Successful Virtual Assistants know the value of having your own website. But choosing the best webhost, one that addresses a Virtual Assistant’s specific needs, can still be an overwhelming task. With our years of testing, using & researching different webhosts, we’ve come to the same conclusion that most other online entrepreneurs have.
HostGator is the best webhost. It offers the best value for your hard earned money…
What Virtual Assistants Need from a Webhost
As a Virtual Assistant you understand the critical role you own website plays on the success of your virtual assistance business. But unless your field of expertise is web design/programming, chances are you will have the following constraints & requirements:
EASE OF USE You have very limited time to seriously study HTML/CSS, and so you need a website builder. But at the same time you need to attract & impress potential Clients visiting your website, as such you need a professional looking, customized & branded website. Generic, homemade looking templates are unacceptable.
PRICE You understand the value of investing on the long term success of your business but at the same time, you may not have large funds to allocate to your website development. Affordability is a key factor.
SUPPORT Because you are not a geek, you need constant guide and support as you build your website. You need technical support that do not speak technical geek. If you are from Asia, you need a 24×7 Online/Live Chat support.
HostGator Addresses The Needs of Virtual Assistants, +Plus More!
Based on our own extensive experience building websites online, HostGator is the best hosting for Virtual Assistants. If you’ve been operating online for a while now, you are probably familiar with HostGator.
1. “One of the world’s top 10 largest Webhosting Companies.
2. 99.9% uptime guaranteed.
3. Easy. Affordable. Perfect for online freelancers/Virtual Assistants.
I. HostGator is Highly Customizable Yet Easy to Use
Ia. Website Building Tools
HostGator has excellent site building tools that can fastrack the creation of your own customized websites. No CSS. No HTML. All webhosting plans comes with a free SiteStudio and SiteBuilder. You basically pick a template, customize it with your own photo/color/branding, and then publish it on the web. Once you subscribe to HostGator, you have the option to activate and try both SiteStudio/SiteBuilder.
SiteStudio
SiteStudio is for the complete novice. More like website creation for dummies. While this is amazingly easy to use, we do not recommend this for Virtual Assistants/ Freelancers. It has very limited customizability and the design templates generally looks homemade.
- You may view the SiteStudio Templates Here| View SiteStudio Templates
- You may try SiteStudio Here | Try SiteStudio Online
SiteBuilder
SiteBuilder is excellent when building a website for your Virtual Assistance Business / Freelance Business Online. The templates are very professional looking and are highly customizable. Do try the demo site prior signing-up. Unless you are extremely technically challenged you’ll find that the Site Builder is intuitive and can be easily learned even without reading any manuals.
- You may try view templates and try SiteBuilder Here | Try SiteBuilder It is right on the HostGator homepage [screenshot]
- You may want to follow sample video tutorials using above SiteBuilder Demo account.
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You may download Free HostGator Header Templates here | Download Free HostGator Headers. You may use them to easily create and upload your templates. Or to use them as matching header for your subsites/ forum/ directory listings.
4500 Free Website Templates
HostGator also offers 4500 Professional looking templates. These templates however requires FTP and HTML knowledge for you to be able to customize them.
- To view all the available templates, goto HostGator and click WEB HOSTING – VIEW WEBSITE TEMPLATES [screenshot]
Ib. cPanel & Fantastico
A control panel is where you will manage every thing related to your website – your domains, emails, accounts, statistics, etc. Not all control panels are created equal. Some control panels are easier than others. Some are very advanced, they can be very frustrating for beginners. HostGator uses cPanel, the number 1 used control panel in the world. cPanel is easy enough for newbies, and yet robust enough for advanced users. HostGator’s cPanel also includes Fantastico.
- You may view the cPanel screenshot here | [cPanel Full Screenshot]
- You may also want to try the cPanel demo prior signing-up. Goto HostGator then view click CONTROL PANEL Try Demo [screenshot ]
Fantastico allows you to install a wide array of scripts with just one click. This means you can easily create a wordpress blog/ image galleries/SohoLaunch/Wikis, etc. with just one click. Without fantastico, you will need to download, ftp and install these scripts yourself. This is not an easy process for non-geeks. But with Fantastico, software installation is just one click. It’s ok if you are not fully familiar with these scripts at the moment. These are basically blogs/wikis/forums that you may find yourself needing in the future, as you get more familiar online. The important thing is, when you do decide you want to have these tools, you have at your disposal, an easy way to install them. You have Fantastico.
- You may find the scripts supported by Fantastico here| Scripts Being Installed by Fantastico
II. HostGator is Price Competitive
You can have your own website for a mere $4.95/mo (hatchling). You are allowed to host 1 Domain for this. But the best value for your money actually is the Baby Plan. At $7.95/mo you will get unlimited hosting, unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. Business Plan offers dedicated SSL & IP, and a toll free number for $12.95/mo. But most Virtual Assistants will probably not need these add-ons. As far as the needs of an average Virtual Assistant is concerned, HostGator’s Baby Plan offers the best value for money. We ourselves use Baby Plan for all our hosting needs.
Why not stick with the cheapest, Hatchling Plan? | Consider this scenario. Today you want to create myvawebsite.com. A couple of months down the road you realize you want to target a more specific niche and so you decide to create another website, mynichedva.com. You get into the hang of creating websites (as most online folks do), and you begin to see the many opportunities in the online world and so you create a couple more. If you are under the hatchling plan, you will need to pay additional $4.95/mo for every single additional website you create! Whereas if you get the Baby Plan (just a couple of dollars more), you can create as many websites as you want without having to pay additional hosting fees.
You want the flexibility to create more websites in the future without paying for more. You want to get the least priced plan that offers unlimited domain – i.e. Baby plan.
Some webhost companies may offer cheaper rates. Do note however that a lot of these sites either charges for non-refundable set-up fees or they tie you down to a long term contract. Others who really charge extremely cheap rates are forced to clog their networks with as many users as possible to recover their costs. You then pay back with slow network connection/speed. HostGator don’t have any of these additional fees/ issues.
Overall Initial Cash Outlay | One of the most common misconceptions among Virtual Assistants is that creating a website is expensive. This is certainly not true. HostGator has minimal cash outlay. During the sign-up, you just pay for your Domain registration (ie. standard 1 year) and then your hosting fee for the month. Depending on the plan that you choose, you will pay a small $10 to $23 – one time. And then for the future months you will only pay either $4.95/mo (Hatchling) or $7.95/mo (Baby Plan). This is certainly a small investment to the long term success of your Virtual Assistance Business!
III. HostGator Offers Excellent Support
As a newbie web designer, you will surely need someone to guide you as you screw up your website 
. We ourselves have experienced many glitches over the years of our website development. And we can tell you that nothing is more frustrating than having your website down and having no easy way to get instant online support. If you are from Asia, you would definitely want a webhost with a 24×7 online/live chat to bridge the time difference gap.
HostGator has an Award Winning Support …
- 24×7x365 Premium Support via Phone, LIve Chat and Ticket System (email)
- Automatic Weekly Off-Site data backups
- 24×7x365 Server Monitoring
- Online Support Portal with over 500+ Video Tutorials and 680+ Help Articles
What makes HostGator support different from the others is that by the time you hang up on their live chat, your issue has already been resolved. The support tech at the end has already accessed your site and fixed the issue right then and there. This is excellent support!
Given the ease of use, competitive price and excellent customer support, clearly HostGator is the best webhost for Virtual Assistants. Do try the demo sites given above. Go thru the tutorials and start creating your own website!
Every second you operate without a website, you are sending your potential clients to your competitors. If you are dead serious about becoming successful online, why would you do that?
