by Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer

Article by Ken Marshall

Virtually anybody can make a website nowadays. They’re cheap, very easy to set up, and there’s oodles of software floating around that takes the heavy lifting out of the development “loop”. Hosting, though, is something of a mystery. There are several important things you need to consider when selecting a company to host your website. Once you understand what you’re searching for you’ll find that hosting isn’t really all that foreign. 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? And let’s not forget cost. How much is all this going to cost, and what kind of hidden costs lurk in wait?

Let’s take a closer look at these topics one at a time…

Getting Help

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? Make sure your host is offering enough file storage for your needs.

Here are some guidelines for accounting firms. 35 Pages of medium resolution black and white PDF files, ie tax documents, will probably take up about 500kb, or .5Mb of disk space. PDF files get much larger if they have color or are saved at high resolutions. While they’re usually smaller than this (and occasionally larger) I recommend allowing about 20Mb for QuickBooks files.

Again, your web host may allow you to upgrade as needed, so you may be able to start small and increase your disk space later. 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 Quotas

Bandwidth is one of those vital features that is often overlooked by CPA and Accounting firms. In essence, the higher the bandwidth allotment, the more visitors that can visit your site during that day or month. And that’s not all. Accounting firms tend to have much higher bandwidth demands than other businesses. Accountants don’t use the same “boutique” sites that are adequate for most other businesses. Most business websites only need enough bandwidth to allow visitor traffic. The more visitors they anticipate, the more bandwidth they need. As an accountant you’ll also be sending and receiving files over your website, and this gobbles up a LOT of bandwidth. As a rule most accounting firms need at least 1Gb of bandwidth per month to get through tax season. I’d really recommend 1.5Gb, and my most active client consumed more than 3.5Gb last year.

Website Creation Tools

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.

Advanced Languages 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. For example, you may choose to be on a Linux server that supports PHP and the MySQL database, or you could opt for a Windows Server with .NET and Microsoft SQL Server. 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? What other tools are provided for other advanced features? 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.

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 will ensure a secure transaction and also verify your company’s identity.

Other Goodies

Most web hosts offer related web services, like email and domain name registration, in addition to their basic service. Sometimes these features are bundled into their basic hosting package, sometimes not. 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.

Google has an excellent freeware solution for small businesses so if you don’t need more than 10 accounts it really doesn’t offer any value. Larger firms may benefit from email service, but be aware that some hosting services offer email service that’s pretty out-of-date. Using your web host as an Email provider can also sometimes create problems if you ever decide you want to change hosts. Make sure you’ve downloaded ALL your emails into an email client before changing email hosts.

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 trusted with personal financial information accounting firms have a much tighter margin allowed error allowed to the best websites for accountants than just about all other types of companies so it’s actually best to explore your choices and discover what other users of those services think when deciding on hosting services. While this post will afford you some pragmatic information so you’ll be able to make a reasonably informed choice I would fervently suggest making flexibility a significant factor in your final selection. If your host allows you to upgrade features as you reqiuire them you’ll have a substantially easier time growing your accounting firm.

About the Author

Kenneth T. Marshall is a marketing consultant and former Officer of CPA Site Solutions, one of the nation’s most successful website companies oriented entirely to providing superior websites for accountants.

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