Back a little bit we talk about how you need to approach the business of getting your business online. It's not just that we all know that you've got to be online these days in order to be running a decent business. It's also that you've got to work out exactly what you're going to do with the business online first. For only then can you decide what you're going to need in terms of websoting support, tools, bandwidth and so on.

To give you another example here. I've a little business which really invloves around 40 people around the world. We all know who each other is, have email addresses and telephone numbers and can manage the global trade in this manner. There's absolutely no point at all in having a trading platform on the web. Nor of trying to run a community or any of those other things.

However, I do want to have a marker out there. Just in case there's a new entrant to the business (either buyer or supplier) I want them to know I exist. So I need a website that turns up in Google seaches. Nothing fancy, not elaborate and the text hasn't changed in years. But it does still bring me the occasional enquiry and I'm not missing any new entrants into the marketplace.

For something like this programming tools, uptime, bandwidth, they're all near irrelevant which is why I use a budget host to operate that site.

There's just no point in spending more money than you have to.