PSPINC Official Company Blog

What is Web Hosting?

Nov

28

Web hosting refers to providing storage space and access to websites. In other words, web hosting acts like a space where websites store their files so users can view them online. So, every website you’ve ever been on is hosted on a server.

There are three types of hosting:

Shared: consists of one server where multiple websites share resources in equal proportions

Dedicated: offers end users all the hardware resources of a given server instead of sharing them like in shared hosting

VPS hosting: stands for virtual private server and is like a mix of the two, where a single virtual machine on a piece of physical hardware is shared with other virtual machines with levels of performance, flexibility, and control that fit somewhere between what shared and dedicated hosting offers.

Features Worth Considering

When choosing what features you need for your website, start by looking at what each type of hosting plan offers. Paid plans will generally have additional features that make it easier to manage your site as opposed to a free plan, which has the basics needed to get a website online. The more a web hosting plan costs, the more features there will be. But all you really need to keep in mind are these three aspects of your web hosting plan: speed, support, and scalability.

In terms of speed, multiple factors affect your website’s speed—one of which is your web hosting plans, and if your site takes longer than two seconds to load, generally, a user won’t stay on your site. When it comes to support, it’s important to know that your web hosting provider can get your site up and back up and running quickly if it were to unexpectedly go down. Lastly, there’s scalability. Your plan might work for you now, but as your site gets more traffic, you’ll want to upgrade your plan–your web hosting provider needs to have that option available for you to grow.

There is a myriad of choices when it comes time to buy web hosting, and PSPINC is one of them! Dreamersi is our premiere web hosting option that we’ve fully custom-built in-house, making it easier to control the overall hosting environment and features we’ve built into it. To learn more, head over to Dreamersi.com.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #customersupport #dreamersi #emailhosting #hosting #marketing #pspinc #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #video #web #webdevelopment #webhosting #website #websites #webtools #youtube

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 195 “Establishing Brand Identity Through Design”

Nov

23

Brand identity is important to any business, especially small businesses. Large businesses have an advantage in terms of credibility compared to small businesses. A solid brand identity helps small businesses gain credibility and inspire customer loyalty. But what is brand identity? Internally, it’s the values your company stands for and how you want your customers to feel about you. Externally, it’s your logo and other graphic design attributes.

Here at PSPINC, we pride ourselves on helping small businesses every step of the way in the design process. If you’re unsure what your brand should be or what it should look like, or if you’re looking for a fresh rebrand for your company, we have your back! Whether it’s creating a logo design, designing a business card, or custom designing your website, we have you covered. Just visit our brand and graphic design page and/or our web design page to get started.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #branding #business #businesstips #design #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #sales #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #website #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 193 “New Marketing Packages”

Nov

9

We are thrilled to announce that we now have new marketing packages available to fit your specific business needs. From small businesses just looking to spread awareness to those who want to completely transform their digital marketing strategy, we have the right plan for you.

pspinc marketing plans

Our plans are billed monthly, without any minimum contract. However, we recommend you run your ad campaign for at least three months for the best results. Our team has the experience and expertise to help you grow your business by strengthening your marketing efforts. Whether it’s social media marketing, paid ads on Google, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, or even blogging, we’ve got you covered. Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 191 “Pass Wizard Pro”

Oct

26

As a small business, we continually improve our services and products so that they’re the best they can be for our customers, which is why we’ve been hard at work doing just that for our password manager, Pass Wizard. Today, we are happy to announce that you can now sign up for Pass Wizard Pro without signing up for the free plan!

Before, users had to sign up for the free plan and upgrade to Pro, which just added more steps to the overall customer journey. So, we made it easier by letting customers get Pass Wizard Pro right at the start of the signup process. With features like unlimited password storage and management, multi-factor authentication, group management, and shared passwords, it’s never been easier to keep your data safe. Sign up for Pass Wizard Pro for just $1.67/month, making it one of the most affordable password managers on the market!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cybersecurity #marketing #passwizard #passwizardpro #password #passwordmanager #passwords #pspinc #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #website #webtools

What is IMAP?

Oct

17

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and is a set of protocols that allows mobile and email desktop applications to access email on an email server. POP, in contrast, stands for Post Office Protocol, which downloads email messages to your device locally before deleting them from the email server. Both are used to access emails on an email server, but they’re both done in different ways.

The Difference Between IMAP and POP

The biggest difference between the two is how each receives emails. IMAP essentially copies email messages to your email app on your mobile or desktop device by pulling from the email server. POP, however, downloads email messages onto your local device and deletes them from the server. The easiest way to think about it comes from an example from CloudFare. Think of IMAP like it’s Google Docs and POP like it’s Microsoft Word. With Google Docs, your documents and changes, from both you and whatever collaborators you might have shared it with, are instantly saved on the cloud, regardless of device. But when using Microsoft Docs, if you’re working with someone else and you make a change to the document, the other person won’t see that change because you’ll only be saving that document to your local computer. Email apps that support IMAP include:

Dreamersi – our web and email hosting option
Gmail
Yahoo mail
Mozilla Thunderbird
Outlook – with options to change to POP, if users want to change it in the settings.

Why IMAP Is Better

businessman with laptop at cafe table on street

With the rise of mobile devices, IMAP makes it easy to seamlessly transition when using phones, desktop, and tablet. Because of how users receive emails with POP, users won’t be able to access their email if they want to open their email in an app on a different device in cases of a lost, damaged, stolen, or even upgraded device. With IMAP, users can just open their email app on a new device without a problem because it’ll just redownload from the server onto the new device. So, using IMAP is a much more secure option than POP.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #gmail #google #imap #mozillathunderbird #officetips #outlook #pop #pop3 #smallbusiness #tech #technology #thunderbird #video #web #webhosting #websites #webtools #yahoo #youtube

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 188 “Send Large Files Without Uploading to the Cloud”

Oct

5

Since the pandemic hit, so many more everyday interactions, for individuals as well as businesses, occur online. This includes sending files to each other, regardless of how large they may be. The problem with emailing a large file to another person is that many email providers set a limit on how big a file is. For files that are too big, there’s usually an option to link the photo to either your Google Drive, iCloud, or some other cloud storage platform.

