If you’re using any type of Web services to run a business and if those services are important to you, you should make sure you own them. The most common and best examples are websites and e-mail services. They are the most common online asset and services small business owners rely on. When you own your own Web services, your business is safer and you have greater peace-of-mind. If blogging is your business and if you build your blog based on a free service, you’re “building your business on quicksand”.

If you build your website on a specific online platform (services where you choose and edit pre-made templates and pay a monthly fee), if that platform changes ownership or shuts down, your site can see disruptions or maybe even disappear. With such services, you won’t be able to take you files and go somewhere else. Even if you could take or save those files, those files are likely incompatible with other online platforms. With services like these, you don’t really “own” your own website. You can customize it to you preference but it’s still not really “yours”.

If you custom build an HTML & CSS website. You can save those files and move them elsewhere if your hosting or server company is having trouble. HTML & CSS sites are “very portable”. If your site gets more complex and uses scripting like PHP and a database like MySQL, there is still a high-level of portability with the site and you can still move the website to another host or server. After a bit of configuration, you can get it up and running very soon.

The same goes with e-mail. If you’re using a free e-mail service, if that service shuts down, your messages and your contacts are gone! There was an article a few years back where Hotmail had a technical issue and the contacts and messages that belonged to a small chunk of their users had disappeared. There was one especially upset lady because she had lost some “very important” contacts and messages for her business. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do with her complaint because she was paying $0.00 for her service. If it was for business and/or if it is important, make sure you own the service.

When it comes to e-mail for business, you should not be using yourbusiness@gmail.com, yourbusiness@hotmail.com, yourbusiness@yahoo.com, etc.  Firstly, it looks bad (as in cheap, unprofessional, non-serious, etc.) and if one of those companies decide to shut down that particular service or sell it, you can be in trouble. If you don’t think that can happen, you may want to look around the tech world. Google being one of the largest tech companies in the world and one of the largest providers of Internet-related services (their services accounting for approximately 25% of North American consumer traffic!) According to Wired Magazine’s July 22, 2013 article, did you know Google shut down 80 different services/products as of the writing of this article! 80 Google services disappeared!

There are numerous possibilities as to what can affect services you use. Some are:

• A change in the company’s executive leadership
• Company acquisitions and mergers
• Internal restructuring
• Internal cost cutting
• Bankruptcy
• And many other reasons

This article does not apply to just website or e-mail services. It applies to blogs, photo-sharing services, video-sharing services, etc. If it’s important to you, make sure you’re not using some free to cheap service, make sure you own the service, make sure you have a solid contingency plan in-place.