Business internet is more than just an office WiFi connection. From faster speeds to greater security, business internet offers more to organizations looking to optimize their connectivity.
You might be wondering whether a home internet connection is sufficient for your business, especially if you’re running a small operation possibly out of your house. There are a few reasons why business internet is important even for small companies.
What is business internet?
Business internet is a type of internet service designed for organizations that depend on the internet for daily operations, including video calls, file transfers and online transactions.
Whether your business operations take place in a basement, warehouse or a traditional office building, business internet is not the same as a residential internet connection. Many internet service providers (ISPs) offer small business plans as well as corporate plans, which have more scalable connectivity options, typically with service level agreements (SLAs), for larger businesses.
One important reason to have business internet is to write it off on your taxes as a business expense. But small businesses internet and corporate internet plans come with certain advantages over home internet plans.
Let’s walk through all the differences and find out if a business plan is right for you.
Business plans offer scalable speeds and greater reliability
Bandwidth and speed
While some home internet plans are robust, like Ziply Fiber’s multi-gig plans, most residential plans are built to handle only so much data, with upload speeds lagging far behind download speeds. They’re made for browsing, streaming and email, not bigger tasks like customer transactions or the upload of large files.
Ziply Fiber, for instance, offers several affordable business plans with symmetrical upload and download speeds for fiber customers. These plans are ideal for small businesses that want a reliable connection at a reasonable price along with the option for business phone lines.
For larger operations, an enterprise solution like Dedicated Ethernet, Dark Fiber and Wide Area Networking will provide a higher level of security and offer much higher speeds.
Reliability and support
Has your home internet ever gone out? Then you know the frustration that goes into getting it back up. Whether it’s a disruption on your end or a more serious neighborhood outage, you are left to troubleshoot on your own, or sit on hold for a customer service representative, and possibly wait for days for a technician to show up and maybe solve the problem.
If you’re running a business, you can’t afford to lose this amount of time on technical difficulties. Even smaller disruptions, like a glitchy video chat or a transaction that gets interrupted, can be the difference between a good customer experience and a bad one. A business plan can alleviate these concerns with network reliability. Many business internet plans also take more of a white-glove approach to support. If customer care is high up on your list, this is something to ask about when searching for the right business plan.
Ziply Fiber runs its network below capacity, ensuring that it doesn’t get too busy. It also offers redundant paths on the network, which means if one line goes down or needs a repair, another path can handle the data with no service disruption on the user end.
With an enterprise business plan, you’ll get a service level agreement (SLA), which ensures a certain level up uptime—which is just a fancy way of saying that the connection will be up and running (as opposed to downtime). And products like SD-WAN come with easy-to-use dashboards to better manage your connectivity.
Scalability and product suites
Anyone with a business has growth goals. And as you grow, your technical needs will grow, too. While you can increase your speed tier with a residential plan, business plans offer a much wider range of scalability, which means that as you grow you can scale up your technical operations. Small business and enterprise plans will offer speed tiers that exceed residential speeds. They can do this by providing higher capacity and dedicated connectivity, like Ethernet, Dark Fiber or Wide Area Networking.
You may also need to add products to your technology suite as you expand, like more voice lines. A business plan can be customized to include an array of voice products as well as WiFi extenders, so your entire space is covered and safe from dead zones.
Security
This brings us to what’s probably most important for a business, which is data protection and security. Few things can hurt a business like a security breach. You are probably going to need a virtual private network (VPN), firewalls and other assurances that any personal data is safe and sound, especially as hacking skills evolve. While you may need to purchase additional security tools outside of what your internet company offers, what a business plan will do is ensure that the routes your data travels on are monitored.
They may also offer advanced threat detection and prevention measures to mitigate the risks associated with cyberattacks. Home internet services, while increasingly incorporating security features, generally do not provide the same level of comprehensive protection as business plans.
Small business plans are a professional solution
If you’re running a small business , like selling products out of your home, operating a boutique or running an independent consulting firm, you would benefit from a small business plan that gives you adequate speeds. With Ziply Fiber, you can choose from plans that have equally fast upload and download speeds and can handle multiple devices on the network. You can also add voice lines on top of easily managing transactions and video calls.
Enterprise plans are ideal for larger companies that need more security and large bandwidth
Without a doubt, larger companies need business internet plans. The question becomes which products are necessary and how robust you need your plan to be. For many companies, Ethernet provides fast speeds for high-capacity data transfer as well as critical security. At Ziply Fiber, enterprise customers enjoy the benefits of a locally owned and operated network run by industry professionals, 24/7 support, always-on reliability, access to the Network Operating Center (NOC) and advanced threat mitigation.
Get Started
Contact your ISP, or reach out to others in your area, to find the business plan that’s right for you. You may find it’s easier to go with the company you’re with already, or you may find that another company offers a better deal, more security, better speeds or better customer service.
If you’re in the Northwest, check your business address or request a proposal for service on Ziply Fiber’s website to see if you qualify for their fast, reliable, locally managed fiber business plans.
