Powerful web hosting, ideal for business websites
Serious online businesses need serious server performance. Red Carrot's hosting offers the most effective platform for your business to grow.
Faster hosting gives you that all important edge over your competition. It delivers the satisfying user experience that makes customers continually return and it plays an important part in getting you to the top of Google listings.
What is web hosting?
Web hosting refers to the process of publishing a website online by renting space and bandwidth from a specialist company. In order for a website to be online and constantly available, it must be uploaded onto a web server.
A web server is a computer that is constantly switched on and connected to the internet. When somebody views a page on your site, various internet systems are used to locate the correct web server and the page is pulled from its memory and sent to your machine.
In addition to keeping your website live, the web server also provides any email services that are associated with your domain name. Each time you send or receive an email, it passes through the server where it is routed to the appropriate destination.
Hosting Packages
Depending on the size and complexity of your new website, we'll offer you one of the following hosting packages.
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Standard Business Hosting
Our Standard Hosting package is ideal for hosting small to medium websites with little or no CMS functionality. These often includes brochure and portfolio-style sites which do not consume very much disk space, bandwidth or server resources.
Standard Business Hosting costs £20 / month.
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Enhanced Business Hosting
Our Enhanced Hosting package is designed for larger websites that use additional storage and bandwidth, or require heavy processing power. These include content management systems, blogs and ecommerce sites which often require advanced hosting features such as complex databases or secure encryption.
Enhanced Business Hosting costs £30 / month.
We do not impose any storage or bandwidth limits, but we may review your site occasionally and if necessary we'll advise you of additional hosting options to ensure your customers continue to get the best from your website.
Hosting charges
Your ongoing hosting fee pays for the bandwidth and storage costs that are incurred keeping your website live on the internet and emails running day and night.
Red Carrot's hosting service is fully managed, meaning that we look after the servers on your behalf. We take care of all security updates, virus and spam protection, day-to-day maintenance, and off-site backups.
We will also provide you with hosting-related support, for example help with configuring your computer or mobile device with your email settings.
Why host with us?
Our web servers are UK based, situated in a purpose-built high-security data centre with a direct link into the backbone of the internet. Hundreds of customers rely on us to keep their websites and emails running smoothly, a responsibility that we take very seriously.
We provide a fully managed hosting service for our web design customers only.The number of websites on each server is kept to a minimum to ensure that each site is able to deliver the best possible experience for your customers. We also provide a solid, dependable email service that includes spam and virus protection.
Red Carrot Web Design retains full administrative control over each server, and we are able to configure the machines exactly as we require. Why is this important? As the web evolves over time, our clients are asking us to create websites with increasingly complex functions and features. Having the ability to install new software and optimise each server means we can remain at the cutting edge of web design.
