Are you looking to start a blog soon? Are you going to establish a small website for your business? Do you think you can find the right web hosting for your website?
Read this post as you will know 5 major things to look for in a web hosting company before making a decision to let them host your soon to be launched website/blog.
Hosting is a very important part of the Web, as it is this service that allows us to have websites online in the first place. Without good web hosting service providers, we would have to build and maintain our own equipment, which would serve the web pages and scripts of our sites to the viewers, and that is a very difficult (and more importantly, expensive) thing to do.
Anyone who has ever tried to get into an online business or simply build a presence on the Internet has gotten to a point where he/she needs to choose a web hosting company, and a lot of the times, people are simply overwhelmed by the sheer number of providers, as the industry is a very competitive one.
But there are some very simple things that you can base your choice on, and if you take them into consideration, you are sure to get the best service for the money you pay.
Security
The security of your data is the most important factor, that’s why you should consider this point first. I’m sure you don’t want to get to a point where your site has been broken into by some unscrupulous hackers. You should always see what other people have to say about a hosting company before choosing it. Their Terms of Service can also tell you a lot about their commitment to your security, that’s why you must read it before placing an order.
I know that web hosting company can’t help you in your website security alone. You also have to take security precautions on your own to be as safe as possible.
But hey! Haven’t you read how due to lack of security in GoDaddy servers resulted in many sites being hacked. GoDaddy web hosting has been compromised many times. Just Google it and you will find all those news.
Reliability
The hosting package and company you choose must also be reliable. They must have a record of good service online and an acceptable service level agreement, which means they should be active for at least a couple of years and have clear-defined rules about any data corruption, backups and troubleshooting times.
For example, if it takes them longer than an hour to replace a failed hard drive, you should simply move on to the next provider on your list.
Performance
The performance of your website or application is directly related to the machine it is hosted on. If the hosting provider uses outdated equipment or a slow connection to the Internet for their data center, it will definitely be a bad choice, no matter what their pricing is.
Be sure to check the server hardware specs on their site before choosing a web hosting package, or ask their sales team to provide it to you.
Features
There are tons of technologies on the web nowadays, and you never know what your site might need. That’s why the rule here is “the more, the better”. You should always search for a hosting package that has MySQL, PHP, Zend, IonCube, PostgreSQL the latest Apache server and unlimited bandwidth and disk space.
That’s not a hard thing to do, as most companies nowadays offer unlimited web hosting packages with all those features installed and configured.
Price
And of course, you should consider the price. If it’s too high and you can’t afford it, no amount of features and security will help you, which is why you’ll have to go with the company that has the best features vs. price ratio.
If you find a great cheap web hosting company that conforms to all of the above points, there’s no reason not to choose it.
Conclusion
By simply taking the above points into consideration, you can really reduce the number of options you’ll have to choose from, and you’ll easily be able go with the best hosting company possible.
Do let me know if you consider more points to look on while choosing a web hosting company. This will really help those people decide just looking to choose a web hosting for their website.
Also, do let me know the point you think is the foremost important according to you when choosing a web hosting company.
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Article Written By Sushant Risodkar
Yo! I'm +Sushant Risodkar & my nickname on web is Typhoon. I'm a 18 yrs. old young blogger from India & the owner of SmartBloggerz. If you are looking for SUCCESS as a blogger & affiliate marketer then SmartBloggerz is the right blog for you. You can follow me on Twitter or be my friend on Facebook. And hey! Don't forget to LIKE SMARTBLOGGERZ on Facebook. Read more About Sushant Risodkar.
Sushant Risodkar has written 375 superb article(s) on this blog
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{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
i am reading a lot about web hosting these days and will advice all newbies to go through this article for sure
To add more.. one thing you should consider also is a Well defined agreement. The agreement should include what the service provider is going to offer and your course of action in case they fail to stick to the agreement.
Choosing a web host is not simple. Sure we have to consider multiple factors such as connection, uptime, support, and advanced features but how we could select the best suits our site? Most hosting providers say they are the best and there are a lot of paid positive reviews about them, we even don’t know which are genuine feedbacks. So I think the best way is finding some webmasters and ask them about the hosts they are using.
