Cloud Web Hosting for Small Business

Although a mailbox has a specific e-mail address (the mailbox address), it can have more than one e-mail address asigned to it. A simple reason to asign more than one address to a mailbox would be to facilitate common typos (e.g. john@ & jon@, or brian@ & bryan@, or steven@ & stephen@) to still get the e-mail.

Another example would be to asign a role (e.g. sales, accounts, reception, etc.) to a person. So for example if Sarah is the reception lady, her primary e-mail address (the mailbox address) would be [email protected]. However, the e-mail address [email protected] could also be routed to her mailbox so that she doesn’t have to check a second e-mail account – and possibly miss incoming e-mails.

We also offer send-only and receive-only addresses (ideal for asigning to a scanner, printer, etc.), forwarders, aliases, catch-all addresses, and so on. None of these addresses constitute a mailbox, although each one is a globally unique e-mail address. The easiest way to determine how many mailboxes you need, is to simply count the number of people using e-mail in your company. Each one needs a mailbox, although they can each have more than a single e-mail address.

A 10GB mailbox is quite a lot for most people. Depending on your specific usage, you can store around 30 000 e-mails (with mixed content and attachment sizes) on less than 10GB. Most users store 15+ years worth of e-mail on less than 10GB. This would obviously not be the case for someone who receives hundreds of e-mails with large attachments every single day. However, for most people, 10GB is more than enough.

We feel that 10GB is a good sized mailbox, especially considering that most hosting companies give 5GB of space to share between your website, as well as all of your e-mail mailboxes. On our Basic package, we give 10x 10GB mailboxes, as well as unlimited website space. That is already 100GB of mailbox space, 20 times the 5GB other hosting companies give for around the same price – and we also provide unlimited website space in the same package.

If you do need more than 10GB mailbox space, you can simply purchase an upgrade per mailbox. The upgrade is billed at R300 per 10GB per year – space can be increased in 10GB increments. To put that cost into perspective, here is a basic annual/monthly cost calculation for a company using (25x 20GB mailboxes):

Standard hosting package (including 25x 10GB mailboxes) @ R149 p/m = R1 788 per year.
+ 25x R300 per 10GB space upgrade, per year for the mailbox upgrades = R7 500 per year.
+ 1x .co.za domain @ R99 per year.
Total of R9 387 per year, or R782.25 per month. Other hosting companies charge in excess of R3 000 per month for the same capacity service, with not even close to the same functionality, flexibility or quality infrastructure. This is not even factoring in any extra charges, which always seem to creep in over time.

Yes, we certainly can! Because our hosting is cloud based, it can scale indefinitely. We can provide as many mailboxes as you need – 100, 1 000, 10 000, we can easily scale to millions of mailboxes and unique e-mail addresses. We only list the packages that we sell most often, because listing 1 000+ different hosting package combinations will only create confusion. However, we can certainly offer you a custom hosting solution to suit your exact needs.

Feel free to get in touch with our sales team at [email protected] for them to do a proper needs analysis, and then propose a custom hosting solution for you. Our sales team will suggest the specific hosting solution that provides exactly what you need. We can also help you migrate all your existing accounts.

There are so many reasons and different scenarios to discuss, it is simply too many specific factors to mention. But here are a few examples:

1.  All domains hosted on a shared dedicated server is physically only available from that one single machine. If it experiences issues, all domains on that server are affected. Whether the issue is downtime, maintenance, a security breach or data loss – all domains are affected.
2. Because our hosting platform is cloud based, any individual server can be removed from the resource pool at any given time for any given reason (maintenance, hardware failure, etc.) without affecting any of the domains, websites, or services hosted on the platform – another server simply takes over.
3. All domains hosted on a dedicated server share the same resources. If another website on that single machine is very busy, other websites are also affected.
4. Security configuration is done on server level. With shared hosting on a dedicated server, all domains on that server are stuck with the same configuration – whether you like it or not. Typically, all servers in a specific datacenter are configured exactly the same way (to make maintenance and support easier). This is good business practice, but it does nothing for the sheer variety of different applications hosted in that datacenter. 
5. Dedicated servers are configured as “one size fits all”, because of the sheer amount of different combinations of sites hosted on a single server. Our cloud hosting platform is configured on a platform level, with e.g. specific performance enhancements for WordPress, on our WordPress hosting platform.
6. Our cloud hosting is auto scaling with load balancers, which means very busy websites are automatically moved to bigger servers to handle the load during the busy period. Other websites are not affected at all. This simply isn’t possible with traditional shared hosting on a dedicated server.
7. Website data and the database are hosted on the same platform, which speeds up communication between them – and, thus, makes your website faster.
8. The whole platform is behind a Web Application Firewall (WAF). All sites, databases and mail content is protected by default – security is not an optional extra.
9. All web content is cached on our global CDN (Content Delivery Network) with Edge Caching technology, which makes it easy to access the content quickly from anywhere. This also helps take load off the web servers, because every single request for a website page doesn’t have to be processed by the web server.
10. Our global CDN also acts as the perimeter security system, because malicious code cannot be sent to the web server directly – it has to pass between the CDN (Content Delivery Network) and WAF (Web Application Firewall) first.

