By Ben Rowland

I've answered many questions about web and e-mail hosting and begun to notice a pattern: Customers often want to know why our hosting costs more than $99 per year.

After reflecting on today's web and e-mail hosting, I created a list of 10 main areas by which budget or discount hosts operate at a profit - at customers' expense

Most web hosts desire repeat revenue from maximum accounts with minimum maintenance. Quantity and personal distance are kings.

The alternative: Tecture launches your website and watches it like a gardener with a watering can. We are an involved partner who attends to you as your company and website grow. Quality and human attention are kings.

Support eats into web hosts' profits. These hosts simply cannot provide adequate customer service while charging only $8 per month. In addition, most budget web hosts employ well-meaning but inexperienced technicians to answer the phones.

Should something serious go wrong, these novices forward your "support ticket" to someone else who can handle it. You then must wait and play phone tag when following up on a problem.

The alternative: Tecture doesn't skimp on support. Our business is based on it. Once your website is launched, we help you maintain it. We also become your primary resource for everything from database development to online advertising strategies.

Web hosts typically don't know what your website looks like or if it even works. That is not what they're in business to care about.

The alternative: Tecture pairs website design and development with website management software. After we launch your site, you can use our management system to keep it fresh and relevant. Our software lets you edit pages and copy with ease right from your office as your business adapts and evolves.

Web hosting is a basic endeavor. A hosting business needs only a server in a garage or basement to begin. These hosts primarily seek large numbers of subscribers. Support and service are often secondary.

The alternative: When you choose a host, ensure it is a professional, competent company with a performance record. Call the business a few times to find out if they answer phones and return calls. Test their knowledge and responsiveness. These people will be helping you if you ever have a problem: You must have faith in them.

Web hosts may or may not use good backup procedures. Most often, backup will be your responsibility. Not all system backups are created equally, either. Many tape backups are unreliable, and data restoration can fail. A web host's claim of backed-up servers does not always guarantee your data will be saved in the event of a failure.

The alternative: Tecture takes disk backups very seriously. All servers are backed up daily. Data is also reinforced through full weekly backups and daily differential backups. The result: Your data can be recovered quickly upon your request.

Web hosts don't include design and development staff for custom work. If you ever need a form, a database or a change to your website, you're stuck. Finding someone to help becomes your burden.

The alternative: Tecture offers excellent design, IT support and software-development services from highly trained and efficient personnel.

Web hosts typically assemble random open-source applications and call them a complete "solution." It simply isn't true. You still have to configure databases and get this software running by yourself. You'll get used to searching support forums for answers on how to make the content-management software work.

The alternative: Tecture offers an efficiently integrated system. We, not you, configure all of your software. Our website manager just works. You, in turn, spend your valuable time running your business rather than losing hours to database problems.

Many budget hosting companies run their servers from inferior locations such as homes or basements. As a result, they provide bandwidths of inferior quality. You then have to endure service outages and periods of poor server performance.

The alternative: Tecture uses a top-tier dedicated-server provider with multiple redundant network carriers. The resulting high quality of our bandwidth maximizes your website's performance speed while minimizing the chance of downtime. Whether your site is a simple marketing tool or an intense multimedia experience, your visitors load your pages promptly, leaving them with a more positive image of your business.

Most budget web hosts pack as many websites as they can into their servers. If they didn't, their low hosting rates wouldn't be possible. Such server overload disrupts and degrades website performances, especially during peak times.

The alternative: Tecture does not overload its servers. Your website performs well at all times. Our clients don't run low-end businesses, so neither do we.

Most budget providers place strict quotas on e-mail accounts. They limit attachment sizes as well. Many providers also use low-quality e-mail servers and webmail systems.

As a business, you do not want your clients' e-mails bouncing back to them with your "over quota" messages, nor do you want your outbound e-mails blocked because you've attached a 3 MB file.

The alternative: Tecture uses the superb Smarter MailT e-mail server and webmail system with built-in, customizable server-side Bayesian spam filtering. We don't believe in setting fixed quotas. For us, it's more important that your messages look good and arrive swiftly. E-mail is vital to your business, and we treat it as such.