Finding the Website Hosting that You Need
The best deal isn’t always the cheapest. Shopping for the best website hosting can be an easier experience if you think about what kind of resources your website will actually need.
Shopping for website hosting can quickly turn from a careful, measured affair to a frenzied “how low can you go” price hunt. Recent years have seen the concept of a “budget hosting” sphere melt away as many large hosts bring prices down to compete. This does benefit the consumer, as they are more likely to get better service for their dollar. This article will discuss one of perhaps many sets of considerations to make in choosing a website hosting company. To those very serious about their hosting needs, “price” will not be a major factor.
Determine Your Needs
This is the first and most important step. Judging what you need will determine where to look for hosting services and give you a baseline idea of how much you should be willing to pay. This very basic step is where the process will break down if your first instinct is to simply jump online and hunt for the “best bargain”. There are more than enough sites out there that seek to accommodate the bargain hunters. Perhaps your site is suited to a bargain host, perhaps not. Knowing the difference is important.
Start with the 2 core attributes of website hosting, space and transfer. Simply, how large do you expect your site to be and how many people will visit it over a monthly period. If you’re completely new to hosting, you may not be able to accurately gauge either. That’s where you might want to consider actually creating the site, or as much of it as you can, prior to shopping for hosting. Knowing the size of the files you plan to upload will give you a basic idea of the amount of space you need. This will vary wildly depending on the nature of the site. Small, “hobby” sites won’t need a lot of space, sometimes they may not even use 10 or 20 megs of space. Online stores and sites hosting downloads or media files will require much more space.
“Transfer”, or “Traffic”, or sometimes “Bandwidth” on some sites, all generally equates to the amount of information transmitted to the unique individuals who view your site over, usually, a monthly period. Some hosts are moving a daily meter, but most still use a monthly figure. In order to estimate your transfer, a very simple method is to take the total size of your site files in kilobytes or megabytes and multiply by the number of visitors you expect. For a number of reasons, this is not going to be highly accurate, and in many cases will provide a higher number than your traffic in practice will turn out to be. Overestimating traffic is always better than underestimating, since you will always need room to grow with whatever website hosting plan you choose.
What if you have absolutely no idea what size your site will be or how many people will visit? Well, then start small. Though your dreams of domination the web might be strong, you will probably not do so immediately. Popularity and traffic that come with it generally occur over time. Choose a host with a clear upgrade path, and start with a small plan. You can always upgrade as you get a better idea of monthly traffic. Pretty much all webmasters hope their traffic will grow, and a host with a variety of increasingly larger plans is best suited to handle such growth.
Determine Required Features
Though space and transfer are your core attributes, assessing what kind of features you need is also important. This may vary with your familiarity with the web and websites in general. Those who only wish to publish static web pages with content they intend to update personally do not need any kind of exceptionally complex feature set. At its most basic level, the WWW is composed of “HTML” pages, which work on any browser on any kind of computer, be it a “PC”, “Mac”, or run by a different operating system. Novices out there can be assured that HTML pages they create on a PC can be read by someone browsing the web using a Mac.
If your site goes beyond rudimentary HTML, then you will need to pay attention to a host’s feature set. Sites requiring databases and active scripting have to be coded using languages your prospective hosting company’s servers understand. There is a variety of options out there, and it is beyond the scope of this article to go into them, simply be aware of what kind of active scripting you plan to use and make sure your host supports it. Common alternatives are PHP, ASP.net, and ColdFusion. Some of the options will vary depending on the type of server your host uses, most commonly Linux or Windows.
Additional features may also be required. Mailing lists, forum software, and ecommerce software are common features most hosts support. If you plan on setting up an online store, find out what kind of shopping cart, if any, a host provides and be prepared to learn how to use it. Advanced statistics packages like Urchin are also valuable for ecommerce sites. Map out the kind of features you plan to deploy with your site and make sure your choice in host makes them easily available to you.
Support Options
This final component is important, because it is usually the dividing line between quality hosting and less reputable options. One of the first causalities of cut-rate hosting is support. Poor support means that low cost you pay each month isn’t worth much because your site is rarely up. Always check your prospective web host’s site support options. Ideally, they will have phone hours where you can call up and speak directly to first level support. Another “direct contact” option that is popular these days is “chat.” This still allows direct contact with a live person, only through a chat window on your home computer. Ideally a combination of both is one sign a host has invested some money in support.
Bare minimum support options should always include a “help desk” or support ticketing system. This allows customers to send information about their issue and have that issue, and all the responses to it, tracked in a central location, so your support history is always available. Beware any host that only offers an untracked “email” support. Having all 3, phone, chat, and helpdesk, is a reasonably good sign a host pays attention to customer support. You can always “test” these systems prior to signing up by calling or chatting, but, in the interest of a host’s current customers, please keep any conversation brief, as the intent of a support staff is not, directly, to answer sales questions. Your test, however brief, has delayed the technician from handling a request from an existing customer.
