Hosting services

First and foremost, although technically you don't have to host your site with me to have a site designed, it makes life a whole lot easier if you do, and cuts down the effort required (and hence cost) in maintaining your site. Web space on my servers comes in smaller packages than you would get from a bulk hosting provider, starting from 10MB, but comes with the benefit of my managing the space on your behalf and is also "professional" space, free of the restrictions that apply to many "free" web accounts you get from your supermarket, internet broadband or telephone provider.

Almost all of my clients have no wish to get involved in server configuration and FTP, and I handle all of this for them. However if you have a heavy-traffic site in mind, especially where email is critical to your business operation, you must set up your own hosting with a provider of your choosing. This is so you can sort out your own service level agreement, and compensation if the worst happens. You then just need to let me have the access codes for the web space so I can manage it on your behalf.

Service Level Agreement

There is no formal service level agreement for my web space, and whilst it is extremely reliable, 100% uptime cannot be guaranteed. You should take with a pinch of salt the claims of any hosting providers who claim they can provide 100% uptime as it is not physically possible (even though some might claim to, there will be lots of small print). However,

• I use the same servers for my own web sites, so I need reliability for my own purposes
• I have access to different hosting companies so that I can choose the best one for each client and also move sites between hosts if there are any serious problems, and
• I am automatically notified (via an independent service) within the hour, by email and to my mobile, 24 hours a day, if the servers are unavailable (that's not to say any problem would be fixed within the hour but it's very unlikely to be significantly longer).

Domain name registration and hosting

Don't forget I can register, host, and maintain your site's domain names for you - this includes not just the formal registration process, but finding a suitable name, setting it up correctly to serve your web site and email, setting domain-related ISP spam filters or (for a small extra fee) the more advanced Spamcop junk mail solution, and acting as Administrative Contact to deal with all the "paperwork" from Nominet or ICANN regarding ownership details. If you choose to register your own domain through a service such as register.com or netbenefit.com, please note that in my experience, this can cause problems down the line with email redirections falling foul of internet email relay security settings, requiring special DNS and MX zone settings and so on... it's usually less hassle in the long run to get me to do the registration and hosting all in the one location - your call though.