The World Wide Web plays an increasingly important role in business communications. Whether it's taking orders, dealing with suppliers and partners, keeping staff up to date, or simply putting out information about your company where everyone can find it, there are many ways in which an effective web presence can support your operations.
All of this depends on web hosting. Your hosting provider operates the servers on which your website is stored, and its terms dictate how much data you can include, how quickly and reliably users can access it, what advanced features (such as scripts and databases) can be incorporated, and how easily you can analyse who's visiting your site and how they're using it.
Many businesses are still relying on basic web space included with a broadband account, or on hosting services that haven't been upgraded to keep pace with modern requirements. Through its Demon brand, THUS offers a variety of cost-effective hosting options to suit every business, and with even more choices now available, there's never been a better time to re-examine your hosting needs.
Hosting options
Many broadband Internet tariffs include a certain amount of server space to which you can upload web pages. However, the capacity may be limited to a few megabytes, and you may not have the facility to use scripts to add functionality to your pages. There may not be adequate support for controlling access or tracking usage, and the performance and reliability of your ‘free' web space may not be a priority for your provider.
Even if you have a professional hosting solution in place, it's worth checking whether you could upgrade to a more up-to-date tariff. For example, some of our customers are using legacy commercial web space accounts (previously known as ‘ComWeb' or ‘Diva'). It's now possible to upgrade from these to our current, more advanced offerings free of charge, and in many cases with no increase in monthly fees. This is true whether you have commercial web space bundled with another product or as a standalone service.
THUS currently offers three grades of hosting services. At the top end, Enterprise Hosting provides a complete solution for the most demanding organisations, offering dedicated servers with advanced security features and comprehensive service level agreements (SLA). You may not need this level of capability today, but it's reassuring to know that we can help you move up to it when you do.
For smaller businesses and web professionals who need to run multiple advanced websites and applications, Demon Virtual Server (DVS) hosting offers much of the functionality and flexibility of a dedicated server at a more affordable price. Essentially, you have autonomous use of a dedicated partition within a server, running its own operating system and software and accessing its own area of storage. A web-based ControlCentre tool allows complete self-management. There are four DVS packages to choose between, ranging from 500MB of space and up to 60 domains to 5GB and 1000 domains. It's easy to upgrade whenever necessary. In addition, we offer a 30-day free trial, giving you time to experience our feature-rich product.
Affordable hosting
Designed for small and medium-sized businesses, our most affordable option is Demon Web Hosting which has a choice of three packages offering 100MB to 1GB of space. This shared hosting service provides a range of features that may not be included with other providers' equivalent packages. For example, MySQL© databases and PHP scripting are supported, so you can use readily available commercial or Open Source scripts to generate dynamic web pages. CGI-BIN access is also provided, so you can take advantage of a number of supplied Perl scripts, including online surveys and discussion forums, and add your own.
Demon Web Hosting supports a single website, but that doesn't mean your main site is the only thing you can serve. It's easy to set up password-protected folders, so that pages within these are accessible only to authorised users, allowing you to set up an extranet to exchange information with colleagues or partner organisations. With the Advanced and Professional packages, you have constant access to a web-based control panel to manage your account and view comprehensive visitor statistics.
At prices starting from £10 exc VAT per month for the Standard package, there really is no reason to make do with a less capable hosting solution. Whether you're starting from scratch, upgrading a legacy THUS service or moving from another provider, call us on one of the numbers below to discuss your requirements or visit http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/technicallibrary/webhosting/product_chooser to see which solution is right for you.
Enterprise Hosting 0800 027 9907http://www.demon.net/demon/products/hosting/enterprisehosting/enterprisehosting
DVS new sales 0800 074 0929
http://www.demon.net/demon/products/hosting/virtualserverhosting
Web Hosting 0800 027 5589
http://www.demon.net/demon/products/hosting/webhosting