Why we insist on hosting our websites (to begin with)
We offer managed hosting services with all our websites, because we care about the long term performance of our products and about making a meaningful difference to our clients' businesses.However, sometimes potential clients look at the budget options that are available online and wonder why we aren't matching those prices. Other times, they want to know if they can use us to make the website, but then move over to cheap hosting to reduce ongoing costs. Some people (heaven forbid) might even suspect that we're simply trying to squeeze as much money out of them as possible. This simply isn't how we do business.
Here's the real reason:
Why we don't complete on price when it comes to hosting
We don't complete on price, because it would mean making huge sacrifices in quality and service, which would result in poor performance and unhappy clients (or going bust - resulting in unhappy us).A good technological platform with robust backups and redundancy to make sure the website loads quickly and never goes down takes investment, and that costs money. On top of that, we want to make sure our staff are available and have time to deal with each client's query patiently and properly.
We believe that our prices are extremely reasonable when you consider the level of high quality hardware, software and genuine personal service we provide.
Why we won't put our websites on other hosts
In the past we have agreed to make websites and then host them on other servers, but we no longer allow this, because of the headaches that have arisen for both us and our clients.The problem is that cheap hosts are cheap for a reason. These companies usually sacrifice quality of hardware and software and customer service, in order to drive their prices to the absolute minimum. This means that servers are unreliable and overloaded, meaning the clients' website runs slowly and may frequently dissappear altogether.
It also means that the customer service is impossible to get hold of, unskilled and in such a rush they simply send autoreplies without finding out about the problem properly. This wastes a great deal of time and contributes to high blood pressure and hair loss (not clinically proven).
When this happens, the client comes back to us, and it's our word against their that the poor website performance is all about the host, and nothing to do with our work - which would have worked great if we were hosting it. And because we're soft, we often end up sorting out these problems where the cheap host refuses too.
What do you mean 'to begin with'?
The reasons stated above are why we insist on hosting our websites - not because we're trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of our clients - and to prove it, we DO allow clients to move, but only after we've proven the quality of the website on our hosting and support platforms first.If, after this has been proven a client still feels they wish to move away, then they can - at their own risk...
If you're thinking of getting a website designed in Leeds, or anywhere across the UK, then give us a call for a chat about your project. We're happy to give free advice and suggestions as well as quotes and proposals.
Or if you need help with your computer - anything from fixing a broken laptop to maintaining a snappy response, then check out our associates, who offer great IT Support Services, from their base in Guildford.