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by: Karolis Petreikis
Nowadays, anybody can afford to order a feature-packed web hosting plan for
next to nothing; however, affordable price is not the only criterion which
should be considered when purchasing web hosting services. In this article, I'll
explain the basics of what you should look for in choosing a web hosting
company, not just concentrating on the best price and features, but also on
reliability and honesty. You're investing your money and effort into finding
paying customers and you wouldn't like to lose them in order to save a few
dollars per month on a web hosting service.
When looking for a web hosting company, it doesn’t matter if this is just for
the inception of a web or the move of an established site; you need to consider
a large selection of criteria to determine which company to go with:
Customer support
Website hosting service isn’t just storage or bandwidth. Based on personal
experience and that of others, even a top-notch service is worthless without
customer support. If you own a business website, your hosting provider needs to
be there for you 24/7 and give you instant access to the technicians you need to
solve your problem; otherwise, you may end up losing customers and money.
Downtime guarantee and service monitoring
Having a personal website go down is a minor inconvenience; having a business
website go down is a serious matter. What amount of profit would you lose if
your site had been down for a week? Long downtime may be very harmful to today's
companies which spend large amounts of money on advertising their websites.
Essentially, there are two rules regarding reliability that one should look at:
1. You should check if there is an uptime guarantee offered. A truly
service-oriented provider will also give a money-back guarantee, offering a
discount or free service as compensation for downtime. Any company which avoids
taking responsibility won't put much effort into the service.
2. I definitely wouldn't go with a company claiming 100% uptime, as there is
no such thing as a server with 100% uptime. If anyone ever claims their server
has a 100% uptime they are either lying or they don't perform the necessary
upgrades that prevent a machine from being compromised.
Reputable web hosts will post statistics on their site: What is the frequency
of interruption? How about the average percentage of downtime? If these aren’t
posted, ask; if the answer isn’t forthcoming, that should be a warning sign. If
you still go with a host which doesn't monitor servers, you'll have to do the
monitoring yourself. I recommend
http://www.siteuptime.com,
as it's one of the best monitoring services available for free in the market
today.
Backups
There is no host which is safe against different types of technical and
programical failures, so make sure that the company runs scheduled backups. The
other advice would be always having a backup of your website yourself, as you
never know what might happen. cPanel, which is the most popular web hosting
management software at this time, has a very comfortable backup-making tool. It
allows you to backup files and databases quickly and easily, so backups are no
longer a problem.
Acceptable use policy
Web hosts may have 200-300 or more clients per server; there is no exact
number, as companies have different hardware and each hosted website has
different resource usage. There always is a possibility that a few of those
customers host illegal content. There are web hosts who have had their servers
unplugged, resulting in their clients’ websites going down. I'm sure you don't
want to put your business at risk and have your website hosted on the same
server together with illegal pornography and software sites, so check host's
acceptable use policy to find out, if the host takes care of what's hosted on
their servers.
Hosting your site on an uncared-for server will also result in a low speed.
If somebody on the same server sends spam, the server's IP address will be
blacklisted and you'll have serious problems as recipients stop receiving your
emails. Use the "Spam database lookup" feature on
www.DNSstuff.com to check if
a web hosting company is blacklisted. Spam is being sent almost everywhere, so
having one or two red records isn't that bad; but, if there are more, it may
become a problem later on.
Unlimited bandwidth and web space
In web hosting industry, the adage "you get what you pay for" is almost
universally applicable. Do not fall for hosts offering unlimited allowances, as
there is no unlimited bandwidth, nor unlimited web space. Host's pay for each GB
of bandwidth themselves. Hard drives also aren't free, so how can they say it's
unlimited? They simply are performing false advertising in order to attract
customers. The average website doesn't use more than 1GB of bandwidth per month;
the customer is happy as he bought something "unlimited" and the host gets a new
customer, which won't cost them any more than $1-2 USD per month. But imagine
what would happen if I had a website, burning much more bandwidth than an
average site does, and I signed up with a hosting company offering unlimited
traffic? The host would simply suspend my account and tell me, that it was using
too much bandwidth. There even are companies which offer unlimited bandwidth and
have a statement on their terms of service, explaining that unlimited bandwidth means 40GB, for example.
Will you really own your domain name?
When you buy a domain name together with a website hosting package, make sure
the host will register the domain name under your name. It usually should be
written in their FAQ, but, if there is no such information, simply contact them.
This will also give you an opportunity to check how fast their customer support
team replies to inquiries. If the hosting company registers domains under
someone else's name, you may have problems switching hosting providers later. If
you were in such situation, you would have to file for a Uniform Dispute
Resolution Policy (UDRP), which costs much more than both domain name and web
hosting service together.
Control Panel
For ease of maintenance, a feature called a Control Panel is a necessity;
this tool will normally allow for regular maintenance, be it email mailbox
additions/deletions, password resets, web additions, web count reports,
statistics and so on. If the site is for any sort of business, this is an
absolute must. The most popular web hosting management software currently
available is cPanel. It's a next-generation web hosting control panel system
that allows you to manage your domain through a web interface. The idea is to
transfer as much of the control of managing your web site to you; you have the
ability to manage all aspects of e-mail, files, backup, FTP, CGI scripts, and
web site statistics.
Value-added services
Hosting companies offer different value-added services in order to set
themselves apart from the competition. Of course, these are an advantage, but a
common mistake customers make is choosing a host just because it offers many
value-added services which won't be used anyway. Some of the really useful
features are:
1. Auto-installer script – Auto-installers will save you time if you are
going to install a forum, image gallery, content management system, etc.
Installation procedures on an auto-installer script take seconds and can be
performed by novices without the need of doing difficult tasks usually
associated with installations.
2. Online website builder - It lets you design a website in a few minutes
without having any creation software and knowledge. One very powerful website
builder on the market is Site Studio; this editor allows for ease of use, full
control of color schemes and themes, one-click publishing, and an array of
templates to use.
The last tip
In this article, I've mentioned only a few warning signs which are worth
considering. You should know yourself that price and allocations aren't as
important as the quality of service; if the budget is absolutely limited, then
the price can be a valid criterion, but otherwise it shouldn’t receive much
credence.
By going through this article and asking questions, you can narrow down the
list of web hosts to the point where a good, sound decision can be easily made.
>> About The Author
Karolis Petreikis is the CEO of
http://www.uphosted.com,
a company that provides reliable hosting services for both individuals and
businesses. |
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