 – If you are hosting with any of the big local hosting companies, there is a good chance that most (or many) of these statements are applicable to you – whether you realise it or not:

1. Your hosting is based on a single dedicated server somewhere in a datacenter.
2. Your hosting does not have redundant storage.
3. You often experience downtime (i.e. cannot connect to your website or e-mail).
4. You often experience slow response time when connecting to your website.
5. Your website is not protected by a Web App Firewall (WAF), or it is costing you extra every month.
6. You often experience database connection limits (which causes stuff to stop working).
7. Your database and website are not necessarily hosted in the same datacenter – or often not even in the same city.
8. Your website’s security is rated as substandard due to host configuration – and you are powerless to have it fixed.
9. You do not have access to a CDN – not even if you were willing to pay extra every month.
10. Your website is not being backed up, or it only happens every once in a while.
11. Your mailboxes are not being backed up at all – ever.
12. You have 100 mailboxes, but 5GB storage to share between all of them. So you really have 100x 50MB mailboxes if you use all the available addresses.
13. Basic website and e-mail security standards are not being adhered to, although you don’t even know about the problem.
14. You don’t have access to staging facilities, so you are left making changes to your live website. When something goes wrong, you don’t have a live website anymore – and your host probably doesn’t have a recent backup.
15. Your WordPress website needs 10+ additional plugins just to do things your host should already be doing by default.
16. Your host offers absolutely no acceleration or optimisation options right out of the box.

If you are unsure, get in touch with us and we can discuss your current hosting facilities in more detail. We would love to have a chat with you, even if you just want us to make sure everything is up-to-standard and you are not at risk. We would be happy to do a basic audit for you – for free.

The best way to switch to Managed IT is to simply pick a package from above and start the process. One of our sales team members will get in touch with you to work out the details and get your hosting migrated over to us. If you need a custom hosting solution (i.e. not one of the packages above), please get in touch with us at [email protected] and we will send you a proposal based on your unique requirements.

If you switch your hosting to us, we will assist you in moving (or migrating) your existing website and e-mail content over to us. No downtime, no data loss.

No you won’t!

We have been hosting customer data for many years, and we have migrated many customers over from many different service providers. We know the process very well and we have a streamlined migration process to ensure you don’t lose any website or e-mail content during your migration to Managed IT.

You bet we can! We even provide quick install packages for more than 200 web applications right out of the box.

Our infrastructure can host almost any web based system, CMS (Content Management System – such as WordPress, Joomla, etc.), online store, or plain flat files – whether it is coded in php, html or aspx.

Please get in touch with us and be sure to provide as much information as possible to the member of the sales team that contacts you. This will help smooth out the process and get you on your way.

Yes, we certainly do.

You can place your order above, or get in touch with us if you have a specific request. Please provide your requirements to the sales team member that contacts you.

You can access your e-mail through POP, IMAP or Webmail – from any device. There are a few things to keep in mind though:

If you use POP (Post Office Protocol), you can choose to leave the messages on the server, delete them once downloaded, or leave them on the server for a specific amount of time. This will help reduce mailbox size, but it could also mean that you might not be able to access a message from another device – especially if the message is from quite long ago.

If you use IMAP, your entire mailbox structure (inbox, sent items, drafts, etc. – including sub folders) will be kept in sync. This is very usefull if you use a desktop, laptop and a mobile device – because the mail content is the same on all your devices.

You are also able to access your e-mail through webmail – if you use IMAP or leave the messages on the server when using POP.

The domain registration and renewal pricing is roughly the same for .africa and .co.za domains. Apart from pricing and the proposed legislative changes affecting .co.za domains in 2022, there is another very good reason we prefer .africa domains over .co.za domains. In 2020, there were more than 1 250 000 active .co.za domains (that have already been registered). In 2022, there were less than 135 000 active .africa domains (that have already been registered).

So let’s say – for the sake of argument – that there are around 10 active .co.za domains for every active .africa domain. This means that you are theoretically around 10 times more likely to get the domain name you want under the .africa TLD (Top Level Domain), but you will not necessarily be able to get that same domain under the .co.za TLD.

During the pandemic and national lockdowns (2020 – 2022), online trading started booming in South Africa and many businesses started putting up websites and online stores. Businesses that had no real driving force to start an online store before, suddenly had an immense need and MANY new domains were regsitered during this time. Most of these domains were probably .co.za domains.

Looking forward, most businesses that register a new domain, would probably be better off registering a .africa domain. Many of the domain names (that are no longer available under the .co.za TLD) are still available under the .africa TLD. This is not even to mention the possible opportunities for small businesses to start trading intercontinentally in the near future. A .africa domain is a perfect fit for a small business that trades throughout the African Continent.

Certainly! We can do hosting for a domain under any TLD. We can almost certainly also do the domain registration and renewals for you – we can do it for most TLDs (more than 100 TLDs). However, if (by chance) you do have a TLD that we cannot do registration or renewal for, you can simply do the domain registration at a different provider and point your domain to our name servers. We can still host your website and e-mail – no problem with that.

Yes, we certainly can. Please get in touch with us and a memeber of our sales team will take you through the process of ordering your VPS Hosting.