10 things to consider when searching for a Web Host

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10 things to consider when searching for a Web Host

20 September 2009 416 views 2 Comments

So, you decided to start a business over Internet. Choosing a good web host straight from the beginning is very important for the success of your business. Below you will find 10 steps to guide your web hosting choice:

Figure out what you want in a webhost first. Do you just want one to play around with and have one for your friends and family or do you want one for your local business or to create a way of making money online? Free web hosts will be fine to play around on but you will need something more if you want it for a business or making money online.
Reliability is the main requisite: when choosing a web host many people base their decision on the offered disk space and bandwidth. Unless you already have a very popular website you will hardly use even 10% the bandwidth on most hosting plans. The main factor on your decision, therefore, should be the reliability of the host (i.e. the speed of the servers and the uptime).
Research online: in order to verify the reliability of the different web hosts you will need to research online. Use search engines to gather customer reviews and check the online forums dedicated to web hosting (the best one is Web Hosting Talk).
Stay away from oversellers: it is very tempting to sign up with a web host that offers many Gigabytes of disk space, Terabytes of monthly bandwidth and unlimited domains. Specially if they charge $5,95 monthly for those specifications The only problem is that those hosting providers are clearly overselling, and thus they are not able to guarantee service quality. When choosing a web host look for a company that offers reasonable specifications.
Resellers? Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don’t know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon). However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.
Test the support service: before signing up make sure that you send some emails to the sales support. Check how fast they answer, how friendly they are and what degree of technical knowledge the operators have. If a company has a poor customer care department to begin with its very likely that other parts of the business will have the same performance.
Leave room for growth with enough space. The amount of space good web hosts provide would matter if your website grows bigger than allowed. Always look for a host with the option to buy more space if need be. Moving hosts can be a pain. Avoid this with a little foresight and planning.
Be wary of hosts that include a free domain name with their hosting package unless you are certain they will be putting your information in the WHOIS. Whoever has their information in the WHOIS is the owner, not the one who paid for it.
Don’t be cheap: if you are serious about your website or blog you should invest some money into a good web hosting solution. I am not saying that you will need a dedicated server right from the start, but consider that if you want a reliable and fast provider you will need to spend from $10 to $20 monthly.
Think twice about web hosts with a more competitive yearly rate, forcing you to pay for a year up front. If you have paid yearly and are dissatisfied with their service, you are less likely to swap. It’s always best to only pay monthly!