Acquia Drupal hosting

The sites which we develop are typically highly-tuned, data-driven websites. It's not unusual for a page request to have many database queries, pulling content from a variety of areas into custom build layouts. For our clients, typically, the cheap hosting packages you see advertised on TV just don't deliver the performance they require. What our clients need is a strong, proven hosting provider which delivers excellent performance, competitive pricing and peace of mind.

We use Acquia to host our clients' websites. Acquia is the leading Drupal hosting company whose co-founder (Dries Buytaert) is the creator and project lead for the Drupal platform. Acquia offers the ability to scale the hosting requirements to the specific needs of each site we build. All our hosted sites have automatic daily backup, first-in-class security, version control and multiple development environments, all helping to provide peace of mind for our clients and an excellent development workflow. That being said, if you have a five page website with static content and little traffic then a hosting package costing a few dollars per& month could offer all you need.

The danger lies in believing all hosting is equal. It most certainly is not. Large websites typically have many server requests for each page load and so relying on budget hosting to pull all of this information together quickly is a big ask. It's not just server response time, either. Things like page caching are a must for enhanced user experience of data-laiden page loads - and the options you get with budget hosting, again, fall short.

There are two questions we ask clients when they are looking at hosting options:

• How important is a fast page load to your users?
• What would happen if your site went down or you lost data?

As you can imagine, the answers are usually something like "It's very important." and "It would be a nightmare!"... which leads to the only real question to ask when choosing a hosting provider: "How important are ;our website's speed and reliability to our business?"

Want to find out more about our Drupal-optimized hosting solutions? Contact Us or do some research on the top Drupal hosting providers. Just remember, there are some good ones and some not-so-good ones. It's important to know the difference.