<\/p>\n
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Executive Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n The Keys to Design Agency Success<\/strong> The Science Behind Hosting for Designers<\/strong><\/p>\n Hosting Features That Matter Most to Designers<\/strong> Design Measures Influenced by Hosting Decisions<\/strong> About KnownHost<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Discover all the ways <\/span>hosting choices can influence design agency success<\/b>. From prospect perceptions to tech support nightmares waiting to happen, this guide shares <\/span>what you need to know<\/b>, from a no nonsense perspective – by a company that hosts many successful design agency accounts. Enjoy your web hosting guide for designers – hope you like it \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Packed to the brim with real world experience, updated facts and figures, plus a focus on specific examples, this guide has been created to <\/span>make your life easier<\/b> \u2013 so that you will be able to make more effective hosting decisions as you will be left knowing more, able to do more and ready to take your design agency head to head against the competition, through better hosting decisions<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note:<\/b> The author of this guide is the Marketing Manager at KnownHost.com<\/a><\/strong>, the USA-based managed hosting experts who have long dominated traditional managed VPS<\/a><\/strong> and now cloud VPS hosting<\/a><\/strong, globally<\/strong><\/span>. Prior roles include ownership of a Scottish webdesign agency as well as directing the marketing and product management of technology and software companies with revenues of over $1 Billion across two continents.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Profitable designers know four areas which can make or break their business:<\/span> <\/p>\n Designers are like Mister Fantastic<\/b>, (Reed Richards) on The Fantastic Four. They are brilliant, but prone to getting pulled in all directions, stretching to their limits of time and money, because of the variety of demands placed upon them by clients, and technical matters alike. While the customer is always right (most of the time), a successful design agency will find ways to reduce pain points<\/strong> – so that there are less reasons a customer could complain<\/strong>, and more time available to deal with profit-driving activities<\/strong>. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Tip:<\/strong> Don\u2019t try to do everything at once – instead prioritize urgent and important tasks. Removing distractions is the goal – not being everywhere at once.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Check the Internet and you’ll find thousands of sites with tips and tricks on HTML5, CSS, Javascript, PHP – and hundreds of other topics on the mechanical execution of turning designs into real websites. They don’t tell you how to run a winning agency. They also don’t tell you why hosting matters to your business.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The author of this guide has owned a website design agency in Scotland, worked in tandem with dozens of designers (as a search marketing expert) and now manages the marketing at KnownHost, a global managed hosting provider that provides hosting for many top design agencies globally. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The knowledge from this <\/span>combination of hard-knocks, education, testing and implementation<\/b> has been distilled into the Smart Designer’s Guide to Hosting. It\u2019s freely shared with you, in the hope that you <\/span>avoid the pitfalls and enjoy the successes<\/b> that can come from putting this knowledge into practice.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n “On an average, 8 out of 10 consumers would stop engaging with a site if its content doesn\u2019t display properly on their device.<\/a>”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n When designers choose hosting plans, they should be looking at:<\/p>\n Specifications<\/span> <\/p>\n Top Tip:<\/b> Anyone can offer cheap unmanaged hosting, but you need to find fast, dependable, easily managed, affordable, fully supported hosting.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \f<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n RAM<\/b> –<\/span> 2 GB<\/span><\/p>\n DRIVE<\/b> –<\/span> 60 GB<\/span><\/p>\n XFER<\/b> –<\/span> 2 TB<\/span><\/p>\n IPV4<\/b> –<\/span> 2 IP<\/span><\/p>\n PANEL<\/b> –<\/span> cPanel (or DirectAdmin)<\/span><\/p>\n MGT<\/b> –<\/span> Fully Managed<\/span><\/p>\n BACKUP<\/b> –<\/span> Fully Automated<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n With a <\/span>poor spec<\/b> hosting plan, a website will be <\/span>slow to respond<\/b> to requests, transfer text, images and scripts. Design agencies need sufficient resources for their site, and their client sites, to respond quickly, avoid timeouts, and never have contention issues.