk)

[emma57573]

It really does depend. How much bandwidth you consume per month and how much disk space, database usage etc.
I pay nearly £60 also, I started off paying £25 and its gone up month by month HOWEVER my bandwidth is quite quite high and the hosting is very reliable.
You will get some companies that offer unlimited bandwidth etc but they often have hidden extras and the service may not not be quite as reliable.

It does seem high but without knowing what exactly you are using its impossible to give advice. I was looking into this only last week as felt the same as you but when I started talking with other recommended hosting companies I found that the deals they were offering were not much difference to what Im paying now. The cheaper companies had poor track records or I couldnt find feedback on them at all. So I decided to stay put until such time Im ready to move onto a dedicated server.