Keeping a business website online for as much of the day and as many days of the year as possible is absolutely vital to the financial success of your business venture. Your website host is the company that is responsible for ensuring that your website remains stable and online for this time. Most hosts will give an estimated downtime or uptime for their service and this is measured as a percentage. For example, if a host declares they have a 99% uptime, this means that for every 100 hours that your site is hosted with them, it will be down for 1 hour.
The Downtime Of Your Host Directly Affects Your Business Performance.
1 hour may not sound like a lot of time in this context, but when you consider that 100 hours is only 4 days then your website will not be accessible for 1 hour in every 4 days. Not only will you lose the potential custom during this hour but any potential future business from the customers that eventually and inevitably look elsewhere. For this reason it is absolutely vital you get a web host that has as high an uptime as you can possibly find to protect your business and to protect your profit.
Other Areas You Should Consider.
Many companies may have similar reliability with their offering, and this means there are other areas you must concentrate on to determine the most appropriate web host for your needs. If you have a personal website then you may want to use a free host. Free hosts usually make no guarantee as to the reliability of their site and use advertising to supplement the lack of direct income made from your account. However, with a business website it is not advisable to use a free account. With paid accounts you receive many benefits, some are essential items while others are more luxuries that will inevitably make your website business run much smoother.
Contemplate Your Requirements.
You need to sit down with your site designer and discuss exactly what is required from your host. You should also consider whether you need responders, unlimited email addresses and many other factors. Only by considering all of these different factors will you be able to make a reasonable judgment on the hosting account you will eventually opt for. These factors will include whether you require FrontPage extensions, regular backups of your site, site analysis, email responders, form handling capability and many more different factors.
Look Around For The Best Deal.
Always shop around to ensure that you are getting as good a deal as you possibly can. Whether you are working on a shoestring budget or you do not consider the amount you spend to be that important, you should never pay more than is really necessary. Your best bet with hosting is to make sure you have more than you actually require, because this way should you need to expand the site or you require more options in the future you will already have them. You certainly need to select a host that allows for this level of expansion.
There are thousands of web hosts around today with thousands of plans to choose from making what was once a simple procedure seems like a daunting task for both newbie and pro alike. Whether you're looking for your first host or looking to move on to a better one there are certain simple steps you must follow to succeed in choosing a great host. These simple steps include:
Right Platform
The first and most foremost step in choosing a web host is determining the platform the web server should run, usually a choice between Unix/Linux and Windows. Your choice is largely determined by your website and the technologies used to create it, generally a website created with Microsoft technologies (ASP, VB) will run on Windows servers while most other sites using open source technologies (PHP, Perl, Python etc) will run on Linux based systems.
Right Features
Once you've chosen your platform the next step is determining the features you'll need from your web host. Take your time with this step as the feature lists of web hosts are getting longer and longer every day and while some plans may look similar on the surface, a good look at the feature lists may tell another story. Only you can determine the specific features you'll need, but some key things to keep an eye on are:
Disk Space Bandwidth Backups Uptime Money Back Guarantee Domains Allowed Databases (Number & type) CGI, PHP, Perl, Python, SSI Cron Email accounts
The list goes on and on, just remembers to take your time and make sure your new web host is going to provide you with everything you need.
Budget
Often budget is the only thing people consider when choosing their first web host, funds are usually tight and on the surface most hosts look very similar. Sometimes you get lucky and choose a good host, but more often than not it turns out to be a horror story.
Remember that the cost of your web hosting is more than just the monthly fee, think about the total cost of ownership. TCO includes lost sales due to downtime & slow speeds, downtime rebates, extra bandwidth charges, setup costs, extra feature costs, and your monthly fee. Many hosts will require you to pay yearly to get the best price available though there are some that allow you to pay by the month and still get the best price, it's really a matter of personal choice as to what payment method works best for you.
Customer Service
Customer service is another aspect that is often not forgettable while choosing a great web host. You shouldn't settle for anything less than 24/7/365 service, your website needs to be running all the time so it's no good if your hosting company doesn't work during the holidays. Don't take the web hosting companies word for it, they all claim 24/7 support but few back it up with consistent performance. Be sure to test them out at various times of the day and night via phone, email and live chat if they offer it.
Support
An extensive knowledge base can be a real time saver as well as being an indication of the level of customer service supports and expertise you can expect to receive. Spend some time browsing the support sections of the website and see for yourself the level of support provided.
Longevity
Do a whois on the web host's domain name and find out the creation date, anything less than a year ago and the risk that they won't be around next year increases. They could be a great host, but considering more then 95% of new hosts go out of business within a year that really isn't something you should be taking a chance on.
Uptime
It's a fact of life that a web host cannot be online 100% of the time, servers need to be rebooted for security and software updates and any web host that doesn't get updated faces the increased risk of being successfully hacked.
99.9% uptime guarantees are pretty standard in the industry however a guarantee is only as good as how it is defined and the company behind it. Look for no less than a full months free hosting should they not meet their guarantee, a prorated refund based on the amount of downtime is virtually worthless. Say you pay $10 for a month of hosting and your site is down for 24 hours. They will refund you for one day of downtime, which ends up being about 33 cents.
Hence, it's not a rocket science; just a little research and investigating that can save a lot of heartache in the future and can offer you a great web host.
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