Choosing a Website Hosting Company

 

I want to know more about Search

 

Now that you've planned your web presence and built a website, you need to get your online efforts seen by others. Web hosting companies are the "silent partner" of every online business. A good partner makes going online a natural extension of your business. A bad one costs you time, money and customers.

An important part of Internet marketing is finding the right web host--the Internet Service Provider (ISP) that provides you with the server space, database and Internet connectivity you need to share a site with the world.

The three issues to consider are location, service and storage.

Location. From a customer's perspective, the geographic location of your web host provider isn't important. Whether they are located within 30 miles or 3,000 miles doesn't matter if they are providing a good connection to the Internet. National providers tend to create generic hosting environments to maximize their economies of scale. This means if your website doesn't require anything special you can often find cost savings with a reliable national provider.

From a business perspective, local web host providers offer some advantage--particularly if your company's knowledge of networking and Internet technology is limited.

Local providers usually provide their customers with higher levels of support and accountability than national providers. Local providers tend to have a more intimate business relationship with their customers. They know their client's objectives and strategies for a web presence, and they can design, implement and support Internet solutions that better meet the needs of their clients.

National providers tend to be less personal and less responsive than local providers. It's not uncommon for it to take 24-48 hours before a support request is resolved.

There are many free hosting services available on the Internet. If you're designing a website for business purposes, never host your website with a free host.

Service. You can't overestimate the importance of service when it comes to selecting a location to host a website or an off-site server. If your website is complex or an essential part of your company's day-to-day business, it's probably the most important factor to consider.

The best way to determine the level of service that a web host company provides is to talk with other businesses that use its service. Web host companies should provide you with references of businesses that use their service and have similar needs to those of your company. It's important to call the references provided by the web host company.

Work Smart Ask the following questions of the references: How long have they been with the provider? How many unscheduled outages have they had with their provider? How timely are technical support issues dealt with? How accurate is the ISP's billing? What procedures are in place when dealing with customer service issues? How long do they have to wait on "hold" when they call for support? Read the fine print. Specifically, read a web hosting company's Service Level Agreement (SLA) to see what they're actually guaranteeing. Does their SLA go beyond network availability? Do they provide a service level for responding to technical or customer support issues? Do they monitor and evaluate your websites availability? Do they support complex or specialized applications?

Offerings. Any competent ISP should be able to host the site in either Windows or UNIX environment. However, there are some basic features to look for when selecting any web host:

• 24/7 technical support
• your own domain name (www.yoursite.com)
• 10GB or more of monthly transfer (traffic)
• a minimum of 20MB - 50MB of server space
• unlimited POP email accounts--name@yoursite.com
• unlimited email aliases
• email forwarding
• unlimited autoresponders
• access to SSL Encryption for secure transactions
• MySQL or SQL Server Database
• htaccess password protection
• Server Side Includes (SSI) support
• unlimited free access to your server via FTP/Telnet
• easy access to your log files
• statistics on visits to your site

Stability and experience are important when seeking a web host. Web hosting companies with a history of providing reliable service and a healthy client list should always be selected over less experienced hosting providers. Unlike inexperienced providers, experienced ISPs solve problems faster. They also cause fewer of them in the first place.