Indeed, selecting a right website hosting service for your website is not always easy particularly when there are thousands of website hosting providers all offering almost identical website hosting packages. Therefore, you should know few major considerations even before you start your internet hosting search. Here are three major criteria for web host seeker:
Website hosting features requirement
This might be the most important consideration to start finding a host for your site. You need to decide the technical requirements for the website, this including:
a) Server platform and hardware requirements
If you are planning to set up an internet site that uses programming environments for example Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic scripts, Cold Fusion or Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL database, in this case, you will have to look for a web hosting service that supports Windows platform for example Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers.
Likewise, if you are planning to make use of programming languages such as Perl, CGI, SSI, PHP or mySQL database, then any web hosting plans that support Unix/Linux platform ought to be sufficient to meet your hosting requirements. Once you have these server platform and hardware requirements in your mind, you are able to decide the very best website hosting plans for your need. To learn more, read “How to select an internet server and server platform?”
b) Disk space & Bandwidth requirement
Here’s another technical requirement you need to consider prior to you buying an internet hosting plan, i.e. disk space and bandwidth. If you intend to publish an internet site without a lot of contents (meaning, web pages), then your disk space requirement might not be a big concern for you. Generally, a disk space with 200MB to 500MB ought to be enough to meet your hosting requirement. In contrast, if you are planning to host an internet site with enormous amount of graphic pictures, mp3 or video clips, then you should consider a web hosting plan that provide huge disk space, for example, 500 MB to 1,000 MB.
Similarly, the bandwidth requirement will depend on your website traffic estimation. Obviously, a website that be prepared to attract high traffic will take in the monthly bandwidth allowance very fast. If that’s the case, you will need to locate one web hosting service that provide huge bandwidth with 40 GB to 100 GB monthly. Depending upon your website requirement, choosing a web hosting service that provide sufficient quantity of disk space and bandwidth is vital consideration to prevent paying extra costs later on in the event you overuse the monthly disk space and bandwidth allowance.
c) Other hosting features
While the above requirements are utmost important, there are other hosting features that you have to consider too. Can web hosting provider support video clips on your website, for those who have? May be the website hosting service suitable for Dreamweaver or FrontPage web authoring tool? Are you planning to set up an online store online? Can the host support the e-commerce features without adding expense for your monthly obligations? In addition, you may even wish to discover the amount of email options provided, number of FTP accounts, web statistic software (analyze your internet traffic), type of user interface supported (manage your internet hosting account), database and scripting languages supported and etc.
Reliability and scalability
A first-class hosting provider offers reliable server uptime and fast Internet connection. You need to only select a website hosting service that guarantee a minimum of 99% server uptime with high-speed Internet backbones using a minimum of OC3 (Optical Carrier) lines (155 Megabits per second) or above rather than T1 or T3 lines. A trusted hosting provider usually invests heavily on the data center infrastructure with high performance servers, high speed multiple backbones providers with fail-over redundancy, backup power generators and firewall program protection in place to make sure they satisfy the uptime guarantee specified by the tos.
Similarly, you need to choose a website hosting service with hardware facilities that created for scalability, so that they can grow together with your business. For instance, if you need to increase more disk space, bandwidth or number of mySQL databases, you should be able to upgrade as needed without any problems.
Customer support and support
The final major consideration in choosing an internet hosting service is to discover website hosting suppliers that offers things to look for and support. You should always search for a hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support that fielded with highly experience technicians, to ensure that any web hosting problems is going to be resolved inside a reasonable period of time. You may also want to consider to test how responsive is the customer care by sending few inquiry emails towards the hosting provider. In general, any response in under Twenty four hours is recognized as acceptable. It’s a sign of poor customer care when they take more than one day to response.
In addition, an internet hosting provider with excellent support also needs to provide multiple support channels, for example toll-free phone support, 24/7 email support, live chat, online knowledgebase, Interactive flash tutorials and FAQ.
Above are few major considerations before you choose your web hosting service. In addition, just how long has the web hosting provider in business and the quantity of customers they currently have are also a great indication from the quality of their hosting products along with the stability from the company. Even though price of the web hosting service can also be important however it shouldn’t be your major consideration. Because the price of a web hosting service continues to be declining through the years due to competition, as a result, the buying price of the majority of the web hosting services offering quality hosting features has been converging to less than US$10 per month. If you can’t afford less than $10 per month, you most likely isn’t in the internet business for the long term. Therefore, price should not be major deciding factor.