But doing it that way just adds steps to the overall process on both sides. To make it easier, we created MegaMail, which lets you send or transfer large files to anyone, anywhere. After signing up, all you have to do is drop files and enter a recipient or several, a subject line, a message, and, optionally, a password, which are the same things you’d add when composing a new email. Then, all the other person has to do is click on the MegaMail link and download the file. Sign up for just $9.99/month or $24.99/month for more storage space and a larger broadcast traffic limit to get started.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#applemail #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cloud #digitalmarketing #email #gmail #googledrive #icloud #megamail #officetips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 187 “New ImaMenu Features!”

Sep

28

We’re happy to announce that our easy digital menu builder, ImaMenu, now has new features! After we realized some of our customers were using it to create secret menus, we went straight to work to build out our product to better serve our customers. Now, with ImaMenu, you can:

Enable limited-time access to your menu.
Add a countdown clock.
Add a secret menu passcode and access menu.

Temporary menus are great for those running an event, chefs wanting to experiment with ingredients and/or flavors, and those looking to generate buzz for their restaurant with a secret menu. Sign up for ImaMenu for free today to get started.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #food #imamenu #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #menu #newsletter #pspinc #restaurant #restaurants #sales #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #website #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 183 “Free Social Media Marketing Tool”

Aug

31

Social media is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways for small businesses to market themselves. But for those who aren’t trained or experienced in design, creating visually appealing posts isn’t always easy. And we’ve probably all seen our fair share of less-than-ideal graphics floating around the internet. That’s why Canva, an online graphic design tool, is so helpful to even experienced marketers.

With Canva, marketers can pick from hundreds of templates and royalty-free graphics, images, and even video. We know our marketing team here at PSPINC loves using it to their advantage. With Canva, people can drag and drop elements using their editor to make the design phase simpler so marketers can focus on marketing your business in other ways. To learn more, check out our YouTube video that breaks down all the ways Canva can help market your business. And if you’re looking to outsource your marketing work, reach out to our marketing team.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #twitter #web #webdesign #website #websites #webtools

Deepfakes: Explained

Aug

29

Deepfakes are images, videos, and/or audio that are digitally altered to convincingly appear to be something else using artificial intelligence (AI). AI development has been progressing rapidly over the last few years, and deepfakes are no exception. With how popular they’ve gotten over the last few years, it’s become much harder to detect what’s fake and what isn’t online. And with it, the concern about those using the technology to spread false information. But there are, thankfully, other non-malicious uses for deepfakes that more people are exploring today.

How It Works

an artist's illustration of artificial intelligence

There are two ways to create a deepfake. The first way is specific to creating deepfake images and videos through a face swap. With this method, developers use an encoder to run thousands of face shots of two people. The encoder then reduces them to their shared common features and compresses the images. Developers then add two decoders to the process, with one recovering one face and the second recovering the other face from the compressed images. The face swap occurs when the developer feeds the encoded images into the wrong decoder. This means that the decoder trained on person B’s face gets fed person A’s compressed image and vice versa. But for it to result in a convincing video, developers need to do this for every frame.

The other way developers can create deepfakes involves using a generative adversarial network (Gan). A Gan pits two AI algorithms, a generator and a discriminator, against each other. With the generator, developers feed it random noise and it turns into a synthetic image, which developers will then feed into the discriminator, made up of a stream of images of real things like celebrities’ faces. After repeating this process multiple times, the discriminator and generator will improve over time with performance feedback. Eventually, it’ll result in very realistic images of nonexistent people.

Deepfake Use Cases

While the technology initially caused concern for malicious uses like putting harmful words in important political figures’ mouths, there are other completely innocent uses for them. Some other examples include, but are not limited to:

Restoring people’s voices when they lose them to disease with voice-cloning deepfakes.

Enlivening museums and art exhibits.

Dubbing foreign-language films.

Providing personalized responses to caller requests for receptionist services and/or simple customer phone support services.

Manipulating actors’ voices for specific scenes in post-production.

The danger that more people are concerned about is how realistic deepfakes can be. There are a few telltale signs that it’s fake, but even those constantly change because of how fast developers fix it. Fortunately, the technology’s popularity has shifted from malicious intentions to those using it to entertain others. But as deepfakes progress, they will continue to improve quickly, as they already have. What we choose to do with it, however, will largely be up to those who know how to use it.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#ai #artificialintelligence #audio #blog #business #businesstools #customerservice #cybersecurity #deepfake #deepfakes #images #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #photos #security #tech #technology #video #web #webdevelopment #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 182 “What is a CRM?”

Aug

24

CRM stands for customer relationship management and refers to the overall process and system companies used to manage and analyze customer interactions with the goal of improving customer service relationships. With effective CRM software, it’s easier to track your business’s overall growth, efficiency, revenue, and profit. It gives you a good overview look at your clients as well as your employees. In addition to keeping track of communications with your customers, you can also assign and manage tasks to your employees.

However, CRMs can get pricey and are made up of complicated systems that even require taking certification courses to figure out how to use them properly. But luckily for you, PSP Pilot is completely free to sign up and easy to use! Organize client data, manage tasks and schedules, and create an employee portal with PSP Pilot for free, or upgrade to paid plans to add more than 20 employee profiles with PSP Pilot. Sign up for free today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.