To create a website for your business, you need to find a place to store your files and pages. Finding the appropriate hosting company to house your website can be very difficult task. If you pick the wrong firm to host your website, you will risk technical problems on your site hosting. Choosing a host is an important decisions as you would want to have a long relationship with the host of your choice. To initiate the decision process, you would need to understand most aspects of what the host has to offer and also to decide what you need of a host. You then finalize the decision by deciding if the different aspects of the host satisfy most if not all your needs.
First of all, relax. Don’t worry about the in-depth technical details. You can leave that to the web hosting companies who would be willing and able to educate you on the technical stuff. The whole procedure should be painless because web hosting companies should be taking care most of the technicalities. Nevertheless, you would still need to know some of the basic knowledge of hosting.
- Free or Paid? – Unless you are looking for a host for your personal or homepage that is for non-profitable purposes, you should go for paid hosting packages. Your business websites ought to have the paid hosting as free hosting space usually comes with advertisements. These advertisements may give your visitors the impression that you are not professional. Furthermore, there adverts will snatch away some of your potential customers.
- How much disk-space? – The disk-space your website would need depends on a few factors. Firstly, it would depend on the nature of business your site is dealing with. It also depends on how big and how fast you anticipate your website to grow. Statistically, an average website does not require more than 10MB. 10MB of space can accommodate about 800 pages of pure text. However, there will be variations depending on the graphics you will have and the database that your program may require.
- How much bandwidth? – The term “bandwidth” refers to the amount of data that may be transmitted over a connection during a period of time. Indirectl, your host bandwidth capacity allows a limited number of viewers to access your website. How much bandwidth any viewer would use to view your sites is dependant on many factors including the size of your files. Once this bandwidth limit for the period is exceeded, you would need to purchase a higher limit or else no additional viewers will be able to access your website in that period. Like disk-space, host packages with higher bandwidth limit would usually cost more. If your website is new, first start off with 5 to 100GB. This should be sufficient for new websites with not so many visitors.
- What kinds of servers and their specifications? – Technology changes rapidly and so do the machines that are used as servers to host websites. These machines, commonly computers, can come in different brands, types, CPU speed, R.A.M size, and connection speed with the internet. As a newbie, you should not worry too much about the hardware specifications. However, it would be advantageous to make sure that the server which your website is hosted has good connection speed to the internet.
- No restricted FTP limits – As you or your programmer need to build, design and edit your website, it’s important to ensure that the host you choose does not charge for unlimited FTP access.
- Site and Data Backups – Does the host offer regular backups of your website and all data files? If so, how often? Even if the hosting company does the regular backup, it is advisable that you try to occasionally back up all the files to your own personal computer. Personally, I back up my files monthly or once in a few months. Unforeseen disasters, mishaps or technical faults can happen.
- CGI scripts and access – CGI is the abbreviation for Common Gateway Interface. This is the popular programming language used in web designing that can help with dynamic page generation and back end automation. Many Web servers support dynamic page generation through CGI. You may need this CGI access utility if you are using CGI scripts on your websites. Besides being able to upload your own CGI scripts, some web hosts provide you with some standard CGI scripts to use.
- Visitor Demographic and Statistics – Most web hosts provide you with some form of demographics or statistics about your website that may reflect how popular your website is. The demographics should include bandwidth usages, visits and hits by summary, day and month, breakdown of entry points, and etc. These essential statistics will come in handy when analyzing your website marketing and advertising strategies.
- Email accounts and Auto-responders - Look for host that offer at least 5 email accounts. With these email accounts, you can set email addresses which pertain to your website domain name. Therefore it will be easy for your visitors, prospects and customers to remember your email addresses. Also, try to make sure that the email accounts offer email redirect features. You may occasionally want to redirect all incoming emails to other email accounts.
- Reliability and Uptime – Good hosting companies with reliable servers need to have at least 99% uptime. However, due to hosting maintenance and unforeseen circumstances, your website may sometimes be inaccessible. Therefore, the better hosting companies will try their best to have your site accessible most if not all of the time. You would want your online store to be open to potential customers 24 hours daily.
- Service not just servers – When you encounter technical problems during your term using a web hosting package and call for help, a good web hosting company would come to your aid swiftly. This support can be in different forms. It may be through ticket applications, forms-fillings, forums, live chat, telephone support or even the plain email correspondence. Take note that good support usually returns your call as fast as 24 hours and aims to solve your problems right to the root.
- Reputation – When choosing a web hosting company, it is wise to rely on what other experts say on the particular company that you want to choose. This is especially more important if you are new to choosing web hosting packages and if the company of your consideration is new to you. You can find more about the company by reading the company’s testimonials, reviews and feedbacks. If the reviews are from gurus and experts, then these testimonials will be more of an influence. You can also check to see if the company has achieved any awards.
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