Yes, you can also just shoot a thread on popular webmaster forums like Digitalpoint, Warriorforum, Sitepoint etc. asking them their thoughts about a specific web hosting company and you are surely going to get genuine answers (mostly).
I have hosted my websites on godaddy shared server. Sometimes my sites are dead slow. I wrote to godaddy support and they suggested me to buy the dedicated server
Big names have monopoly in the market.
I think GoDaddy just looks good in the domain business. They don’t have much reputation right now as compared to others in the web hosting area. But still, people look for it as convincing in some way..
Yes its really true. Choose a web hosting company that has reputation and has been in the business for years.
Thanks for your comment Kene. But make sure when choosing a web hosting company in business for years is not using old technology otherwise it will be a sad thing for your website.
The list should have the following 10 points:
1. Price
2. Area of Focus / Specialties
3. Tech Specs / Limitations
4. Tech Support
5. Features / Add-Ons
6. Hardware
7. Customer Reviews / Satisfaction / Reputation
8. Email Features
9. Control Panel / User Interface
10. Scalability / Room to Grow
Thanks Jack for listing down the things important while choosing a web hosting company. It’s a quick checklist and people can benefit from it.
Thanks for your comment Jack.
I also think that choosing a web hosting is a very simple task. The important thing what anybody who is looking for hosing is to consider whether they are going to build 1 website or multiple sites. The best would be to take reseller hosing package, as then you are more flexible how many sites you can build, and you do not need to create account each time you have some new idea for website.
Ya, I am also finding many people are now opting for this trick of using a reseller hosting instead for going a little high cost vps and getting “almost” full benefits like a vps hosting. It’s really a smart thinking.
I have used BlueHost more than others and have been pretty satisfied. Pretty good customer service and high percentage of uptime. I have also used AT&T but they seem to have higher prices and their control panel is not close to as user friendly. Thanks for the information.
Never heard of AT&T web hosting…And that’s why I think you weren’t satisfied with them.
Bluehost is quite good and it scores good on all the scales mentioned in the post.
Thanks or your comment.
I just had a friend that was concentrating on building traffic to his blog and he had what he thought was good hosting for a good price. Without notice – his host shut him down for using too many resources on the server. So, you get what you pay for and don’t go cheap or suffer the consequences, as my friend did.
This is a great post that covers the main topics…but, set a budget and be realistic. It costs money to run a successful blog and in return you should be able to monitize it and recoop your investment plus make a nice profit.
Yes, Louise people usually get excited with “Unlimited Hosting” types of packages but they should never forget to ask the company questions about the truth behind it and what happens to their hosting like what happened with your friend and also ask them about various limits related to that package so they can make the use of it in a proper way without getting suspended.
Thanks for your comment Louise.
To add more.. one thing you should consider also is a Well defined agreement. The agreement should include what the service provider is going to offer and your course of action in case they fail to stick to the agreement.
Ya that’s something people themselves miss while purchasing a web hosting from a company and which some companies try to take benefit of. They just try to hide certain things under the hood and only displays the “good” things and what is more important for people.
Thanks for your comment Jerry.
Yup! these are some common points but yet of great importance that are mostly not present in the minds of many people when they are choosing a hosting company for their website and hence they later found themselves in a big problem….
I agree with all above points and this must be taken care by all newbie bloggers before selecting any web hosting company. The most important factor for me reliability and security is very important, making sure about the downtime and that website don’t crash because of wrong web hosting company.
I would reconsider the thinking that “more for less = better” when shopping for a hosting package. Often the unlimited hosting packages have more accounts on a server and higher limitations or restgrictions on what content can be hosted. More for less equals better does not really apply to web hosting. Support and Uptime should rank number 1 and 2 on the list. Price somewhere in the middle and “unlimited” should be one of the last items to consider.