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n For example, Magento. A design agency hosting a handful of<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Slow loading times for images cause 39% of users to stop engagement with a website. If delays are encountered during peak traffic times, 75% of users will click off the page and head to competitors\u2019 websites.<\/a>“<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some of the key specs to focus on include:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The hosting requirements of basic html\/css websites are remarkably different than those of a massive ecommerce shop like Magento. A guide <\/span>cannot tell you how exactly much memory or drive space<\/b> your particular situation will require.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, a good hosting company will have salespeople available who know what questions to ask, so that you can select the perfect hosting plan.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n When comparing plans between various providers, make sure that you\u2019re comparing available memory to available memory, and not comparing available to burstable (or similar terms being used for short term availability only).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Generally speaking, for a VPS, there\u2019s little point in running one with under <\/span>2GB of RAM<\/b>. When you get down to 1GB or 1.5GB, you suddenly need to make sacrifices to keep things running (like not having a control panel).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n When choosing storage, be sure to <\/span>compare like to like<\/b>. There\u2019s a monumental difference in performance between network file systems (SAN, NAS, NFS), local hard disk drives (5400 RPM IDE, 7200 RPM, 10000 RPM SCSI, +++) and solid state disk drives (SSD).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Getting 1 TB of poor performing hard drive space is not better than getting 100 GB of ultra-fast SSD!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you want to safely choose high performing hardware – go with SSD.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Most desktop computers don\u2019t rely on a redundant array of independent disks (RAID), though nowadays most all server environments do so.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are many types of RAID, depending on whether you want <\/span>pure speed<\/b> (like RAID 0), a simple mirroring <\/span>in case one drive fails<\/b> (RAID 1), or a <\/span>combination of performance and fault tolerance<\/b> (RAID 10 also called RAID 1+0 or RAID 0+1).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you don\u2019t care about downtime in case of drive failure and have great backups you can rely on, then maybe you feel lucky enough to go with RAID 0.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the other hand, if you want that <\/span>piece of mind<\/b> that comes with having 2 drives with exactly the same data being written to them, but don\u2019t need a fast website for your visitors, then maybe RAID 1 is your cup of tea.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In our experience, <\/span>RAID 10 is the only business solution that makes sense \u2013 giving you speed and redundancy<\/b>, the best of both worlds.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It hasn\u2019t been that many years ago that 10 mbit\/s network cards were common in most hosting environments. At that time, web pages relied less on massive images and videos, and could easily serve up many simultaneous users with that connection speed.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Those times have changed. The \u2018tube generation\u2019 has encouraged companies, large and small, to put gigabytes of video on their websites while simultaneously pushing the envelope with larger and larger image sizes, and quantities.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 100 mbit\/s can work for many SME websites, while 1 gbit\/s, or faster, is required for large corporate hosting.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Just be sure you\u2019re checking this, amongst all providers, before you commit. It wouldn\u2019t be good if you got stuck trying to push out a ton of video the size of bowling balls through a network pipe built like a soda straw.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Network speed is one thing, like having 3G, 4G or 5G via mobile. Not matter how fast your transfer speed, you are still going to be facing possible <\/span>allocation limits \u2013 the amount you can transfer each month<\/b>. A fast network just enables you to use up your full allocation that much faster, leaving you with a charge for the overage at the end of the month \u2013 or worse, an account suspension!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some advertise their allowed transfer in GB\u2019s or TB\u2019s per month. Others advertise theirs as unlimited** (note the asterisks point to the fine print where you find out about their Terms of Service and what happens if you use too much).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Make sure you know how much you can actually transfer, and know how much you are likely to need. