If you are going to set up a work-at-home business, it is always a good idea to provide an online presence, whether to display your goods or promote your services. The value of having your own website cannot be overemphasized. It is the window through which folks get to know you or your company and also an avenue where many enterprise interactions are initiated.
Your website can either be a straightforward blog or as intricate as a full-fledged e-commerce website. Whatever it is, you need a very good, reliable, and cheap hosting company to host your internet site. With thousands of web hosting organizations, how do you choose one that will meet your needs?
Personally, I use done a lot of research directly into web hosting companies for my own personal websites. There are many criteria that we evaluate before narrowing lower my search to three or perhaps four companies. I have detailed a few of the criteria (in no particular order) that we deem to be the most important to take into account when looking for a web hosting company.
Table of Contents
Tech support team
Good, responsive, 24 simple 7 technical support is a must for anyone serious about hosting a business site. Whether you program your own personal site or hire somebody else to do it for you, it is frustrating when troubleshooting your internet site to find that your support solution doesn’t always get responded to and sometimes gets responded to following waiting for something like an eternity.
Before selecting a hoster, find out more about their particular technical support. Check out there all the time live chat support, dial their technical support hotline, and write-up in their support forums. Consult some pre-sales questions and see how responsive their help support is. Also, try to consult some difficult questions to check if their technical support is really sufficient and that not any Tom, John Thomas, or Harry is manning the hotline.
You also ensure that the company has a booming technical forums page, which contains very active participation by clients and helps support staff. This will ensure you have an avenue to turn to when you need guidance.
Reliability and Uptime
That criterion is critical for small business sites, where time generally is money. Your website can no longer afford to be down for extensive periods. However, there is really none in the world as 100% uptime, seeing that hardware may need to be replaced as well as software patched once in a while. Presently, web hosting companies typically publicize an uptime of 99. 9%, less than 45 minutes of recovery time per month. An excellent place to look at uptime for a hoster is web hosting stuff. com.
You can also evaluate the company’s forums page to check if any complaints were getting downtime and how quickly the downsides were resolved. Another pointer of reliability and reputability is how long the company operates. Typically, you want a corporation that has been around for at least four years and has a large client base. It indicates that the level of service given is good enough for it to outlive in a highly competitive marketplace and that the company is here to stay.
Disc Space and Bandwidth
Don’t think it when a company states unlimited disk space and bandwidth. The truth is if you are using hosting that is shared, the bottleneck is really often the CPU and the RAM, indeed not the disk space and bandwidth. Your hosting company will routinely have a cap on the level of CPU and RAM assets you can use. If you exceed the particular limit, your site will be expelled for using too many assets. It has NOTHING to do with drive space or bandwidth!
In spite of this, you can expect anything from 1 GB to 50GB for drive space and 10GB to 1000GB for bandwidth.
Selling price and Affordability
For a shared environment, the price can range from $4. 95 from a starter want more than $70 for an extensive plan. Consider the disk room, bandwidth, and features you require and choose a plan most convenient for your requirements.
The important thing I feel this is don’t get locked into an annual contract. Although many companies have a very one-month money-back guarantee, it is not in your best interest to lock yourself into a contract, however tempting the offer is; presently, there may not be any problems on your first month, but what concerns two or three months later?
Nearly all respectable companies will have monthly payment options, which would travel to show that the company is confident of what it is performing and is likewise confident in grasping you as a customer. If your company does not have a monthly payment selection, avoid them like the plague! They get no idea what they are doing, and in addition, they want to tie you decrease with a contract.
My advice is to tend to stinge on a bit of cash because it is not worth it. Fork out a few more dollars for payment per month, and it will save you a lot of time of frustration later on.
Pièce
Most websites make use of often PHP (4 or 5) or PERL and work with GD for manipulating photographs. Most hosting companies should have these individuals installed. Check with them, or else, sure. They also typically incorporate other scripts which can be fitted via their Control Panel. Pièce that may be useful includes information management systems (Drupal, Mambo, etc . ), forums (phpBB, SMF), blogs (WordPress, Not fixed Type), and e-commerce buggies (osCommerce, ZenCart).
Others
Several other things you may want to check previous to clicking that order option.
How fast do the internet websites hosted by the company work out their pages? Necessary using a shared hosting plan; it indicates that you are sharing the CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT, RAM, and bandwidth with quite a few other people. A slow velocity probably means that the hoster is squeezing every dollar out of their servers simply by cramming as many customers as possible into a single storage space. Therefore, you want a fast velocity. Use this tool to check the pace of the website.
You want a business that manages its own info centers. Reputable companies may generally have an “about” webpage where they will list the data centers they manage, although resellers do not. Usually, I favor going “direct” and not explaining resellers because when items happen (server crash, and so on ), I would be able to get information firsthand rather than by a third party. This will make repairs much easier too.
Conclusion
These are the most important criteria that we use to assess web hosting organizations before I decide to join. It takes time and effort to research and locate a good hosting company, but be reassured that it is time well spent. It will eventually save you a lot of frustration down the road.
Walter Tang is a pupil documenting his quest to build an online business to work at home when he graduates. His or her trials and tribulations usually are documented in his blog.
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