In general, investing in a web hosting solution can aid many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in establishing a foothold in the billion-dollar online economy. Remember, though, that, because a business website serves as a source of income, attention must be paid to reliability and robustness. Online income depends on server hardware that not only has 99.9%+ uptime, but that is also able to handle huge numbers of transactions simultaneously. A business with one or two income-producing websites may be able to live with a single web hosting account, but it's clear that, for reliability purposes, multiple websites require multiple web hosting accounts.
The simple requirement of business continuity demands that redundancy be built into the online component of sales for a business. If one web hosting account is used for all the websites of the company, then, if the provider's servers take a hit and go down, then all the SMB's websites are unavailable and no online income is being generated. An SMB can also distinguish multiple websites for many demographic and marketing targets.
Customers use the Internet now to browse for products, compare the offerings of several retailers and make the decision to buy. SMBs can work with multiple web hosting providers to participate in an online strategy that does not depend on one server being up all the time. E-commerce sites are relatively easy to set up with the aid of a web hosting provider -- online shopping carts have become a mainstay of the internet.
One aspect, though, of online shopping that every SMB must account for is the use of SSL certificates to vouch for the integrity of the shopping site. An SSL certificate is an online security protocol well-known to customers -- without one for your website, you'll have no customers at all. Each SSL certificate is linked to one IP address, the foundation for your website. As an online business, you must provide an SSL certificate for each website that incorporates financial transactions. Though you may be able to acquire multiple SSL certificates from one web hosting provider, spreading the risk of downtime over several web hosting providers will ease the acquisition of separate SSL certificates.
What makes multiple web hosting accounts such a powerful benefit for SMBs is the dilution of risk. Instead of making one web host provider the guardian of all that potential income, an SMB can increase their online income by relying on several providers for their Internet business needs.
