Hosting fees: Why are they still a thing for real estate professionals?

What Is Hosting?

Hosting is a service that stores images, videos, website files and other data on a server making them accessible online. Hosting can be done on a personal server, but this requires time, money and technical skill.

More commonly however, people often pay a fee to host their data on a server with another company, and in exchange the company provides a safe and secure place that allows you to access your data from anywhere, on any device, as long as you’re connected to the internet.

This means you do not need to set up the server yourself, and all the maintenance involved in running a server will be taken care of by the company. Alongside this, large files can be held without the concern of running low on hard drive space.

Cloud Hosting

The most common type of hosting is cloud hosting. Cloud hosting is common in our daily digital lives, and it’s a method that uses virtual servers spread across the internet. Cloud hosting can be more reliable than server hosting as the cloud can compensate if a physical server fails. This helps protect your hosted data from loss or corruption. At Giraffe360 we use the industry leading Amazon Web Services (AWS) for our cloud hosting.

Reliability and Speed

As AWS is owned, operated and maintained by Amazon, you can trust that the company has the resources to hold large files securely with no issues. AWS is only likely to have issues if there is a major global outage, which is very uncommon.

Global outages usually only affect one system at once, bringing the likelihood of an outage down even further. The speed of AWS is industry standard and you can find out more information on AWS speeds here.

Stop paying for hosting

One of the biggest traps that hosting services have is ongoing fees for content you have already paid for. When cloud hosting is offered as part of a service, some users find themselves paying for both the initial asset, with a monthly fee for hosting.

Hosting with Giraffe360, which utilises AWS, comes at no extra cost to you. This means that there will be no hidden fees for hosting after you have signed up – you pay for a project once, with unlimited hosting included.

For the duration of your subscription, your tours, floor plans, images and everything else will be hosted as part of your package and available to view online when you have published it.
If you choose to cancel your subscription, your data will remain on our servers. This means that when you come back to Giraffe360, your content will be ready and waiting for you.

Private Links and Public Access

Control over access and sharing is a huge barrier when it comes to dealing with multiple clients and unique permissions need to be set for each asset.

With Giraffe360, you have the ability to generate multiple links for your virtual tours, floor plans and photos. This means that you can restrict access and make them viewable to whoever you want to view them.

You can also create public links. This will allow you to host your images on a domain that anyone can view. This way, you can share and publish the images on your website or social media.

Customer Support

Customer support is fully available throughout the duration of your subscription, and is accessible through your dashboard. Unfortunately, customer support won’t be available after cancelling your subscription. This is because access to the dashboard, where you interact with support, is also restricted.

All You Need To Know

Hosting is a useful tool for making your floor plans, virtual tours and other content even more accessible in a world becoming more digital everyday. It’s the backbone of content delivery, and by using hosting you are ensuring your business is moving forward with our ever changing digital landscape.

Hosting with Giraffe360:

• Comes at no extra cost to you.
• Utilises the AWS platform for cloud hosting.
• Provides a fast, reliable and secure platform for your content.
• Allows you to access your content from anywhere on any device.
• Gives you control as to who can access your content.

Learn more about how Giraffe360 can support your business with industry leading cloud hosting. Book a demo today!