Having a website has become a crucial part of any private business or non-profit. A major part of creating a new website or updating one is choosing a web hosting provider. For non-profits, this can pose a unique challenge since they don’t often have large budgets or an in-house IT staff. Keeping that in mind, here are some of the key factors that non-profits need to consider when choosing a web hosting partner.
1. Your non-profit lacks technical or IT staffing
For most non-profits, not having in-house IT staff is common. You often run on shoestring budgets and don’t have the resources to hire additional staff, purchase IT equipment, and carry out periodic maintenance. This is where hiring a web hosting partner who caters specifically to non-profits can help to ensure your website stays up and running at all times.
2. Is The Host’s Technology Stack Up-to-Date?
Another important question that non-profits need to ask is whether or not their web hosting partner is up to date on the latest technology stack. The good news is, most of the well-known hosting services stay updated on the latest technologies and tools used to improve their hosting service.
We’ve also seen the opposite though: hosts that haven’t updated server software versions, often using outdated and old software that could leave your website at risk. When looking at web hosts, make sure they are using the most current versions of server software, where possible.
3. Can Your Host Provide Additional Services?
Some non-profits just need a login for their website and they are good to go. Others may need help with updating images, text and PDFs as time goes on. Make sure you pick a host can offer additional services, if you need them. As we mentioned above, make sure that if you need more hands-on services such as WordPress updating, plugin upgrades and more, that your host can offer them.
4. What Sort of Support and Monitoring do They Offer?
Large web hosts don’t have the scale or tools to monitor each and every website they host. Each of their servers could be hosting thousands of websites, and they watch for an entire server to go down. An individual website, however, could go down at any time and you don’t want to wait for a customer to call you and let you know it’s down.
Make sure to speak about up-time monitoring for your site with your web host, and if they offer such services.
5. Does Your Hosting Partner Have Your Best Interests at Heart?
There are some very large web hosting companies, and they are all about scale. In order to make as much money as possible while keeping prices low to attract new customers, they cram thousands of websites onto each of their services. This means all those websites are competing for a finite set of resources. Your website could be served slowly to your customers, and that could mean a loss of donations, services or worse.
We offer web hosting for non-profits that is built with the needs of non-profits in mind.
We don’t oversell our servers at Gas Mark 8. We make sure that each server has a small number of sites so they are served quickly and securely using the most up-to-date software, servers and networking equipment. We have data centers around the world so your site can live as close to your customers around the world, wherever they may be.
We also offer WordPress software and plugin updating, nightly secure backups, uptime monitoring and much more, with plans starting at $12 per month. Let us know how we can best help you.
Image by Colossus Cloud from Pixabay
