Home-based e-business - an option for the
self-employed?
• Web hosting
Once the web site is designed, it needs to be hosted with an Internet Service Provider. There are basically three options on web hosting. The first choice is to buy one's own server but it is very costly both in initial hardware, software and maintenance, and therefore not suitable for a small home business start-up. The second choice is to use a free web hoster. There are a lot of free web-hosting services on the Internet but in return, most of them require placing some form of advertisement on your site. These could be quite disturbing to the potential customer and affect the image of the web site. Besides, the performances of these free web-hosting services are often unstable, and can seriously affect the business should the hoster go down. The third choice is to rent space on a paid web hoster. All it requires is to pay a monthly fee and there are technicians to set up and maintain your server regularly. Many web-hosting companies have a 99.9% uptime guarantee and this could be critical for success.
The standard and charges of web hosting service providers varies greatly in the market. Generally speaking, those from the developed countries such as United States , United Kingdom and Hong Kong are very reliable. The charge range from a few US dollars to several hundred dollars per month, depending on the services you choose. Normally, for a new start up small business, the package with minimum services is good enough and additional services can be added on later. In selection of the service provider, make sure that it has adequate space, bandwidth, reliability, knowledge and capability to handle a fully functional e-commerce site. In general, the author would recommend a free-hosting company in the initial start-up phase, but switch quickly to a paid web hosting company once the business takes off. The following is a comparison on free and pay web hosting services:
Comparison of Free Web Hosting & Pay Web Hosting Services
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Free Web Hosting Service |
Pay Web Hosting Service |
Poor Services - web site can be shut down without any notice.
|
Good Customer Services |
No Data Transfer Service
|
Have Data Transfer Service |
Not as Reliable- no up-time guarantee
|
Some plans have up-time guarantee |
Little or No Technical Support
|
Have Technical Support, some are 24 hours and with telephone support |
No control of advertisements (distracting)
|
No compulsory advertisement |
Loading time is long as the resources are usually shared between many users
|
Loading time is fast because there are fewer users to share resources |
Normally will not host domain (only sub-domain)
|
Can host your own domain |
(Exhibit 17)
Source: researched and analyzed by the Author
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