website hosting
Hosting a website means that Pico design will store the website, the email addresses and data on a professional web server which will provide a fast and reliable connection to the Internet and mail server facilities to enable the email accounts to be used with software such as Outlook and Thunderbird to receive email. Pico Design Hosting also includes renewal of the domain name or names.
If you are UK based, then your website will be stored on a professional web server in the UK.
Domain names
A domain name is the website address. This will be purchased on your behalf and renewed every one/two years. You don't own a domain name, it is more like renting.
Web Servers
Hosting a website on a professional web server in a Data Centre is good because they are fast! and very reliable. Data centres are designed for speed, reliability and redunancy. If a connection to the internet is lost, there will be others. If power fails there is an immediate backup. Web servers are designed so that if hardware failure occurs, then repairs can be made quickly and while all systems are still running. Web servers also allow search engine bots to crawl your web pages and list your website on search engines. This can happen multiple times a day, which is another good reason for having a fast web server capable of receiving a lot of internet traffic.
Email Addresses
Up to 10 email addresses that come with the website can be set up and hosted, and the data transfer that applies when emails are sent and received. Anti-Virus and Anti-spam can be installed on any of the email addresses for no extra cost. Pico Design will supply instructions and settings in order to collect your email using programs such Outlook or Thunderbird.
Important: With Pico Design, you get your own mail server, and not just an email forwarding service. This means that you have a proper email address that is the same as your website such as you@yourdomain.com, rather than having email address forwarding. Email address forwarding means that you wouldn't actually get any email addresses that match your website name, you would get one like this: you@yourdomain.freeprovider.com. By relying on a free email address for your business the chances of email failure are much higher - and it is much more professional to have an email address that is the same as your website.
All these facilities also have to be administered and that is included in the price of Hosting as well as everything mentioned above.