subject: What to Look For When Choosing Your Web Sites Hosting Company [print this page] What to Look For When Choosing Your Web Sites Hosting Company
When you are thinking about expanding your business and putting it on the World Wide Web, choosing the most suitable hosting company is a matter of great importance. There are many domain registration and web hosting companies in business today, so choosing the best among them can be a bit stressful. There are a number of things to consider when shopping around for a web hosting company.
Firstly you want to determine exactly what you are looking for when it comes to your site's needs. Some things you will need to determine would be: Is this a business or personal site that you will be hosting? What is the platform your site will operate on? What type of language was used to build your website? How much website down time are you willing to handle? What are you looking to spend per month? How much traffic do you anticipate your website getting?
Many individuals and companies maintain more than one website as part of their web portfolio or business, and this also plays a role when it comes to selecting a website hosting company. In the big scope of the web hosting industry, it all starts with the datacenters.
Data centers are the facilities that house the necessary equipment to host and maintain your websites servers that connect your information to the internet. These facilities typically have multiple fiber feeds routing to them, backup power systems, network switching equipment, and multiple racks of servers that hold all of the files that display your website and information.
The best way to start the process of choosing your hosting company is to determine the type of web hosting that your web site will require. You will want to speak with your web developer to get information from them on how the website is being built, if it is using any data base languages and with what language are the data bases being written, as well as what language the website will be written in. The size of your site and its contents such as media including audio or video files will also determine the type or amount of hosting space that you will choose.
Once you have determined the main components of your website and how it will be constructed, you can start your search for the hosting company that you will want to use.
First and foremost one thing that you will want to look for in a hosting company is what is included in their hosting packages as well as support services. This would include the storage space, and any additional specifications that you might need such as the amount of bandwidth or online file storage that is included for example.
You don't need to start looking at the pricing of these packages just yet as most hosting companies offer hosting packages as low as $3.99 per month. What would be ideal first is to look at the packages themselves to determine what each package consists of and what options are right for your website project. Once you have found a few companies that meet your required needs then sort them by options then price and choose the best package from there.
The second most important feature to look for is the type of support that is offered by the hosting company. Many people who own websites keep a busy schedule and running their business during the day is their number one priority. Finding a hosting company that offers 24/7 sales and support would be ideal in any case. This enables the website owner to take care of minor issues or changes that may arise with their website once their day is over and not have to interrupt their daily activities and business to try to contact their web hosting company during only daytime business hours. This becomes very inconvenient and a bit of a hassle to those who maintain a very busy daily schedule.
The last major feature that you will want to look for outside of the package types would be the amount of downtime that the web hosting company has. When you're running your business, especially online, as a business owner you cannot afford your site to be down for any reason. If your site is down, you're losing out on potential business. Finding a company that has a reasonable uptime standard would be ideal, especially for those who run their business day to day on the internet. Very few companies offer a guarantee of uptime but they are out there so spending a few cents more for features such as 24/7 support, and an uptime guarantee will give you a piece of mind when it comes to your online presence.