Conclusions
Choosing a host is not something to enter into lightly. We’ve reviewed 3 key concepts that should be addressed when looking for a web host. “Price” was not one of them, and, though certainly important for a number of reasons, should never be the final deciding factor. If your website is important to you, or mission critical to your business, you want to find a host with an excellent reputation and high-uptime. Cut-rate or budget hosts rarely obtain either one of these things. Today, even highly reputable hosts will have “budget offerings” that can provide stable hosting at reasonable rates. Do your homework and don’t rush to the first “unbelievable deal” you come across. You’ll be happier with your service in the long run.
About the Author:
Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for ApolloHosting.com and previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers.
Established in 1999, Apollo prides itself on the highest levels of customer support.
Note: These articles are provided for general interest and content purposes only, and should not be construed as “support” materials. Apollo Hosting does not guarantee the information contained within. All articles are free to reprint so long as they remain unchanged, the “About the Author” section remains, all hyperlinks are preserved, and the rel=”nofollow” tag is not added to the hyperlinks.
Posted by admin on January 27th, 2008 filed in Webhosting
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How To Choose Web Hosting
The Asian market is projected to increase by 15% per year until 2008. It should be noted that this prediction does not include the Japanese growth rate. Europeans spent 1.8 billion dollars for hosting in 2003 and expectations for the coming years even higher. According to the Market Researchers, the European hosting market will reach $6.8 billion by the end of 2005. In the UK only consumers and businesses will spend $1.7 billion for hosting in 2005.
Attracted by the good omens many of the new hosts get down to work without having a complete service solution or a plan how on their business development. As usual with newcomers, the brand new companies often try to beat down the prices or start offering high rate, or even unlimited transfer and space to the potential customer. By flooding the market with a “mess of big promises” providers only confuse most people who seek hosting services. Many of the new companies fail to meet requirements and as a result the industry’s quality of service does not live up to expectations.
We have to work hard to prevent this situation of having a large number of unhappy customers. The industry should introduce more strict rules and standards that must be respected by both providers and customers. Of course we shall also keep the market open and to prevent any chance of an oligarchy led by a few big corporations.
How to keep the hosting industry’s growth is a substantial debate. Realizing the importance of this issue I can put in my thoughts into the discussion. Here are my suggestions and advice to new web hosting companies and especially for those who need to choose their new web hosting provider.
Make your Own Research
Forget Testimonials at the host’s page. Although we also have them and what is written are true opinions, no doubt, you have to see for yourself if the company is as reliable as it claims. Just contact them and ask for information you will need to know. “Where is their data center located?”, “What happens if I exceed a bandwidth limit?”, “Do you provide basic help with scripting?”, “Am I going to have full control over my domain and if not do you register the domain at customer’s name?” etc. Ask any question that might affect on your online business.
Ask for reviews
Ask for reviews about particular provider in the leading hosting/webmaster forums. This way you will be able to find out more about host’s reputation among its peers. You will see what are the pros and cons of the service. Note there is no “perfect provider” but there are a lot of awful ones.
Check for Provider’s Business Establishment
Check if a host states its business address or phone number. If a particular host doesn’t have this information on its web site or does not provide support phone number it may mean it have no physical offices. Hosts like these are not incorporated in any country. So they can go offline or close business anytime they want. Ask the hosting company representatives if it has legal presence; where are they incorporated and where do they pay their taxes. You should not really bring business and profits to people who are not responsible enough. Paying taxes is substantial engagement of any business worldwide. It is always better to support companies located in your own country if they provide good service at a low cost.
Require Phone Support
When choose a host be sure whether they provide phone support. Hosts generally provide phone support if they are reliable enough. It doesn’t need to be a Toll-Free phone but having one is an advantage.
Go for Companies That Offer Reasonable Pricing
Take a look at the host’s pricing. Price under $10 a month for 5 GB space / 150 GB transfer or more is not a good sign. It means the host oversells or tries to underbid the market. Stay Away!
Get Information about the Provider’s Policy
Make sure you check Host’s Policy. Some providers have very strange Terms of Service (TOS). They don’t take any responsibility for the service they provide and state in their TOS they can close your account for no reason anytime they decide. Be sure the provider respects its customers’ privacy and will not sell your contacts to third party.
Do Not Tolerate Illegal Activity
Avoid Spammers and Internet Piracy. I was spammed 4 years ago by company that now has a reputation of a good host; that doesn’t mean we should support spammers. So never sign up with spamming hosts! Keep in mind that a host that performs such illegal activity may at some point turn harm your direct interest as well.
Check Host’s Brand and Business History
Check host’s whois information! Go to archive.org and find more information about the previous business years of a hosting provider. If this company has a business experience in selling vegetables you cannot expect them to have good knowledge in providing reliable hosting services.
