How To Choose A Web Hosting Company?

choose a web hosting companyWeb hosting is a fundamental service that is critical to the operation of a website. The success or failure of a website is largely dependent on the quality of web hosting services that are being offered by the service provider.

There are a number of reviews that can indicate which firms give the best web hosting services In case you want to know what others think. As always, at the end of the day, it is you as the customer who has the responsibility of choosing a web hosting service provider that satisfactorily addresses your needs. With the advent of article marketing and other SEO (Search Engine  Optimization) campaigns, web hosting service providers have engaged the services of accomplished article writers who write articles that give them a good image even though in reality that may not be the case.

Below are some of the features that you should think about before investing money in a web host.

Know Your Need

You must realize your need before hand. There are a variety of web hosting packages available in the market but all may not fit into your need. When you think about web hosting, ask these questions to you.

  • What kind of website you’re building i.e Business, eCommerce, Blog etc.
  • What technology are you using i.e PHP, WordPress, Magento, ASP.NET etc
  • How much traffic you’re expecting on it?
  • Do you need any special software for your website?
  • Do you need any special version of programming language i.e PHP

The Bandwidth Packages

It is the desire of every website owner to handle unlimited amounts of online traffic. In an ideal setup, this is possible. The limit of online traffic that can be accommodated at any given time is dependent on the amount of bandwidth that the website owner has purchased. The more the bandwidth purchased, the more the capacity to handle streams of online visitors.

Web hosting companies have been very unreliable in terms of the bandwidth package options that they offer.  Some will even go to the extent of assuring you that they offer unlimited bandwidth when the idea of “unlimited” is questionable. While choosing a web hosting firm, be careful to scrutinize their bandwidth options in addition to sampling customer reviews and feedback on several different trustworthy websites. This can serve as an eye opener.

The Estimated Uptime

In the era of Penguin updates and search engine rankings, every website owner is worried about how the search engines could possibly rank them. Lower rankings can potentially damage the reputation of a website and the business that owns it. Unfortunately, one of the major factors contributing to lower rankings on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) happens to be downtime. When online traffic comes to a site only to find that it takes long to load, they will probably go back to the search engine top explore other search options. This action increases your bounce rates. The more visitors bounce from a specific site, the more the search engine lowers the ranking of that site.

Before getting into any contract with a web hosting company, it is good to inquire about their uptime percentage and confirm from existing and past clients whether what they say is true. With advancement in technology, many companies have improved the level of their uptime. All the same do your own research to avoid disappointments down the road. The least you should expect is 99% uptime.

The Suitability of the Control Panel

control panel enables you to make fundamental changes to some features such as email accounts and passwords. Although this may seem obvious, some control panels are structured in such a way that they do not give you the benefit customizing your site. It is critical to choose a control panel that addresses your unique needs. Remember that a complicated, technical and restrictive control panel may force you to incur additional costs when you are forced to hire technical support services. This is expensive, unnecessary and totally uncalled for. All these pitfalls can be avoided if during your shopping for a web hosting company, this feature is analyzed and considered before the purchase.

The Disk Space Limit

A big disk space is one of the basic requirements of quality web hosting services. Ensure that you confirm with your service provider and again look at a few customer reviews so you will get the gist of the quality of services that they offer. If they have trial products, you may consider giving them a test to reduce the chance of an unhappy purchase.

The Pricing Regime

Depending on the kind of business that you want to start, there are a variety of web hosting plans, and each has their own price tag. There is an idea that the higher the quality, the higher the price. Although this may be true in many cases, it is beneficial to assess your needs before you engage a web hosting plan. This will avoid cases of paying for dedicated web hosting services and only using the most basic of the features you paid for.