Many web hosting companies are now trying to provide 24×7 customer support after watching the popular web hosting company HostGator succeed with that thing. I think it’s a great way for their business also as it helps in creating a good reputation amongst people.
Thanks for your comment Matt.
I have to agree with this post. In choosing a web hosting company to host your site is definitely one of the hardest thing to decide. I mean it’s pretty obvious that there are so many web hosting companies but only few really provide quality and outstanding service to web owners. These 5 things you mentioned is really helpful. Keep it up!
Hi Sushant, I got a lot out of your tips. I’m using Blue Host now but I did hear some complaints about it from a handful of bloggers. I think that every host has some unhappy customers and the trick is to find the one that has the lowest amount of dissatisfied customers.Btw – I linked to this post in a guest post that I did and I hope you see the track back. Thanks!
Just waiting for your trackback to appear
..I think the blog on which you guest posted is not having trackbacks enabled.
Update: just found the trackback..It went into Spam box :]
Good, I’m glad you saw it. Btw – have you heard about the new spam plugin called GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin. You might want to give it a try, you can see it in my CommentLuv link. Have a great day
Yup, I have heard about it. But I’m using a better plugin called “Conditional CAPTCHA”. Go just check it on wordpress plugin directory for information. It works great; seamlessly with Akismet.
Stats: All spam bots eradicated from my blogs. I don’t get spam comments from bots anymore…Now I only find max. 10 comments in my spam box everyday (in 24 hrs) in which 90% are human spammers looking to get backlinks and rest are genuine comments.
couple of days ago . my website went down and i couldn’t access it for two days . previously i hvent face such time of problem with this company . so i am giving then another chance lets see they dont mess up this time . you said that go daddy lacks in security but didn’t gave alternatives . i would like know all the other alternatives that would be more cool
The best hosting to try out is HostGator
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this will help you save your first billing amount upto $9.94
Nice and thanks for this post. I made a mistake with my first website and this will help others from make that same mistake.
Reliability and performance are the most important factors that attracts the customers. A company with good performance and with reliable factor always has exponential progress graph. A customer is the best source of advertisement. When any company provides good service, it is also doing their marketing in the form of performance.
I would go with first two, for me security and reliability is very important. No one really seems to care about security these days when it comes to buying hosting but it is very important…you don’t want to wake up one day and see all the hard work you put in 1-2 years on your site vanish.But there’s one more point I would like to add here and that’s ‘Quality Support’. Not many good hosting companies have good support staff who know what they are doing so it’s important that they’ve a good staff who are always on there to support you 24/7 because you never know when you need them.
Thanks for sharing about 5 things things to consider before choosing a web hosting. It’s the one I am looking for because I am currently starting a new blog and as a blogger I to publish my articles online and that’s why web hosting is very important. I will always remember this five: Security, Reliability, Performance, Features and of course the price.
I agree that these 5 things must be considered by each of us who wants to have a good hosting company. But I would considered the reliability of the company as the main factor of choosing a good web hosting company because a web hosting site with a good performance of its reliability can easily provide your security and the other factors you’ve stated.
It is definitely important to find a hosting that is reliable, especially for bloggers and businesses that relies on traffic to earn. If a webhosting company is unreliable and that their servers are down once a week, then you definitely need to look for other hosting companies. It will also be a good idea to check if the next hosting company you are going for provides excellent technical support aside from the 5 that Typhoon has mentioned.
Usually people try to get cheap web hosting service. It is very good if it is reliable and secure.
spot on article. i wish when i first started i found a good server! Bluehost works good for me
Unlimited bandwidth is a must have web host because with it we no need to worry about our site server down because of the we already reach the bandwidth limits =)
I have now a web host who does anything for me in terms of support. So for me excellent support is the most important feature.
Very good points. We have people write asking how we answer all those questions. You should ask any potential hosting company how they stack up against them. If they don’t have time to answer your simple question, what will they do when you have a real problem.
In choosing a web hosting company one must have a knowledge or background to that company before come up to a final decision. Indeed, after reading the contents of these tips, I could say that it has an assurance for someone who finds for a reliable hosting company.
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