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Tip<\/i><\/b>: Don\u2019t rely on unlimited without checking first. 99.9% of unlimited plans – aren\u2019t! There are always limits of some kind to protect servers and networks from overuse.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n While not every VPS or dedicated server comes with a control panel, the vast majority of site owners find<\/span> a control panel to be an absolute must<\/b> \u2013 saving them time and effort, daily.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing worse than having spent the last 5 or 10 years using cPanel (or another panel), then signing up with a new host, only to find out that they have some proprietary panel designed in the Pleistocene Era. Suddenly, nothing you\u2019ve learned over the past decade is going to help in figure out this Rubik\u2019s cube.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Make sure your favorite control panel is available and what it will cost to add-on to your hosting plan price. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Tip:<\/b> Get a standard control panel like cPanel or DirectAdmin. The pain of migrating to\/from a proprietary or no-name control panel is ridiculous and avoidable.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some hosting companies will limit how many domain accounts you can add to your hosting plan. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Others will allow you 1 primary domain and the rest have to be <\/span>add-on domains<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The difference lies with <\/span>how difficult it is to administer<\/b>, especially when migrating accounts from one hosting company to another, or making backups you can easily send to clients.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s important to know how many domains and how many email addresses (and databases) you can create with a given hosting plan. Being surprised later, is definitely not fun.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fast Fact<\/b>: There are now more than 1,000 top level domains (TLD\u2019s) and roughly <\/span>400 million domains<\/span><\/a> hosted on the internet, with <\/span>5 billion email addresses<\/span><\/a> in use.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The difference between cheapest price and best value hosting companies often is most easily spotted in the server room. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Are they running latest and greatest hardware, routers and monitoring software? Can your server get updates without forcing a reboot (and having downtime)?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A <\/span>simple speed-test<\/b> of some files or websites, when loaded on multiple different hosts is one way of telling the performance of one company versus another, but not definitive.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are many speed-test tools out there, but a few of our favorites are:<\/span><\/p>\n Pingdom<\/b> –<\/span> https:\/\/tools.pingdom.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Google PageSpeed<\/b> –<\/span> https:\/\/developers.google.com\/speed\/pagespeed\/insights\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n
\nImpressions<\/span>
\nRetention<\/span>
\nProfitability<\/span>
\nTime<\/span><\/p>\n
\nSpecifications<\/span>
\nPerformance<\/span>
\nCost<\/span>
\nDependability<\/span>
\nCentralized Management<\/span>
\nManaged Services & Support<\/span><\/p>\n
\nPortfolio Load Time<\/span>
\nTrust Signal Presence<\/span>
\nIssue Response Time<\/span>
\nDependability \/ Uptime<\/span>
\nManagement Time Overhead<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
Executive Summary<\/b><\/h2>\n
\f<\/b><\/h2>\n
The Keys to Design Agency Success<\/b><\/h2>\n
\nFirst Impressions<\/b> \u2013 a well ranked, easily navigated, fast loading portfolio<\/span><\/span>
\nClient Retention<\/b> \u2013 keeping customers happy while gaining new referrals<\/span><\/span>
\nProfitability<\/b> \u2013 controlling costs via value-centered purchases<\/span><\/span>
\nTime<\/b> \u2013 maximizing time on projects – minimizing time on distractions<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
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\nThe Science Behind Hosting for Designers<\/b><\/h2>\n
Hosting Features That Matter Most to Designers<\/b><\/h2>\n
\nPerformance<\/span>
\nDependability<\/span>
\nCentralized Management<\/span>
\nCost<\/span>
\nSupport<\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nSpecification Basics<\/b><\/h2>\n
Minimum Recommended Specifications<\/span><\/h2>\n
Specification Details<\/b><\/h2>\n
RAM<\/b><\/h3>\n
DRIVE (Storage) Size<\/b><\/h3>\n
Storage Type (RAID)<\/b><\/h3>\n
Network Speed (transfer per second)<\/b><\/h3>\n
Network Throughput (monthly transfer)<\/b><\/h3>\n
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\nControl Panel (which ones can be used, like cPanel)<\/b><\/h3>\n
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\nDomains and Email Accounts<\/b><\/h3>\n
Premium Hardware\/Network<\/b><\/h3>\n