How to Choose a Right Web Hosting Service?
Indeed, choosing a right web hosting service for your website is not an easy task especially when there are thousands of web hosting providers all offering almost identical web hosting packages. Therefore, it is important to know few major considerations even before you start your web hosting search. Below are three major criteria for web host seeker:
1Web
hosting features requirement
This is probably the most important consideration to start finding a host for
your site. You need to decide the technical requirements for your website, this
including:
a) Server platform and hardware requirements
If you plan to set up a website that uses programming environments such as
Active Server Pages (ASP), Visual Basic scripts, Cold Fusion or Microsoft Access
or Microsoft SQL database, in this case, you will need to find a web hosting
service that supports Windows platform such as Windows NT or Windows 2000
servers.
Likewise, if you plan to use programming languages such as Perl, CGI, SSI, PHP
or mySQL database, then any web hosting plans that support Unix/Linux platform
should be sufficient to meet your hosting requirements. Once you have these
server platform and hardware requirements in mind, you can decide the best web
hosting plans for your need. For more information, you can read "How to select a
web server and server platform?"
b) Disk space & Bandwidth requirement
Here is another technical requirement that you need to consider before selecting
a web hosting plan, i.e. disk space and bandwidth. If you intend to publish a
website that does not have a lot of contents (meaning, web pages), then the disk
space requirement may not be a big concern to you. In general, a disk space with
200MB to 500MB should be enough to meet your hosting requirement. In contrast,
if you plan to host a website with enormous amount of graphic pictures, mp3 or
video files, then you should consider a web hosting plan that provide huge disk
space, for example, 500 MB to 1,000 MB.
Similarly, the bandwidth requirement will depend on your site traffic
estimation. Obviously, a website that expect to attract high traffic will
consume the monthly bandwidth allowance very fast. If so, you will need to find
one web hosting service that offer huge bandwidth with 40 GB to 100 GB per
month. Depending upon your website requirement, choosing a web hosting service
that provide sufficient amount of disk space and bandwidth is crucial
consideration to prevent paying extra costs in the future should you overuse the
monthly disk space and bandwidth allowance.
c) Other hosting features
While the above requirements are utmost important, there are other hosting
features that you have to consider too. Can web hosting provider support video
clips on your website, if you have? Is the web hosting service compatible with
Dreamweaver or FrontPage web authoring tool? Do you plan to set up a virtual
store online? Can the host support the e-commerce features without adding extra
cost to your monthly payments? On top of that, you may also want to find out the
number of email accounts provided, number of FTP accounts, web statistic
software (analyze your web traffic), type of control panel supported (manage
your web hosting account), database and scripting languages supported and etc.
2Reliability
and scalability
A first-class web hosting provider offers reliable server uptime and fast
Internet connection. You should only choose a web hosting service that guarantee
at least 99% server uptime with high-speed Internet backbones using at least OC3
(Optical Carrier) lines (155 Megabits per second) or above instead of T1 or T3
lines. A reliable web hosting provider usually invests heavily on their data
center infrastructure with high performance servers, high speed multiple
backbones providers with fail-over redundancy, backup power generators and
firewall software protection in place to ensure they meet the uptime guarantee
specified in the terms of service.
Similarly, you should choose a web hosting service with hardware facilities that
designed for scalability, so that they can grow with your business. For example,
if you need to increase more disk space, bandwidth or number of mySQL databases,
you should be able to upgrade as needed without any problems.
3Customer
service and support
The last major consideration in choosing a web hosting service is to find a web
hosting providers that offers excellent customer service and support. You should
always search for a web hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week technical support that fielded with highly experience technicians, so that
any web hosting problems will be resolved within a reasonable amount of time.
You may also want to consider to test how responsive is their customer support
by sending few inquiry emails to the web hosting provider. In general, any
response in less than 24 hours is considered acceptable. It is a sign of poor
customer support if they take more than one day to response.
In addition, a web hosting provider with excellent support should also provide
multiple support channels, such as toll-free phone support, 24/7 email support,
live chat, online knowledgebase, Interactive flash tutorials and FAQ.
Above are few major considerations before you choose your web hosting service.
In addition, how long has the web hosting provider in business and the number of
customers that they currently have are also a good indication of the quality of
their hosting products as well as the stability of the company. Even though cost
of the web hosting service is also important but it should not be your major
consideration. Because the price of a web hosting service has been declining
over the years due to competition, as a result, the price of most of the web
hosting services offering quality hosting features has been converging to less
than US$10 per month. If you can't afford less than $10 per month, you probably
isn't in the online business for the long haul. Therefore, price should not be a
major deciding factor.
On the other hand, it is more important to ensure the web hosting service that
you choose is able to meet your website hosting requirements, guarantee your
website is always accessible with satisfying speed, provide scalability to grow
and expand your website as well as offer excellent customer supports.
