Business Hosting upates
Today sees a long planned update to our Business Hosting platform. Most importantly we’re increasing the resource limits of all plans immediately.
Website demands have increased dramatically since the platform launched in 2011. We’ve spent the last 12 month deploying new hardware, and are now able to quadruple our base package in terms of RAM. The base plan previously offered 640MB of RAM, and as today we now offer 2GB as standard. More than 90% of our clients are hosted on this base plan. This brings the Business Hosting plan into line with our other containerised products.
We’ve also updated the core configurations of all containers to work better with these dramatically increased resources – this means all users should see immediate boosts to the performance and speed of hosted sites on the platform.
If it’s been a while since you’ve looked at the Business Hosting plan, here’s a recap of the other improvements we’ve made to the platform over the past few years.
Snapshot tool
Snapshot is our special backup tool that comes as standard on Business Hosting. This is offered in addition to our automated backups. Snapshot lets you take control of your website backup process through our control panel.
At any time, you can simply click a button and the snapshot system will take a copy of all your site data, there and then. You can choose to leave the snapshot on your hosting server (and restore the snapshot any time you like) or download it offline for safe keeping.
We recommend you take regular offline snapshots at intervals that make sense for the type of data your site generates. We will always take automated backups as detailed above for you, but if anything does go wrong, you can still sleep soundly knowing you have offline data copies too.
You can learn how to use the snapshot tool here: https://www.34sp.com/kb/146/how-to-manage-snapshots
Enhanced backup platform
In the past 24 months we’ve also allocated significant resources to improving our automated backups as well. In addition to a more robust and scalable architecture, we’ve also changed the core functionality, meaning we always store snapshots of your most recent site updates for the last 30 days. Just contact support and we can restore these for you, free of charge.
You can read the details of all our backups here: https://www.34sp.com/website-backups
Unlimited bandwidth
You’ve probably noticed we haven’t charged for excess bandwidth in quite some time. Back in 2015 we formally lifted the lid on this cap for normal web site usage. Provided your site conforms to fair and normal usage patterns, you won’t have to worry about bandwidth ever again.
What’s fair usage? Well, if a site causes generalised server instability we will still ask you to alter your package to fit your specific needs. We’ve only ever asked a vanishingly small number of our clients to do this.
Free SSL support
We’ve always offered free SSL support and free SSL certificates on Business Hosting. We’ve recently switched over to Let’s Encrypt to make this even more seamless and reliable. The system now auto renews SSL certificate every three months.
We’ve also simplified our range of SSL services too. If you need EV SSL to give your clients extra trust and confidence in your site, we’ve dropped pricing considerably: https://www.34sp.com/ssl
IPv6 support
As legacy IPv4 IP addresses dwindle, you should ensure your hosting can support the next generation of Internet technology. All 34SP.com Business Hosting accounts now come with IPv6 support as standard – future proofing sites for years to come.
CloudFlare
Another improvement we added services in 2015 was free access to the world leading content delivery network (CDN), CloudFlare. A CDN places your content closer to your site visitors, reduces load on your server, improves site loading times and also helps increase your site security. In a world where every second counts for a successful website, a powerful CDN is essential in putting your content in your user’s hands as fast as possible.
Increased development and support staff
In order to keep improving on both our support and the features we deliver, we’ve been hiring across all our departments; our current headcount is our highest ever in our 17 year history in terms of team members/clients. That’s also true of our development team, which has seen a tripling in size during the past 72 months – this means more features hitting your account and control panel at a faster and faster pace.
Custom hosting environment
As ever, Business Hosting is configured specifically to each client needs (on request). This means items like PCI compliance, security, software version are all setup per instruction you give to us. We don’t make any basic assumptions out of the box on your plan regarding software, security or otherwise.
Price changes
Since we launched the Business Hosting platform in 2011, we’ve never increased the price by a penny. Due to all the improvements and investments we’ve made, and taking into account changes in inflation and VAT over that period, the new monthly price for the base package is £19.95 per month. All other plans will increase by £5 per month too.
As always, we believe in fair and simple pricing built on transparency and openness. The price of £19.95 includes VAT and no hidden fees.