For the inexperienced, choosing the correct
web host can seem a very daunting task and many important factors
can easily be overlooked. Most people judge a web host by the
amount of disk space offered, with the impression generally
being that more space is always better. However, this is not
an ideal way to choose a web host. It’s important to remember
that your website is an investment. You will therefore not want
your site to be ‘offline’ more than it is ‘online’,
due to unreliable hosting.
Before setting up my own hosting company, we had been faced
with similar problems. I tried various reseller options but
experienced seriously worrying unsatisfactory service from several
hosting companies. This service failure affected my own business
website and the sites of many clients. Eventually I made a considerable
financial investment that gives me guaranteed control and reliability
for running my own efficient servers.
Below
is a check list that you should consider when choosing a website
hosting company:
Verifiable Address:
Does the hosting company you are considering
using have a physical address that is listed on their website
and is included in the WHOIS directory. Or are they hiding
behind a PO Box number?
When interested in any business on the Web, always have a
clear idea of the company you will be dealing with. This is
particularly important with web hosting, as you can buy cheap
and cheerful reseller packages. This makes it possible for
virtually anyone to start a hosting business - with no knowledge,
no equipment, etc. The hosting company can easily vanish overnight.
This happened to us when we fist started out, after signing
up with a company that used a PO Box number.
Make sure you have several points of contact for the company.
Hosting Platform & Compatibility:
Make sure the web hosting company can provide
the platform and software you need to host your web site. For
example, if your site is programmed in ASP, choosing a Linux-only
hosting company is NOT a good idea, given the cost of re-writing
your code to make it compatible.
Uptime and Servers:
This is probably one of the most important factors
to look for in a good web host. Do they guarantee 99% or more
uptime? Are their servers based in a secure Data Centre with
24/7 monitoring, or is it home-based using dynamic DNS? This
consideration is crucially important as most home-based servers
cannot maintain a high percentage uptime. They simply do not
have the time, staff, or technical knowledge to achieve this.
Choose a web host that does not overload servers and provides
adequate bandwidth.
Bandwidth:
This key factor is usually overlooked until
the bandwidth limit is reached and your site is suddenly not
available. If you are planning to do a large amount of ftp or
publish a site with several images or downloads, then your bandwidth
will be a lot higher than a mainly text site, especially if
content is seldom changed. Another important factor to consider
when looking at bandwidth is the potential number of visitors
to your website.
If your site sells a popular product (such as mobile telephones)
and you advertise the site both online, maybe using Google ad
words or other marketing campaigns, and offline displaying ‘for
our latest offers visit our website at www.anyname’, you
will find that your bandiwth is tight. The amount of bandwidth
you should be looking at for maintaining a successful website
is 1gb minimum.
Website Hosting
Features
When choosing a hosting package, be sure to
check that it supports the features you will require to run
your site properly. Features such as:
CGI (now standard with good hosting companies)
PHP (many new scripts and programs require PHP support)
MySQL - some scripts require MySql database to run, especially
shopping carts which also require PHP
FTP Access - strange as it may seem, some hosts do restrict
FTP access, so check that the web host you are considering does
not have any restrictions
Customer Service:
Regardless of whether or not you are technically-minded,
sooner or later you will probably need to contact your web host.
Before signing up, it’s worth sending them a test email
to see how quickly they reply. (If at all)
Check their site to see if they have any testimonials available,
as this will give some indication of their reputation - a good
hosting company won’t mind sharing testimonials.
Domain Name :
Some hosting companies will charge extra to
transfer domain names to and from their servers so this is always
worth checking before you sign up. Although many hosting companies
will register a domain on your behalf you should compare prices
and ideally learn how to register a domain yourself, which is
very easy to do and enables you to stay in complete control.
In this way, if your hosting company ever goes out of business,
you can change the nameservers to another host quickly and efficiently.
You will be back on line in no time with very little damage.
(This happened to me when starting out. I had no control over
my domain, which was down for 10 days while Nominet sorted it
out.)
Pricing - The
last consideration :
Some deals look good at first sight but if one
feature that is important to your needs is missing, then that
deal is no longer so good. Do your research and compare different
companies. Pricing should be the last consideration as hosting
prices can range from being very inexpensive to almost no upper
limit.
In the web hosting world, the terms “no such thing as
a free lunch” or “you pay for what you get”
is highly applicable. Many free hosts will put banners or advertisements
on your site, and sometimes the free service is very limited.
The inexpensive hosting companies often put too many customers
on each server resulting in lots of problems - slow performance
to the point of site unavailability, security issues, slow transfer
rates, etc. Network and system resources cost the hosting company
money, which in some way has to be recovered. This is why free
or very cheap hosting packages are renowned for providing slow
servers and poor customer service.
Using the guidelines on this page will help you to find an affordable,
efficient and dependable hosting company for your business or
personal website.