| Red Carrot Hosting | Third Party Hosting |
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| Full Control | |
We configure the servers how we like Having the freedom to configure our servers means your website can take full advantage of modern web design techniques |
We have no control over the configuration of the server Third-party shared hosting is often very limited in terms of functionality and even relatively simple things (such as an online form) are occasionally not possible. |
Your website is designed to work with our hosting packages We build and test websites from the ground-up in the exact same hosting environment as our live sites. |
Your website may not function as expected Some features of your new site may not work when the site is transferred over to your third-party hosting package. Who pays for the additional time spent 'fixing' the problem? |
We know exactly how our hosting packages work We can get things done very quickly with our own servers which saves us time and keeps costs down. If ever there is a hosting-related issue we know exactly where to look and how to fix it. |
We don't always know how third-party hosting packages work There are thousands of hosts out there, and there is often a learning curve. We don't want to waste your money familiarising ourselves with your third-party hosting product. |
| Support | |
Our support team are quick to respond Having trouble configuring your email program? Just give us a call on 01233 631544, and speak to a real person immediately. Our staff are friendly and knowledgeable. |
Third-party support can be slow and is often costly If something goes wrong or doesn't work as expected, we don't want to waste your money sitting in a premium-rate phone queue, or waiting for a response to a support ticket. |
We assume full responsibility for keeping your website and emails running smoothly We design, host and maintain your website on our servers. Keeping everything under one roof means that you have a single point of contact for anything related to your website and email service. |
Who is responsible when things go wrong? If your ecommerce website suddenly stops taking orders, and after several hours of head scratching we discover that your third-party host changed something on their server, effectively 'breaking' the site, who pays for the time spent diagnosing and fixing the problem? |
| Backups and data recovery | |
We backup your data every night Our servers are automatically backed up every 24 hours, and we also take a daily snapshot of every single website and store it in a separate physical location. |
Backups will be your own responsibility Third-party hosting often requires you to take full responsibility for planning and implementing your own backup and restore strategy. |
Business-class email included as standard Our hosting package includes a reliable email service with automatic spam and virus protection, and the ability to access your email in a variety of ways. We'll even help you configure your chosen mail program or mobile device including iPhone and Blackberry. |
Third-party email services are often badly implemented Emails sent through large hosting providers are often incorrectly flagged as spam due to other customers abusing the network, and may not be received. Other problems include slow delivery rates and poor support. Some devices may not be supported. |
| Resources | |
No limits on bandwidth or disk space We do not enforce any limits, so you won't get any unexpected charges. We may review your site occasionally and if necessary we'll advise you of additional hosting options to ensure your customers continue to get the best from your website. |
Limited bandwidth and disk space Excess bandwidth charges can be expensive if you exceed your allowance. |
Powerful servers Our dedicated servers have powerful processors and lots of RAM, and are optimised for ecommerce systems, content management systems and blogs. |
Servers lack power Third party shared hosting is often only suitable for small to medium websites with no CMS functionality or advanced features. |
| Speed | |
Our servers are on the fastest UK network We locate our clients' hosting solutions in the best data centre facilities available, with a direct connection into the backbone of the internet. |
Servers often located in other countries on slow networks Third-party hosting is often slow, lacks power and feels unresponsive when browsing sites. To cut costs, servers are frequently located in other countries where hosting is much cheaper. |
| Uptime | |
Red Carrot's own website and emails are hosted on the same servers as our customers We have so much confidence in our hosting packages that we use the exact same packages to host our website 'redcarrot.co.uk' and all of our own email addresses. Sharing the exact same hosting package as our customers means we can spot potential issues early and deal with them quickly. |
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Importance of speed
Speed on the web is now incredibly important. With Google's ranking criteria now taking page load times into account, the speed of your servers can be the difference between page four and page one.
Faster hosting gives you that all important edge over your competition. It delivers the satisfying user experience that makes customers continually return and it plays an important part in getting you to the top of Google listings.
We only locate our clients' hosting solutions in the best data centre facilities available. We lease multiple servers directly from UKfast, a large hosting provider with data centres here in the United Kingdom. UKFast is consistently rated as the fastest hosting provider by independent testers.
Backups and data recovery
Performing regular server backups is a must for every business that relies on the data associated with email, websites or ecommerce. Your business cannot afford to lose this vital information.
Red Carrot Web Design uses hassle-free, timely backups that keep your data safe. Our servers are automatically backed up every 24 hours so data is duplicated and stored on a regular basis. In order to avoid any unnecessary disruption to your business, we carry out backups at night when the network is at its quietest.
In addition, we take a daily snapshot of each website which is then backed up to a separate physical location. Should disaster affect our primary storage location, rest assured data is safe and accessible at all times in a secondary area.
For our advanced users
Our servers are configured with Intel's Dual Core G6950 (2x2.8Ghz), 8GB RAM, 2x2TB SATA RAID1 and a dedicated Cisco firewall, all leased directly from UKfast datacentres here in the UK.
Our servers are all Linux based with Apache, MySQL and PHP.