How to choose the Right web host

Choosing a web hosting company isn't something that should be taken lightly. If you make the wrong decision it could have a significant impact in your business in the form of downtime, lost sales and most importantly - lost customers. This article provides some useful tips on selecting the proper host right from the get go.

If you have a website of any kind you'll need to host it somewhere. Depending on what kind of website it is (business or personal) the first choice you'll need to make is whether you want to go with a free hosting or paid hosting account. If you plan to use your site to make money with in ANY form, a paid hosting account is the only way to go. Besides having more features than a free account (which are often necessary) it looks much more professional.

One of the most important features you should look for when choosing a host is their level of customer service. Does the hosting company offer 24/7 technical support? Is their tech support by phone, email, or live chat? Although it is best if they offer all three forms, live chat is better than email and phone is better than live chat, so don't just settle for email. Also find out if their technical staff are certified, qualified and competent enough to help you when you need assistance. A good way to test and see if the site's customer service is any good, is to send them an email and see how long it takes for them to reply.

Something else that's quite important is the hosts reliability or uptime. If their guaranteed uptime (time when the server is functional) isn't above 99.9% you should probably look elsewhere. The speed of their servers is something else you should pay attention to, and will depend on several factors, including their type of connection to the internet, bandwidth and the speed at which your webpage can be retrieved from the server's computer. It's best to choose a host with a full T3 connection (or better). The smaller and cheaper service providers often use a much slower T1 connection.

Does the host backup systems in place in case of a power failure, data or connection loss? A good hosting company should have at least two different connections to the internet. If the weather knocks one out on a Saturday, you probably can't afford to wait till it is fixed on Monday. Also, most hosts will regularly backup your webpage's (data) and also have some kind of power backup in case of a power failure.

How much online storage space is available? Most sites only need 5 or 10 MB unless they have a lot of media intensive webpages. Many hosts offer around 1GB of space… though you'll probably never need that much, it's nice to have just in case.

How much bandwidth (data transfer) do you get monthly? Some hosts claim to offer unlimited bandwidth (data transfer) while others set a limit of 10-20GB which is often much more than enough unless you get millions of visitors.

What's their control panel like? The control panel is the software interface that allows you to manage different aspects of your web hosting account yourself, in an easy to use web-based interface. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should easily allow you to do things like add, delete and manage your email addresses, change passwords for your account, add, edit and delete files, check your web logs and so on.

While the price does matter, it is one of the last things you should look at. Only after deciding which hosting companies might be right for you, should you can compare prices. Just remember cheap hosting can have problems and it's probably not something you want to mess around with.

Other fairly common features that any host you are considering should at least have available include: simple autoresponders, POP3 email access, email forwarding FTP access, CGI-BIN access, SSI, SSL, htaccess, telnet and more.

After you've looked at some different web hosting companies and narrowed it down to a few who fit your needs both financially and in the services they provide, don't forget to check with some of their customers. Ask them about their general experiences with the host, including speed, reliability and customer service and you'll be all set.

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