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How to Choose a Web Hosting Company?
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 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.
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