Sales, Marketing and Advertising Tools

Below is an overview of common tools and services offered by hosting companies, along with links to more in-depth guides about each. It is usually a bad idea to make your decision primarily based on these extras — the core web hosting service is the most critical. But if they are available, there’s no harm in going ahead and taking advantage of them.

AdWords Vouchers

Google AdWords is the largest and most popular search marketing platform available, and allows marketers to promote their services only to those people who are actively searching for similar services. Many web hosting companies provide coupons for $50 or $100 of free AdWords credit for new accounts. This is one of the most common web hosting marketing freebies, and you should definitely take advantage of it.

Announcement Lists / Email Lists

One of the most powerful online marketing tools is an email list of current, past, and potential customers. You can use it to send announcements about special deals and new products, or just to provide ongoing value to your customers in the form of informational articles and advice columns.

Some web hosting companies provide the tools you need for managing marketing email lists and sending out bulk email. This is especially helpful because email marketing is subject to the rules of the CAN-SPAM act, and you need to make sure that your email forms and confirmation system keep you in compliance.

Merchant Account Support

A merchant account is a bank account that provides support for accepting a variety of payment types, particularly credit cards.

Merchant accounts can often carry large fees, especially if you don’t have very much money in them. Additionally, not all merchant accounts work very well with online forms or with all web applications — some banks and credit card processors are simply more or less tech savvy than others.

Many web hosting companies, especially those that cater to small businesses and ecommerce operations, have partnered with a Merchant Account provider to offer their customers low-cost Merchant Accounts. Besides the savings, the other advantage of these partnerships is that the web host has (in theory) vetted the merchant account provider, ensuring you that they can fully support online transactions.

PowerPay

PowerPay is a name-brand online payment gateway that allows its customers to accept a wide variety of payment options. It has special solutions available for small businesses, non-profit organizations, retail stores, and financial institutions. It can even be used by a company as both their online and in-person payment gateway.

Some web hosting companies provide special discounts and plug-n-play support for PowerPay.

Constant Marketing Tools / Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the most popular internet marketing services available. Their flagship offering is a robust email marketing platform supercharged with social media integration and detailed analytics.

EventSpot is Constant Contact’s event management service. It includes online registration functionality, along with email invitations, reminders, and analytics.

Constant Contact provides a search and directory listing service called SinglePlatform. This allows customers to keep key business data up to date in one place, and have that information automatically submitted to various online listings, directory services, and social networks, including Google, Yelp, FourSquare, and Yahoo.

Constant Contact also has tools for managing social media marketing campaigns, online surveys and polls, and local deals.

Many web hosting companies offer discounts on Constant Contact’s services, or offer easy integrations between Constant Contact and your web site management tools.

Credit Card Payment Gateway

If you are going to sell products or services on your website, you will need a Credit Card payment gateway. Paypal is one option for this, but the fees can be very high compared with other credit card processing options.

Some web hosting companies have partnered with credit card payment gateway providers to offer special discounts or other deals to their web hosting customers. Often this is accompanied by specialized integration tools to make it easier to connect your ecommerce solution to the payment portal.

OpenX

OpenX is an ad-management service that provides both self-hosted Ad Server software and also an ad network. Many web hosting companies offer one-click installation of the Ad Server software, which also includes the potential for integrating with their Ad Exchange platform.

phpAdsNew / OpenX Source / Revive Adserver

This is an Open Source ad server software application. It was originally called phpAdsNew and then OpenX Source when development was taken over by OpenX (OpenAds). In 2013, the software was sold to a team led by some of the original developers of the software, who now maintain the project under the name “Revive Adserver.”

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most powerful advertising methods available. But it isn’t something you can just buy your way into — you have to produce a lot of great content, get people to share and link to it, and make sure your web site is well-structured.

Many web hosting companies have partnered with SEO consulting firms to provide SEO advice and assessments to their customers.