Advice to Webmasters Who Want to Get the Best Hosting

Last Updated (Wednesday, 31 December 1969 15:59) Written by Bethany Payne Thursday, 05 November 2009 15:37

One of the most important factors to look at when purchasing web hosting is technical support. Building a website can be complex, and you will undoubtedly need assistance from your hosting company. You should be able to easily contact your hosting company and have your problem solved quickly. There are a variety of support options and you should choose a company that offers them all. Your first step for help will probably be an online "knowledge base" at your hosting company. Many questions can be answered there. You'll also want your hosting company to offer assistance by chat, email or ticket system, and 24-hour phone support.

One of the most important factors to look at when purchasing web hosting is technical support. Building a website can be complex, and you will undoubtedly need assistance from your hosting company. You should be able to easily contact your hosting company and have your problem solved quickly. There are a variety of support options and you should choose a company that offers them all. Your first step for help will probably be an online "knowledge base" at your hosting company. Many questions can be answered there. You'll also want your hosting company to offer assistance by chat, email or ticket system, and 24-hour phone support.

Uptime is another factor to review in a web hosting company. When you have put hard work into planning and having your site created, you want to know others can view it. You should look for it to be functional for at least 99% of the time. Most hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee. Beware that a guarantee only means that if they don't meet their uptime standard, you are given your monthly fee back on a prorated basis. They don't usually compensate you for lost traffic or sales.

Other important factors to look at when choosing a hosting company are number of sites you may host, bandwidth and disk space. The best hosting companies are now offering "unlimited" for all of these items. The number of sites or domains you may host used to be just one per account, in the old days. Now you may host an unlimited number of sites with most hosting companies. Fun, fun, fun. The second factor, bandwidth, is the amount of traffic between your site and the internet. Say your site was mentioned on an important newscast and a ton of traffic was sent to you. You would need a lot of bandwidth in that situation. The final factor is disk space and is now usually unlimited at most hosting companies. Disk space is the amount of memory used by all of your files, photos and videos. Note that although hosting companies claim to offer you "unlimited" amounts, if you are going to need a sudden large increase in any of these factors, you should contact your hosting company beforehand. They may be able to charge you in that situation.

Price is another factor to evaluate. You, like everyone, want the best price you can get. But we've all learned that you get what you pay for. My advice with regard to hosting cost is to try to get a good price, but know that really cheap hosting does not make up for a lack of good support and services. Be aware that there are free web hosting companies, often requiring you to put up with advertising. There are some free web hosting sites that do not have advertising, but know that free web hosting services disappear frequently. In my opinion, free hosting is not worth the hassle of moving your website to a new company every couple of months.

All in all, having your own website is a rewarding experience. Just be sure that your hosting company is up to the task.