subject: Best Web Site Hosting - 4 Key Features To Look For [print this page] Best Web Site Hosting - 4 Key Features To Look For
Finding the best web site hosting can be difficult but there are key things to look for and these are listed below. At this point you will see that price is not a major issue. In fact price should always be a secondary issue until you are able to find multiple hosting companies that can offer the necessary service. You have to accept that there will be a price as free services will not be appropriate.
1. Help and Support
This can be overlooked as nobody expects to have problems but if they do arise, or even if you just want a question answered, support will become a primary concern. If you do have any issue, from a simple question to a major problem with your site, how it is handled is of prime importance.
If you have a problem you want it resolved yesterday and certainly do not want to wait until the provider's office hours, especially if times zones differ. Neither do you want to be given the "run-around" by unhelpful support staff.
The best web site hosting providers invest in support and have people contactable 24/7 by phone as well as electronically.
2. Fast Serving
Your site must respond fast for users. Offering a poor experience will drive visitors away and they may never return.
Have a look at the hosting company's own web site, can you move around it quickly? If their site is fast that is a promising start. Try searching for comments on your potential host but try to ensure these are from independent users. Bear in mind that people are always more likely to complain than praise so expect to see some negative views on all hosts.
3. Guaranteed Reliability
The best web site hosting companies guarantee 99.9%+ system availability. Clearly it would be impossible to see 100% uptime so occasional brief periods of downtime are acceptable but regular long periods are not.
There should be some financial compensation if the uptime target is missed but the damage has been done at that point. Quite simply you will lose potential visitors permanently.
Once again you should look for independent feedback on the history of the hosting provider.
4. Ease of Use
Most hosting providers will supply an easy to use control panel such as cPanel which includes the means to access your server, set-up email accounts, view visitor statistics and much more. In fact more that most users will ever need.
One thing you should look for is tools such as Fantastico which makes installation of additional software easy. Amongst other things this allows you to install a Wordpress site in a couple of minutes.
