Many small businesses, when first starting out online, are looking to keep costs low, and the first thing they do is get a cheap website hosting provider. This can be a bad business decision because the problems that a cut-rate host causes can really hurt your profits. Read if you are a small business owner who needs web hosting advice.
Dedicated Hosting
Are you having problems deciding between shared or dedicated hosting services? Shared servers are not ideal for websites that enjoy high traffic levels, design-driven layouts and sensitive customer and payment information. If this is the case, you are better off with dedicated hosting.
Select several providers you are interested in, and keep their contact information. If you do this and the problem turns out to be a major one, you’ll be ready to move quickly meaning less interruption to your site.
Register domains separately from your hosting provider. That way, if there’s trouble between you and your hosting provider, your host won’t try to hold your domain name hostage. If you register your domain with your host, your host will control the registration instead of you.
Are you looking at free web hosts? Remember that free hosts rarely offer backup features. If you go with this option, you should be diligent in backing up your own data. If one of your files vanishes, there’s nothing to be done. If this happened with all of your site content, it would be impossible to recreate without a backup.
Hosts Charge
The amount you have to pay for hosting depends on how many people regularly visit your site. Find out how your host is going to bill you: some hosts charge different flat rates and your site progresses from one category to the other as it gets more traffic, while other hosts charge you a different amount every month in function of your traffic.
Choose a web host with multiple hosting awards. Knowing that others have used the company and have been satisfied with the service, is a strong indicator of a good company. Having an award is a good indication that the web hosting company is reliable and has many satisfied customers. Try to find a hosting company that has a number of such awards.
Having a good reputation is highly valuable to any great web host. Check out a few user reviews and you will quickly find that there are some web hosts that have a stronger reputation than others. Others make promises they cannot deliver on, and should be avoided.
Programming Language
Make sure the web host you choose offers support for every programming language used by your website, as well as any you may end up using in the future. Not having this proper amount of support for all your languages means, you won’t have the ability to launch your own site. Furthermore, if you choose to switch to a different programming language further down the road, your provider may not be capable of accommodating your site. It can be very tedious to switch web hosts.
Know that many web hosts use Linux, but Windows is used extensively as well. You need to be prepared to deal with the different features and operations of either. Linux is often cheaper to use compared to Windows, and can result in having lower monthly payments for your website.
Don’t just pick based on price. You have many different options to chose from. There are a lot of things that define a good web host, so make sure you don’t settle for less than you need because it is cheap. Your final choice should meet ALL of your needs, not just price.
Before making a final decision on a hosting site, make sure that you check out their security and safety features. You want to be sure that your site will be secured from hackers, and other dangerous security breeches too. A good hosting site will be constantly backing up their servers.
You should be able to contact your host quickly and in a variety of ways when you encounter an issue. If they have contact available through email, live chat, and phone support 24/7, they’re probably a good hosting company. That way if you do experience a problem, you’ll have a better chance of resolving it quickly.
Review available web hosts by taking a look at online directories. This puts all the different web page hosting companies and their plans in one place for easy comparison. This makes it much easier to comparison shop and commit with confidence.
Read the reviews of different hosting companies to aid in your decision process. Do not trust them on their word. Instead, read what their customers are saying because this can provide you some vital information about the companies.
Now you should be a bit enlightened on the subject of web page hosting, and you should now notice that you truly get what you pay for. Reliability, service and ease of use are some of the other things to keep in mind. If you have a website that is constantly down, this can cost you money in the long run. Use the information that was provided to help you make the right decisions as you choose your website host.
