“Web hosting” is the term given to the collective service of keeping your website and email online.  Your website (and email) consists of many (often hundreds or thousands) of individual files and often a database that stores information.  All this stuff sits on a powerful computer (the ‘server’) and the web hosting fee that you pay basically is your ‘rent’ on that server.  Whether you opt for ‘shared hosting’ (like an apartment building where you rent a portion of the whole building) or ‘dedicated hosting’ (where you own the whole building), you are simply renting space on another computer that is hooked up to the internet.

Anyway, web hosting is practically a commodity these days.  You can spend just about any amount you want to on it and get it from thousands of various providers around the web.  Archetype Marketing provides web hosting to our clients because hosting a website and building a website go hand in hand.  And by hosting the sites we build, we’re able to eliminate the potential pitfalls that come with introducing another vendor into the mix.  If we build your site and someone else hosts it, then you may end up in a scenario where something doesn’t work, and we blame the web hosting company, they blame us, and you as the client have no idea who to believe since this isn’t your cup of tea.  You certainly aren’t required to host with Archetype Marketing, but we do recommend that you let us host your site since we can eliminate that potential passing of the buck.  

If you are the kind of person who shops around,  you’ll find that you can buy web hosting from all kinds of firms for as little as $5 per month.  And Archetype Marketing charges several times that for what seems to be the same thing.  Why?  Well, firstly, let’s be very clear: you’re not comparing apples with apples if you’re looking at $5/mo web hosting!  Archetype Marketing offers fully managed web hosting, which means that when we handle your web hosting, we handle all aspects of it for you.  When you need something done or need to know how to do something, you can simple call or email us, talk to a real person, and get on-the-spot results.  Try calling up one of these $5/month guys and get them to walk you through how to set up your Outlook to receive mail or check your website traffic stats.  If you even get a response, it will typically be to point you to some online FAQ or Help Desk to let you self-serve.  So three hours of research later, maybe you’ll eventually figure out how to set up that autoresponder.  With Archetype Marketing’s fully managed hosting, you can call us up and we’d have the autoresponder set up right there while you’re on the phone.  It’s that sort of service that makes us more expensive than the low-end web hosting shops out there.

Archetype Marketing Provides you with customized tutorials if needed for your staff.

Here are more examples of what you get with fully managed web hosting that the budget web hosts don’t typically provide:

• We upload and configure your web site for you (including setting up the database). 
• We will set up and manage all your email addresses for you and provide support for things like configuring Outlook, Blackberries, etc. 
• We automatically set up web stats for you and provide reports upon request (you of course have access to real-time reports at any time, but if you simply want to know how much traffic you got on any particular day, you can just contact us and ask, and we’ll email over a graphical report). 
• We automatically set up daily backup systems for you so that you don’t have to take it upon yourself to figure out how to protect your website and data.
• If you have questions about anything, you can simply call us up and talk to a real person.  There is no phone tag.  No complicated ticket system.  We provide very personal support.
• Also, because our web hosting clients are also typically our web development clients, we can provide a much more seamless support system for upgrades, maintenance, and other web needs.  For example, if your hosting needs spike some day, we don’t have automated limits that will just turn off your site like most hosts would.  We will note the spike and if it’s a one time thing, we just let you have it as a professional courtesy.  If you spike often and are outgrowing your plan, we will discuss it with you and figure out if you need to upgrade plans or if we need to build a new custom plan for you.  All of this is just done as a part of our normal service and does not incur any additional fees.

And of course, we provide all the other typical service standards, such as 99.99% up time guarantees, full control panel access, web-based email access, web stats, daily backup, etc., etc.