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Choosing a Web Hosting Provider from 40 Million Other Web
Hosts - Pt1
Discover how to go about choosing a web hosting provider
in ways that 99.5% of the advice on the Internet never mention.
If you struggle with finding good web hosting then using
the process I describe could be the answer to one of the
biggest problems you can face as a webmaster.
But first I'd like to give you an idea on the scale of
the problem in choosing a good web hosting provider. A search
on Google for the exact phrase " web hosting "
returns over 32 Million results and " web hosting provider
" or " web hosting company " produces around
800,000 results.
An IP survey by www.netcraft.com in 2003 found over 40
million web hosts.
Whether you want to believe Google's 32 Million web hosts
or Netcraft's 40 Million, it gives some indication of just
how many web hosting provider 's there are to choose from.
Google has over 7,800 sites offering advice on " How
to choose a web host. "
But to be frank a lot of advice on the Internet is from
sites promoting web hosting provider 's and resellers, which
means it's not without bias.
If you think " web hosting review sites " are
a good source of advice, try choosing one from over 6,000
listed by Google. Consider also that many are affiliated
to the web hosts they recommend. This can mean not only
do they get a sign-up commission, but a regular monthly
fee for as long as a customer remains with the web host.
Much of the advice about choosing a web hosting provider
talks about how much disk space or bandwidth you need, what
type of server to use, or the features you should look for.
It's important stuff but it doesn't help in choosing a
good web hosting provider.
I say this because disk space and bandwidth are today largely
a non-issue, since most web hosting provider's are competing
to offer so much of it, you'd need to have a website the
size of CNN's to use it all.
As for the features offered by web hosts, there's often
little to choose between them, they all generally offer
enough of the basics for most websites. If you're looking
for enhanced features like a website builder, adding a shopping
cart, taking secure payments or promoting your website then
these additional features might influence your choice.
But as a web hosting provider, you still don't know if
they're any good.
At this point some of you may be thinking you'd read the
other customers testimonials, or go to some of the website
forums to see what other people have experienced with this
host, or post a question to ask for advice.
Well again a word of caution, many forums are also the
hangouts for people selling web hosting, so they frequently
post replies or offer advice acting like the ordinary Joe.
This means the advice can be biased toward or against a
particular web hosting provider. One forum you could try
that's dedicated to issues with web hosting is Web Hosting
Talk
Oh! Let's not forget " Testimonials. " When was
the last time you saw a customer testimonial on the sellers
web site that said anything bad about the service or product
they provide ?I have only ever seen it once in the past
5 years and then not for a web hosting provider.
I've had web sites hosted with dozens of web hosting provider
's and made 100's of inquiries to other web hosting companies
that I never even got close to the point of signing up with.
I've moved some websites two or three times in less than
two weeks because a web hosting provider is unable or unwilling
to solve problems, or whose server configuration is unable
to support the scripts my site needed.
It was after many years of suffering bad web hosts, I finally
decided to work out a process that gave me a better chance
of finding a good web hosting provider.
It's a bit like taking out insurance, you don't know what
the insurance company is like until you need to make a claim.
As a matter of interest I did an exact search for insurance
against bad web hosting and there were no results.
Obviously no one is providing insurance against bad web
hosting, which must mean it's too much of a risk.
I don't even consider my sites to require anything special
or more than any other typical business website. Yet despite
all my experience, finding a good web hosting provider is
still one of the most difficult website challenges.
You'll find the exact step by step process in the 2nd part
of this article at : www.webpageaddons.com Choosing a Web
Hosting Provider from 40 Million Other Web Hosts - Pt2
Of course no process is full-proof and it does not mean
that the web hosting you find through the search engine
filtering and techniques I suggest are the only web hosts
capable of providing the services you're looking for.
You should also not assume because your Google Advanced
Search was for web hosting provider 's with selected features
that the sites you are reviewing are guaranteed to have
those features.
Check every site on your short list, since search engine's
are far from perfect.
What it does mean is that by using my suggested techniques
you are selecting those web hosts who considered things
like support, sufficiently important to want to be found
for them on Google. Other web hosts may have good support,
but the difference is that in your search you did not find
them listed for this term.
It could mean support's not that important to them, even
though they provide it.
It's also worth mentioning that the price of web hosting
is not an indicator of the quality of the service. Some
lower cost web hosting provider 's can give a far better
service than some medium cost ones.
Conclusions
Using a six stage process I was able to choose from 40
million web hosting provider 's, a short list of 15 web
hosts that met my selection criteria. With a further six
stage process I was able to reduce the number of possible
web hosting provider 's down to a choice of 2.
In the final stage the web hosting provider 's were both
asked a number of general and technical questions that resulted
in the final choice. Whilst the process is not full-proof
I am yet to find a better devised way of choosing a good
web hosting provider.
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