Written by Things to consider when choosing a website hosting company for your website:
Tech Support -Good tech support is a big factor to be looked at when choosing a website hosting company. If your website is down or you have a critical problem, you cannot afford to wait hours or even days for help. You need immediate attention to your needs.
Bandwidth – Data transfer (bandwidth) is measured in gigabytes. Images can take up a large amount of kilobytes, and file downloads can be several megabytes in size. If your website will have a lot of downloads, you will probably need many gigabytes of transfer – 10 gigabytes should be good to start with for most sites. Be careful about exceeding bandwidth – many web hosting providers charge for every extra gigabyte of bandwidth you use. Extra bandwidth charges can add up quickly.
Control Panel – The control panel is the interface where you can administer your website functions such as uploading files, creating email accounts, checking your website hits (unique visitors are more important than hits) and statistics, adding more domains, installing scripts and making other changes to your website. The control panel that is offered by the hosting company you choose should be easy to use. Make sure you ask what control panels are offered with their hosting accounts. Control panels such as C-panel make adding scripts such as blogs, wiki’s, message forums, shopping carts, photo galleries and more a breeze. You can install these scripts in just a couple clicks. Ask prospective hosting companies if they have a demo control panel you can try before you commit to a hosting package. Most reputable website hosting companies offers a demo control panel you can try before you buy.
Disk Space – Just like your home computer has a hard drive to store files and data on, your website is stored on a server. Most small businesses will start with a small website requiring less than 50 megabytes of storage but there will be some that need more storage space. Websites that use many images or that feature videos will require a lot more disk space than text data. Most website packages offer an ample amount of space for most new website owners. Disk space can be upgraded at a later date if required.
Number of Domains Allowed Per Account – Another important factor that must be taken into account when choosing a web hosting company is the number of websites that allow you to host in a single account, some hosts allow only one domain per account while others will allow you to host limited to an unlimited number of domains or websites per one account, meaning several websites at the expense of one. Successful internet businesses usually expand beyond one domain and end up with multiple domain names. This makes targeting keyword phrases much easier. You can always upgrade your hosting account to accommodate your growth. Choosing the correct domain name for your business is also very important. Most of the good .com’s have been registered but there are some good domain names still available. Here are a few tips for choosing the right domain name for your business: - Try to choose a .com or .net domain name - If you use a hyphen, don’t use more than one hyphen in a domain name. - Try to include your most important keyword phrase in your domain name for example: a flower shop in New York could use a name like: www.newyorkflowers.
Other Considerations – depending on your needs, these factors should also be looked at when choosing a web host.
- Do you need a Linux, UNIX or Windows Server?
- Are scripts such as shopping carts, message forums, chat rooms, wiki’s and blogs included?
- How many MySQL databases are you allowed?
- What type of backups are offered?
- Does the host offer a money back guarantee?
- What type of Email features are offered?
- Secure Certificate options (SSL)