You’ve bought your domain and are ready to put your website online, good for you! How do you begin to find a good company to host your website? What are the best things to look for when selecting a company to be your website host? How do you know if they are reliable or not? This article will answer some of the most common and pressing questions concerning website hosting services.
Shared Hosting
Dedicated or shared hosting, which one is right for you? If your site is rather large and complex you may find out that shared hosting cannot handle the heavy volume of visitors that your site receives, as it will limit your ability to properly serve the customers. It would likely be in your best interest to use a dedicated host.
Choose a web hosting company that is located in the same country as your target audience. For example, if your targeted traffic consists of people who reside in Europe, you should try to obtain your hosting service through a company that has servers located throughout Europe.
Monthly Payments
When choosing a web host, use monthly payments instead of lump-time payments. Consider monthly payments – what if you need to cancel service sometime down the road? If your host goes out of business or if your company outgrows them, you could lose any hosting payments you’ve made.
Choose a hosting service that will accommodate your site’s eventual growth. If you want to add data intensive things, like video or photos, you will need more space. Look for a plan that gives you 100MB of space to develop your website in the next year or so.
Does the host which are you are considering offer a refund guarantee if you are not satisfied? If you find you do not like the service in the first 30 days, you ought to have the option to cancel and receive a refund. Not every web host is as good as advertised.
When searching for a web host, do some extra research online besides simply reading the host’s website and promotional materials. Scout out some customer reviews or reviews written by watchdog sites to find out how satisfied their past and present clients are. Independent customer reviews will be a good indicator of quality.
If you are new to web design, select a hosting company that has outstanding customer service instead of just extra bells and whistles. As a beginner, you will find that you have many questions as to how to utilize certain features of the web hosting package. In most cases, you will not even use all of the expensive bells and whistles. Odds are good that you will get more out of a reliable and accessible technical support system.
Email Address
If you need more than one email address, ask for it from your web host. One that uses POP 3 is the most popular choice. This allows you to create your own personalized email address containing your domain name.
You should visit the website of a company which you are considering choosing for web hosting. If the website is not designed well, this should set off a red flag. This could also mean that they’re not that experienced and that they could have a “fly-by-night” thing going on. Proper design elements will indicate that they are devoted to detail, and that they are well versed in coding and HTML.
Choose your host based on a range of criteria rather than making your decision based on price alone. Consider a wide range of options and features. Look at all factors before choosing your host and then pick a plan which is within your budget. Be certain that the host can supply everything needed.
Find out a website hosting company’s history before choosing to use them. Choose a company that has a history of good service and has been in business for a long period of time. If possible, choose a host that has been in business for 12 months or more. These newer services are more likely to disappear within the next months.
Before you sign up for any hosting company’s services, make sure that their web security features are solid. You want to be sure that your site will be secured from hackers, and other dangerous security breeches too. Good hosts constantly back up servers.
Choose a hosting company that is dedicated to clear and open communication with customers. Choose a host that communicates with its customers and answers any questions and notifies them of any important information. You also need to know that communication is easy, meaning you have a way to contact them 24 hours a day.
As you can now see, just because you picked out a fancy new domain name and want to set up a website, it still must be hosted somewhere. Launching your website isn’t hard if you know how to find and evaluate web page hosting providers. Use the advice from this article to quickly get your site running.
