MaconMacGuy.com:

Putting the tech pieces together
for Macon & Middle Georgia
for "a good while now"

I see ads everywhere for inexpensive web hosting. So why pick MidGaHositng.com for your webhosting – and when should you opt for something more powerful?

Plans start at less than $4 a month (US). This includes a whole slew of features – plenty of email accounts, alias email accounts, file storage, bandwidth, stats, and auto-install of many different open source packages (like Wordpress, Movable Type for blogs, classified ads, guestbooks, phot albums, etc). These are all accessible via an easy to use control panel – you just login and click to select what you want to do!

>More details can be had at MidGaHosting.com

So when would you need something more powerful?

A lot of the cheaper hosting systems woudl have you believe they can handle anything. Short answer: NOPE!

That’s why I offer a second option for my clients. It is more expensive – around $120 a year – but is hosted on a more powerful server, in a datacenter with a closer tie to the internet’s backbone. (In laymans’ terms, those servers are a few layers closer to the absolute fastest segments of the whole internet – well, except for Internet2, which isn’t publicly available.)

I generally suggest my clients host on teh more powerful options when they will have a LOT of traffic, are going to do heavy ecommerce, need industrial strength Spam filtering, would like to share calendars/address books/etc via Outlook AND Webmail company-wide, or will want to upgrade to a VPS or hosted server in the future.

I have an article HERE that looks at the differences between the hosting plans I offer. Take a look – and feel free to contact me for more info, or an opinion on what you should do!

I’ve noticed several times over the last few weeks this situation:

A small business – it might be a plumbing company, printshop, whatever….. – has their website plastered on their truck / flyer / billboard / facebook ad / etc. They’ll have the company name, a phone number, maybe a phrase describing what they do – in short, it’ll look pretty good, and is probably pretty effective.

…and then I get to the contact email address.

If you are going to go to the trouble of having a website and your own domain (www.joesplumbing.com) – you really ought to use an email address from that domain as your primary contact.

Why?

Using whatever@joesplumbing.com will reinforce your website, your brand name, and make it easier for potential customers to remember you. There is also the advantage of consistency – clients only have to remember ONE domain (joesplumbing.com) – not 2 or three (Wait – was the email contact at yahoo.com? hotmail? live.com? uhhhhhhhh……)

Granted, this is ONLY an advantage if your domain makes sense for your business – but it is definitely worth doing well!

What about spam?

Most hosting plans will offer some type of spam filtering. The plans over at MidGaHosting.com all do. It is a fairly capable spam filtering system that catches the majority of the spam received, and it is easily configurable in the hosting control panel. You just make a selection for each email address on how aggressive you want the filter to be.

If you need something heavier-duty, try the hosting plans offered by the MaconMacGuy. You can add on an industrial strength spam filter for $12/year per email address that will catch virtually every piece of spam the world throws at you. It is remarkable effective – and can save you some significant time in handling email.

Another Option

Setup what is known as an “alias” email account – again, easily done in your hosting control panel. An alias account isn’t a “real” email account, but the hosting will automatically forward any emails sent to info@joesplumbing.com, for example, to Joe’s real account at Gmail or Yahoo (which then spam filters the incoming mail). The DISADVANTAGE of this approach is that your customer will email info@joesplumbing.com, but will receive a reply from joesplumbing@gmail.com – and this can be confusing. It could also possibly trigger their spam filter.

Contact the MaconMacGuy for more information and ideas for using technology in YOUR business!