What Site Owners Should Understand Concerning Hosting Websites For Accountants
Websites have become kinda commonplace and very nearly anyone can easily set up their own. Once the site is up, though, it’s time to find a host. Site hosting is an element of of the web that most folks, even most site owners, don’t actually understand. There are a few important factors you need to look at when deciding on a server to host your site. Once you know what you’re searching for you’ll discover that hosting isn’t really all that deep. Does it include adequate storage and bandwidth for document storage and will it support the security needed to transfer QuickBooks files and tax documents? Who will be available to help when you have questions? How much will you have to pay, and what’s included in your fee?
Here are some topics to consider when choosing a web host for a CPA or accounting website.
Technical Support
What kind of technical support will your new web host offer, and are there different levels of support you can get? A lot of people don’t think about support until it’s needed and this can be a very expensive mistake. Even if you don’t have problems I guarantee sooner or later you’ll have questions.
Disk Quota
If all you have is a website with a few pages this isn’t much of an issue, but for the best websites for accountants you’ll need space to store files. Running out of storage space in the middle of tax season can become an inconvenience, but more importantly it will aggravate your clients. Before you decide on hosting you’ll need to decide what kind of file transfer capability your site needs. Permanently storing files for clients online uses much more disk quota than simply transferring them. Do you want to add videos or large picture galleries to your site? All of these factors affect the amount of disk space you’ll need.
Most websites for accountants use the bulk of their file storage on client files. Here are some guidelines: You’ll store most normal documents like tax returns and forms as black and white PDF files. 35 pages of normal business documents usually use up about 500kb of storage. PDF files get much larger if they have color or are saved at high resolutions. QuickBooks files tend to be larger, but theres no real standard so I recommend erring on the side of caution and allowing 20Mb for each. Many QuickBooks files are smaller than this, but some go back many years or have lots of detailed transactions and these files can get much larger.
Find out if your web host will allow you to upgrade your storage if the need arises. This is the best possible solution because it allows you to start small and expand your capacity as your business grows. It can be easy to overestimate how much space you’ll need. Frankly, disk space is pretty cheap. When tax time rolls around not having enough online storage will disrupt your practice and it’s worth a sawbuck or two to avoid this.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is extremely important when hosting websites for accountants, and it often gets overlooked. Accounting is a very seasonal profession and websites for accountants tend get hit extremely hard during tax season. Bandwidth limits the number of visitors you can recieve in a given time period, and you’re website is going to go down in the middle of tax season if you don’t have enough. And that’s not all. Accounting firms tend to have much higher bandwidth demands than other businesses. Most websites only need enough bandwidth to allow visitors to view the actual website. Increases in traffic results in increased bandwidth requirements. This is still true of accounting websites, but even smaller firms are going to need a lot more bandwidth than a bowling alley or restaurant might need. Accountants send and recieve files over the internet all the time, and this causes their bandwidth needs to skyrocket. Most accountants need at least a Gigabyte of bandwith in the months around tax season. I’d really recommend 1.5Gb, and my most active client consumed more than 3.5Gb last year.
Site Manager
What kind of tools are available for you to create your website? Some sites will only let you upload finished sites that you’ve built from scratch, others force you to use inflexible templates that cannot be modified at all, and many offer varying degrees of compromise between these extremes. Find out what, if any, editing tools and capabilities your host offers. Some offer packages. Make sure if this is the case you buy a package that suits your real needs.
Programming and Database Support
OK, this is where things might seem a little intimidating, but it’s really not as scary as it sounds. In simple English, you will probably want a website that can support advanced functions. Your website host will likely have at least a few options available. If your host is using a Windows server they most likely offer support for .NET and Microsoft SQL databases. On the other hand if it’s a Linux server they’ll most likely support PHP and and MySQL. Both servers are able to do pretty much the same things, but they do them in different ways.
Other Support Tools
As an accounting firm you’ll find that secure file transfer capability is an absolute MUST for your website, but there are some other advanced features to consider. One very important feature is traffic stats. Your host should offer you a report detailing traffic information like number of visits, visitor movement inside the site, and traffic sources. Do you have FTP access for ease of moving files onto and off of your website? And keep an eye out for other goodies, too. Again, depending on your intended use, you may or may not not need these extra management tools but it’s important to that your host is giving your firm room to grow.
Site Security
If you actually want to USE your secure file transfer this becomes extremely important. In order to keep your client’s tax returns and QuickBooks files protected you’ll need to make sure adequate online security precautions can be put into place. Make sure the host supports SSL, the basic online security protocol. This acts as an encryption key and verifies users’ identities in order to ensure that all transactions are secure.
Extras
Some web hosts also provide additional convenience features, such as providing domain name registration and e-mail hosting. If your host provides domain name registration, consider what the terms are for them to register the domain, especially if you decide to change your web host. Make sure any domain names you register through your host are registered in a retail account in YOUR name. Some hosts will register your domain in a wholesale account in their name, and they’ll often use their ownership of your domain to browbeat you into staying with them.
With e-mail, you will also want to find out how you can access that e-mail remotely, if it’s compatible with any potential devices (e.g., smartphones) or software (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) that you may use. Using your web host as an Email provider can also sometimes create problems if you ever decide you want to change hosts. What happens to any e-mails you may have on their server?
These basics should help you when you’re ready to choose a website host for your accounting or CPA firm. You should seriously consider a host that specializes in websites for accountants, but these fundamentals apply to just about any hosting service. As service professionals dealing with personal financial material accounting firms enjoy a much less forgiving margin allowed error allowed to the best websites for accountants than many other types of businesses so it’s really best to examine your choices and discover what other users of those services feel when deciding on hosting services. While this post will impart you some pragmatic information so you can make a comparatively informed choice I would strongly advise making flexibility an important factor in your final choice. If your host allows you to upgrade features as you reqiuire them you’ll have a significantly easier time building your CPA or accounting practice.