Support Competitive Providers
Do not ignore smaller hosting companies in favour of the “big guys”. Big players often don’t care about your web site simply because they host thousands of web sites like yours. This of course does not mean you necessarily have to go for hosting to the guy next door who runs a server in the basement. Spend some time to learn more about the offers you think are worth it.
Ask for Host’s Business Engagement
Ask the hosting provider for it’s business engagement. What are their plans to improve the service. How does the company contribute for the industry’s development?
About the author and the Blog
DawHB.com was launched on March 14th. The blog covers the web hosting industry, starting with newbie advise and extending to high-end issues. The blog publisher has been in the web hosting industry since 1999, working as a CEO of a web hosting company and then moving to the website marketing and advertising business. He manages a network of web hosting, web design and web master related service directories that cover US, European and other regional markets.
More articles at DawHB.com web hosting blog (http://www.dawhb.com/)
Posted by admin on January 26th, 2008 filed in Webhosting
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How To Choose A Reliable Web Host For Your Website
A client of mine paid for a solo advert to promote
his website in the newsletter I publish at
e-bizministry about two months ago. As I
was about to send his advert to my list, he called
me up on phone and told me not to send it yet.
Naturally, I asked him why. His reply shocked me out
of my wits.
He said he had just discovered that his website had
disappeared from the net. He even said the same thing
had happened to the same website earlier in the year
when it disappeared in January only to reappear for
just one week in May. I could not help but laugh
because I knew his problem. He had made a wrong
choice of web host.
Your choice of web host can either promote your business
or ruin your business. You have to be very careful
when choosing your web host or you will be consistently
losing up to 80% of your income due to your web
host’s inefficiency.
Here are a few quick tips on how to know which
web host is reliable, affordable and right for your
website.
1. Check if the web host has a web presence. Face it,
if a company claims to be a web host and they don’t
have a functional website of their own, then they
have no business hosting other people’s websites.
Any web host you will use must have a functional
website where you can check for domain availability,
get support and order for their hosting services.
Additionally, you should conduct random checks on
their website. If you visit their site randomly ten
times and the site is not available more than once in
those ten times, forget about that company except you
want your own website too to be unavailable almost
all the time.
2. Any web host you will use must have an appreciable level
of relevant experience. A minimum of a full year of operation.
A new web host will only experiment with your website and
the result may not be good for your business. Visit
the web host’s website and read about them. If they
don’t talk about their experience, then they don’t
have it. Just leave them alone.
3. Look out for their present clients’ testimonials
on their website. Call or email the clients and ask
them questions. If they confirm that the web host is
good, then the company has passed this test. However,
if you don’t even find a single testimonial on their
website, they probably don’t have any satisfied client.
What to do? Just leave them alone.
4. How fast or how well does the company respond to
support emails? You can find out by conducting this
small test. Visit the web host’s website and submit
or email an enquiry to them. If you don’t get a
response in 24 - 48 hours, please run away as fast
as your legs can carry you. Why? When you host
your website with them and you have a problem,
it will take them more than a month to respond to
your support emails or requests.
5. You should not forget to check out their prices.
The prices must be within reasonable limits and
their packages must have the features you desire;
adequate monthly transfer, email addresses,
MySQL databases, CGI bin, FTP access, control
panel etc. Very high prices don’t necessarily
translate into very good services. Don’t be
fooled by high prices. It’s a common trick,
please don’t fall for it.
6. It must be easy and secure to make payments
to your web host. It is not advisable to fill
in your credit card details when making your
payment. You should rather use a web host that
accepts other forms of payment that do not
require you to fill in your credit card details
e.g. paypal and egold. If you are in a country
where you don’t have easy access to credit card
facilities, it is even better to use a web host
that accepts payment in your local currency.
This will ensure that you won’t have any
problems when you want to renew your domain
and your hosting accounts.
7. Use only web hosts that give 24 hour online
access to your account. With that, you have
total control over your domain and your website
and you can change anything including your
name servers (DNS)whenever you want.
8. It is better to use a web host that offers
additional web services such as web design,
website promotion, search engine submission
and website management. They can be of help
to you in future if you have any problems
with your website or you need any additional services.
9. Before you make your payment, read the
terms and conditions of the company carefully.
If you don’t understand or agree with any
of their terms contact them for more explanations.
10. Finally, I know it may be very time consuming
for you to conduct these tests on the hundreds
of web hosts out there before choosing one. I
have therefore taken the pains to analyse
hundreds of them. I recommend two web hosts
that have passed our simple tests. I can put
my reputation on the line and guarantee their
efficiency, reliability and affordability.
Oyeleke Toye is a web consultant, with expertise in web
hosting, web design, web promotion, website management and
custom scripts installation. The web hosts I recommend are: