When is a web hosting company not a web hosting company? When is a VAR.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being a VAR (Value Added Reseller) – I have been many times in the past and probably will be again.
It’s just that people generally don’t understand what a web hosting company is, or what it does, and when it comes to their online business, they make some questionable decisions because of it.
For example…
I was recently consulting with a client and they asked for my opinion on a hosting package offered by their web design company. * STOP RIGHT * There’s your first BIG TRACK …
His web design company is dedicated to website design. Make your website look a certain way. Sometimes the web design company may have coders on staff who can program the site to behave in a certain way (and coding a web page is not the same as coding a database application) and sometimes the web design company has writers on staff who can do the reading of the site in a certain way (and writing your company profile is not the same as writing your main sales and landing pages …) talk about SEO, internet marketing and general strategic business development tips online!
But I seriously doubt that they have a multi-million dollar environmentally controlled data center, fire suppression enabled, multi-point redundancy, monitored around the clock in their back room.
Now THAT IS a lodging center.
Most suitors are wrong … most hosting companies are really VAR, and here’s the catch, these suitors often charge 100 times the actual cost of hosting and deliver 1% of the service package.
Now before I get a bunch of angry quality hosting VAR letters, I have to say that they are not all like this. However, I bring up this huge discrepancy and tell you this story to clarify a point that drives me crazy.
Just because someone can code a web page doesn’t mean you should trust them with the presence and hosting of your online business. It certainly doesn’t mean that you should trust them with your online marketing, and it especially means that you should not automatically trust them with your online brand reputation.
These are all important points that require special skills; some companies have the combination, others do not. Do you know what questions to ask and how to tell a suitor?
I know the web is still a blissful world (at the time of this writing, she’s in her early 14s!) And I’d forgive you if you don’t quite ‘get’ it yet, so you need to be careful and ask more questions and Work with a proper web strategist / advisor who has flipped the block a few times.
Remember that before focusing my efforts as a corporate web strategist and online marketing expert, I was vice president of IT and consulting and managed multi-million dollar software development projects on most continents for banks, governments and large manufacturers. Managing over 50 people, I have personally built and sold software solutions for over 30 years, and even pioneered online systems that predate the internet (I tried creating a television-based hyperlinked teletext system in the mid-1980s. .. now that’s creative)
Anyway … I’m a little off topic.
The conclusion of my story was the following. I recommended a direct hosting source (one of the major players in this field) and provided their price. The client refused to tell me that it was “too cheap” and that he would keep the web design company * sigh * So I pointed out that the company was a VAR and in this case it was charging them almost 100 times the cost for the 1 % the service …
Call me crazy, but spending 100 times what I need seems unnecessary. But that’s just me …
