eCommerce Hosting
Higher Tier Hosting
We are unable to offer the £100 annual hosting rate to websites with above-average server load.
Web hosting costs would only increase if your online business grows enough to cause a significant impact to your web server, meaning that we have to dedicate a larger percentage of a particular web server to your eCommerce website to ensure smooth operation at all times.
This applies to <5% of our clients, who have considerable sales volumes, traffic volumes and high demands from the web server resources. If this happens we would then move the website to a higher tier hosting package (see bottom of this page).
Server Load (Technical)
Unlike other hosting providers we base our charging structure on average server load.
To understand why we feel this is the fairest way of charging, we have detailed why we charge this way:
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the No.1 charging method for most major hosting providers around the world.
Bandwidth is the amount of data, in megabytes, being uploaded and downloaded from your website, per calendar month.
Reasons for increase: Increase in users viewing large pictures, users viewing products and users generally browsing the site.
Reasons why not to charge: Bandwidth (unless excessive) does not constitute a detriment to the web server. While bandwidth gives an indication of traffic and user activity, it has no real bearing on sales. Bandwidth does not necessarily cause a detriment to server performance, or cost, and therefore does not normally affect other users of the server.
Disk Space
Disk space relates to the total space on the hard drive of our dedicated server that your website is using, at any one time.
Reasons for increase: Adding products to the site (data and images), adding additional images to products, adding PDFs to products, adding news/updates to CMS modules or growing sales data.
Reasons why not to charge: Disk Space (unless excessive) does not constitute a detriment to the web server. Our servers cannot be used for file storage, so the only disk space you will use is that relating to the actual use of the site. Disk space does not necessarily cause a detriment to server performance, or cost, and therefore does not normally affect other users of the server.
Web Traffic
Web traffic relates to the number of people visiting your website, per calendar month.
Reasons for Increase: Increase in traffic, traffic from internet marketing (SEO, PPC, Banners, Adverts, Links), traffic from Shopping Channels (links from "Google Products", OnBay™, etc.), traffic from comparison websites and includes anyone visiting your website for any reason.
Reasons why not to charge: Traffic alone does not necessarily constitute any form of detriment to the web server. Some sites literally have 10,000 unique hits a day and only 50 sales (due to relevance); traffic does not always cause a huge increase in bandwidth if the visitors only load one page. Traffic alone does not necessarily cause a detriment to server performance and therefore does not normally affect other users of the server.
Sales
Sales obviously reflect the number of sales being generated by your eCommerce website.
Reasons for Increase: The website is working as it should.
Reasons why not to charge: Because sales alone do not constitute any further charges to us for our dedicated servers. Sales are not sufficient enough to cause detriment to other users of the server. Most clients have healthy sales volumes, without having to leave the basic hosting rate.
So Why Server Load?
Server load is the load being put on the web server, caused by your website.
An increase in server load can have a detrimental effect on other websites on the same web server.
When one website begins to demand more resources from the server, this will increase the server load. This increase will cause the other websites on the server slow down and performance to be affected, as your website is using more of the available server processing power. This will leave less available resources to the other websites on the server.
Every site will have brief periods of increased Server Load. Generally this is acceptable because it balances out throughout different times of the day. We measure average server load over the course of 1-30 days.
If your site is consistently using high resources, increasing Server Load, we will give you 30 days notice that we are intending to upgrade your hosting to a server with more available resources and allocate these to your website.
The fundamental reason for upgrading your hosting package would be to ensure that your website runs perfectly, without causing detrimental effects to other clients on the same server, or your own website.
How is Server Load Calculated?
Server Load monitoring is the fairest method of charging, as Server Load combines all of the above elements (Disk Usage, Traffic, Sales and Bandwidth) in order to cause an increase to Server Load.
This means that if your website is working and selling, with many people searching and buying, then server load may increase.
It takes a significant amount of Server Load to justify an upgrade in eCommerce hosting. We allocate enough resources as standard for any above-average trading eCommerce.
Most of our clients generally stay within the £100/Annum Hosting rate and only 5% of our clients excel beyond this level.
It takes considerable online growth to increase server load.
An increased Hosting charge is normally pro-rata to the performance of your website. You would never be upgraded without expecting to be; most clients would know that their site was working very heavily.
Note: Reserved percentages relate to resources allocated specifically for you. Other clients' websites could be on different hosting packages and still on the same web server as you (excluding Dedicated Servers).
Please feel free to Contact Us for clarification or more information on eCommerce hosting.
*Subject to Higher Tier Hosting.
