Hosting Comparison
3plains offers content management (software to update your website) and hosting packages for all the websites we build. These packages include everything necessary to keep your website secure, online, and working for you; including: content management software, hosting, email, domain name, domain name renewal, website statistics, contact form software and database, customer relationships management, lead generation tools, photo gallery software, blogging tools, e-commerce tools and more.
We realize that an ongoing monthly fee can be a surprise to clients who are new to the web, and we know there are other offerings online for as little as $4-$10 a month for raw hosting. This can be disconcerting when you're not sure what you're paying for or why… but rest assured a content management package with 3plains is well worth the cost, and for what is included, a worthwhile investment.
So what are the differences between a content management package with 3plains and the latest hosting deal online somewhere else?
Support
With 3plains we know your name and are familiar with your website. We have access to your website in its entirety and are familiar with exactly how it's being hosted on our dedicated top of the line server. Chances are if you notice a hiccup in service with your website online, we already know about it and are working to correct the issue. 3plains runs a dedicated environment, which means our servers are ours alone, and are kept at peak performance to give our clients fast reliable websites. We don't let other developers or designers write code on our servers. Our code is tested and kept up to date.
With the other guys your website sits in a folder on a server with hundreds if not thousands of other completely unrelated websites. On a shared server you don't know your neighbors, and can easily be affected by bad code. Your site might sit next to a pornography site, or a fraudulent company's site. Their practices could effect the server negatively and take your website down. If you think you got a deal on hosting, you're most likely on an older less capable server, which means even without issues your site will load slower, be less responsive, and more prone to down time.
And If you do call that host because your website is down, you won't receive friendly one on one service from someone familiar with your business. You'll be put on hold with an automated phone answering system. When you do get through, you'll be required to jump through administrator usernames and passwords you've likely forgotten, or never knew in the first place, so the provider can try to find your website in the shared environment and source the problem.
Web Design & Page Updates
So you've got the website and its up and going, but now your business information has changed, or you've added another staff to your team… How do you update the content on your site to reflect the new information? With 3plains you've been provided a custom website manager that was built with your needs in mind. You can sign right into your website, click the page that needs editing and type in the changes just as if you were working in a word processor. Click Save and you're done. Its that easy, and once you try it you'll wonder why you never had something so powerful before. Because our website manager is being actively developed you'll find that its regularly updated to allow you to do more, quickly and easily.
With that other hosting company you'll have to become familiar with HTML, and probably buy some software for your computer, or pay a computer savvy developer exorbitant fees to access your website and dive into the code. If your host does offer any content management you'll find its hard to find online at their site instead of yours, and its difficult to use. On their servers you'll also find your website uses a different file for each of your pages, so that when your website grows to tens of pages or more you'll have to sift through and manage many many files, instead of signing into an integrated system that lists all of your pages and allows you to edit them with the click of a button.
Security
We run dedicated servers and don't give anyone FTP access for your protection. Our secure environment protects your websites so they run smoothly, and don't get hacked. Our dedicated servers are backed up every night, so if something were to go wrong, your content is always safe.
With the other guys your site sits on a shared server where hundreds of people are moving information back and forth all the time. The chance of your website being hacked into, or going down because of malicious or poorly written code goes up dramatically under these conditions. In fact we have two clients who came to us recently from other hosting providers specifically because their websites were hacked into. Because of their cheap hosting the websites were not backed up and it became a time consuming and costly ordeal to try to dig up their previous content from internet archives.
SSL Certificates & E-Commerce
To run an e-commerce store effectively, you will need to have hosting that offers security for your shoppers. This level of security is known as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificates. With 3plains, SSL is included. With the other guys that smokin' deal just changed with the fine print, because SSL will be an additional monthly fee, and an add-on you need to keep track of.
Domain Name Management
WIth 3plains you'll find everything with regard to your domain name is taken care of. We transfer everything you've started over to our registrar, and keep everything in your name. You won't need to bother with renewal reminders or yearly fees. We take care of all the little details, so your domain is always current and registered to you. With the other guys they may or may not be in managing your domain. Did you purchase and register your domain prior to setting up hosting? Did you register it through a different company? Did you transfer it to your new host to consolidate your bills and support? Where are those important emails with the registration info? You get the idea.
WIth 3plains you get secure email address(es) that use your domain name for professionalism, and have 10 GB of storage that's roughly 10,000 megabytes. It runs from secure servers for incoming messages and outgoing messages which keeps your emails from prying eyes and malicious software.
With the other guys you'll probably get as many email addresses you care to set up, but they'll probably only carry 5-25 MB of storage. That's Megabytes, not Gigabytes… You could easily fill one of their email addresses with a single message these days. With full resolution photo files at 1-2 Megabytes a piece you can see how useful an email address with so little storage would be. Not to mention that these low cost, low grade email addresses aren't secure in any way.
In Conclusion
We realize our content management package was probably an expense you weren't considering, and with what goes into it, an expense that can be foreign and difficult to understand. But more than anything we want to convey that our solution is a cost effective one, with a much higher return on investment than what basement bottom dollar providers are selling. Our hosting and content management packages are built to keep your website secure, up and online, current, and working to provide you with all the tools you need to grow and succeed.
They are designed to be easy and hassle free so you can focus on your business... that's why they are called "Business Hosting Packages". The more time you spend on your business, the better it runs, and the faster it grows. We're a small business ourselves, and we use the same tools we're providing you when you choose 3plains. We know you don't have time for tools that are difficult to use, impossible to understand, or simply don't work.
In trying to compare what we're offering to what you've likely seen online there is no comparison. They simply won't offer what we do, and we're simply not willing to offer what we wouldn't use ourselves.
Here's what some of our current customers have to say about the services we provide.
Posted in: Hosting & CMS