How To Choose An Effective Hosting Company
Any online business is only as good as its weakest service provider, which is many times a third-party hosting provider. If you don’t know how to program, all of the words and all of the directories can be overwhelming at times. When things seem messy, we sometimes make a random purchase decision instead of doing a proper evaluation. Although that may seem simple, this article should be able to help you find another method.
A lot of web hosts will offer a few add-ons that go with what their service, but these features vary from host to host. As you compare your options, you should also take into consideration the expected service levels and support for each of the most important features. For instance, one company’s low hosting price might rise once you add a certain feature, while another company has that feature in one of its packages for a low price.
You should choose your host based on more than a few recommendations. There is more of a chance you will be dissatisfied if you don’t research each company thoroughly.
Shared Hosting
Trying to choose between dedicated and shared hosting? If your site is rather large and complex you may find out that shared hosting cannot handle the heavy volume of visitors that your site receives, as it will limit your ability to properly serve the customers. Find a dedicated host for more space and bandwidth.
Select a web hosting provider that has a record of few outages and downtime. If the company suffers from many outages and tries to offer up excuses as to why they are down, this means they are not reliable and do not have a plan in place to stop these lengthy outages. Frequent outages signify an unprofessional business. Don’t make commitments to these type of companies.
Research backup host sites when you find certain aspects of the website hosting services unfavorable. This makes it much easier to change from a poorly performing host to one that can better fulfill the needs of your website. After all, anything beats losing everything in a server crash or total failure.
When looking for a web host, choose a service that is in the country that your target audience is in. For example, if your audience is located in the U.K., ensure that your hosting provider has a data center in the U.K. as well.
When choosing a web host, ask what kind of security precautions are in place. Websites are under attack regularly, and there are very many other threats, as well. Ensure your website hosting service has security measures in place to deal with these attacks. Ask what sort of safeguards are in place against attacks such as DDoS events and how they will be dealt with if they occur.
When choosing a web host, use monthly payments instead of lump-time payments. You never know what could come up in the next 12 months, and you do not want to be locked in with one company. If you do choose to make a lump payment and decide at some point in the future to switch providers, you might not receive a refund.
You should select a web host that offers you a detailed report on your web traffic statistics. Add your own visitor counter on your site, and compare your visitor count to the one provided by your host. As an online business owner, you will benefit from using this information to tailor your approach to your audience.
Check on whether or not your web host offers some sort of money back guarantee. If you become dissatisfied with the service within 30 days of signing up, you should have the right to cancel your service and have your money returned to you. Sometimes the service a host claims to provide is not everything it’s supposed to be.
You should now have sufficient knowledge to at least understand the terminology, and be able to recognize both the good and bad features of a website hosting company. If you have registered for a hosting plan already, you can still port your information to a new server.