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Things to consider when choosing a
Web Hosting Company
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1) Support.
When choosing a Web hosting provider
you need to know that they will be on
hand should you experience any
problems. They need to be contactable
via telephone and/or email and have a
good knowledge base and FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions) list for
you to check for answers to your
problems. The best way to find out
just how good a companies support
services are is to fire off a quick
email to their support email address
and make a note of the time it takes
them to reply. Send the email out of
normal work hours if you can, around
midnight is best. For a good response
you should expect to receive a reply
to your email within 45 minutes.
Anything over 60 minutes and I
wouldn't touch them with a barge
pole.
2) Up
Time
Your Website is important so you
need to know that your site is going
to be online and available 24/7 365
days of the year, especially if you
are running a business.
Uptime is the percentage of time that
a web site is up and running and
available to your visitors over a one
month period. For example, if a
Web host advertises an uptime average
of 99.85%, this means that your site
will be down for no more than around 1
hour each month.
It is rare to find a company that will
guarantee 100% uptime and those that
do in my opinion are not being
realistic as your website data will be
hosted on a web server which can and
will have problems from time to time.
Web servers can breakdown for a number
of reasons including hardware failure
and software problems.
3)
Features
Before
signing up for a Web hosting package,
think about the features you will need
for your Website or online business.
Do you want to sell your
products online? Do you just want to
start your own Blog?. Most good web
hosts will include all you could
require for your website as they will
want to cover all basis and attract as
many customers as possible. If your
website is intended to just inform
your visitors and you don't intend to
sell anything directly using your
website you will be provided with
everything you need to get your
website online in a matter of minutes.
If on the other hand you intend
to sell your products through your
website you will need some kind of
shopping cart or
ecommerce software installed so
that your customers can purchase
online. All the companies listed
on this page will be able to help with
that and most shopping cart software
is provided free. Be sure to check out
the features that come with your
chosen package to make sure it has
everything you will need. If for any
reason you are unsure, give your
prospective web host a ring and ask
them for advice.
4)
Price
All hosting companies have to make a
profit to survive in what is today a
cut throat business. Some even offer
free hosting accounts, but If you are
serious about your website and
business you will avoid these
companies as you will probably have to
display third party advertising on
your website which will tempt your
user away from your website to visit
another, or they will use some other
marketing gimmick to generate some
revenue from you. You will have worked
hard to build your website so the last
thing you will want to do is divert
the users eyes away from your website
or business. As the old saying goes
"You get what you pay for" so don't be
a skinflint when it comes to paying
for your hosting. Depending on your
requirements you should expect to pay
between 5 and 10 dollars per month for
a good shared hosting
account.
About
Unlimited Bandwidth &
Webspace
Most web hosting companies today will
offer you unlimited webspace and
bandwidth as part of your chosen
hosting package. Let me tell you right
now that there is no such thing as
unlimited bandwidth and webspace, if
that was the case I'm sure the likes
of Google, Yahoo and others would be
running their companies from a $4.95
per month hosting account instead of
paying millions of dollars each year
in bandwidth fees. Even so, almost all
hosting companies now offer this, why?
B
ecause
everybody
else is offering it and they don't
want their business to be at a
disadvantage.
If you check your chosen providers
terms and conditions closely
you will see that the term
"unlimited" is covered by a "fair use
policy" usually also contained within
the terms and conditions that you will
be asked to agree to before signing
up. So what do they mean by "fair
use"? Well, if you run a normal
Website, whether as a personal or
business you don't have to worry about
this to much as you will find that you
will have more than enough Webspace to
hold your Website, all its supporting
files and databases and have plenty of
bandwidth to cater for many hundreds
of visitors per month.
Most Web
hosting companies offer hosting
through a shared environment which
means your website will be hosted on a
server with sometimes many other user
accounts, therefore, each site has the
ability to impact the performance of
all the others. Fair Use means that
you operate a personal or small
business website that utilizes
resources in a manner similar to most
other customers. For example, the
system requirements of large
corporations are not the same as those
of small businesses and their resource
requirements would not be considered
as normal. Another example would be
the storage of large numbers of video
or audio files that may be associated
with a site, but require more
resources to support than a normal
personal or business website.
So, if
your website uses more than your
hosting provider considers to be your
fair share of the available webspace
and bandwidth resources, you can
expect to pay more. If this is
the case with your Web hosting you
should consider upgrading to (VPS)
Virtual
Server Hosting which is more
expensive but gives you much more in
the way of server resources.
A brief
explanation of Virtual Server Hosting
and a list of good providers can be
found
here.
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