by: Tal Fighel
When you are considering finding the best website hosting company, it is important to know a few things before making the right decision.
Web hosting is like a company that provides you with a phone line to talk to other people. Without it, you can not talk to people or make any phone calls. A web hoster is the behind the scenes technology that lets your site run on their servers and let people view it online.
When you choose a hosting company for your website consider the following things.
Price:
Don’t simply look for the lowest price. You know how they say, “you get what you pay for”. That is also very true with hosting. You pay little amounts, you get a lot less then you really need to run your site. Same thing with hotels. You look for the cheapest price, and when you get there, you get what you paid for. You know what I mean, right? Dirty old, smelly, small room.
Features:
Different hosting companies offer a variety of services. Make a list of what you know you want your website to do. Here are a few services you will want to consider. Easy to navigate control panel, front page extensions, set up fees, transfer fees, site stats, site creation tools, submission tool to search engines, extra sub domains.
Technical support:
Is it important to find a website hosting company that has a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week service available. You simply don’t want to find a cheap website hosting company that can only help you once a week. You want a fast and accurate response to your questions.
E-mail accounts:
The best ones are those with administrator control. Generally, you should have at least 5 email accounts for 3 users. Depending on the number users that have in your company, you should have least 3 to 6 standby email accounts. Look for email accounts with web based access as well as POP3.
Speed:
You need to know how fast anyone can get into your site. You don’t want to have a low-speed site that takes too long to load. It is crucial for your site to be accessed at a good speed for your visitors. Web users do not tolerate slow websites. Once they see that, they will leave your site and never come back.
E-commerce options:
Should you want to sell a product or service online, you need to find a hosting provider that offers a selection of ecommerce features and payment processing services. Shopping cart, SSL security certificate and credit card merchant providers are some of the options you need to consider.
Disk space:
Nowadays, many hosting companies offer hosting services that exceed the disk space needed for any given websites. Although more is better, it is not always necessary. Disk space can be purchased from time to time if it you need it. Consider hosting providers that can support the growth of your website and business. Ask them about the application, network, disk space cost, facilities and the solution they can offer as your site grows.
Downtime:
This could be the one if not the most important things when choosing the best web hosting company. You can not make money if your web site is down. If your site is constantly down and your visitors can not access it on a consistent basis, you will lose subscribers, visitors, and possibly sales. Your site is useless if it is down most the time.
It is very reasonable to expect to spend between $20-$30 each month for a good and reliable website hosting company. I personally use Host4Profit for my hosting needs. I have found them to be, fast, reliable, offer top customer service, and reasonably priced. They have a web hosting affiliate program that allows you to make $10 a month for every person you refer to them. If you refer 3, your hosting is free.
http://www.talfighel.com/hosting.htm
Copyright 2005 Tal Fighel