What To Look For When Choosing A Web Hosting Provider
When you embark on the task of building your own website, one very important factor that needs to be considered is the web hosting service or company you are going to choose to host your website. A web host provides you with disk space for your website and a means for online users to view your website. A web host’s purpose can be simply translated to the online virtual home of your website. Your task of finding the right web host is to simply analyze a few major aspects of the web hosting company to make sure it will suffice your website’s needs.
A commercial web hosting company has many tools and features. Since you will be paying them a fee, you should be aware of all of said features (or lack thereof). There are many variables that can determine and differentiate between a good hosting company and one that lacks considerably. What you should understand is that hosting your website on an inadequate web host could cost you a great deal of success in the long run.
The major aspects of a web hosting service or company that you should investigate are:
- Reliability When your website is online, its uptime is going to be one of the most crucial aspects of its success. If the web host you are looking into has a large percentage of downtime or maintenance, this could have many drawbacks for you. A commercial web host should have an uptime of over 99%. Anything less should be unacceptable to you. To find out the uptime percentage of a web host, you can either ask their support or read their fine print.
- Data Transfer / Bandwidth and Diskspace The data transfer, or bandwidth, of your website is how much data is passed from the host to the online user while viewing your website per unit of time (usually repressented in megabits per second). If you are working with a simple website then this should generally not be of concern for you. However, if your website is meant for large amounts of data transfer, you should find out exactly how much the web host allots to your website. When a hosting company uses the term ‘unlimited’ the real figure will appear in their fine print. The same applies to diskspace – you should investigate how much is allotted to your website. If you are working with a large website, you should make sure you have enough diskspace for it on the web host.
- Software Features and Functions It is essential that the web host you choose has, at least, the basic functions and features such as FTP, PHP, MySQL, Perl, SSI,.htaccess, etc. Any lack of these functions could stunt the usability of your website.
- Technical Support The technical support of the web hosting company you choose says a lot of how they choose to run their company. If they are not willing to invest in good 24/7 customer support, then they either do not care enough for their existing users or their infrastructure is too small. Another important factor of their technical support is that they are competent enough to assist you – there is no point in 24/7 support that cannot help you.
- Email Capabilities Having your own e-mail account affiliated with your domain can yield a great advantage to you and you should always make sure that the web host you are choosing offers this important feature. You should also make sure that the number of E-mail accounts you can create is sufficient for your needs.
The above services should never be inadequate in a hosting service or company, for they are generally the most important factors. There are many more aspects of a web hosting service or company that could be investigated before making the decision to settle with a specific one.