Once your website is ready you need web hosting company that hosts your website on their server and then only your website available to the others. Success of any online business is totally depends on web hosting service providers. Before signup you need to do detail study about the reputation of web hosting company in industry, features, reliability, connectivity, customer support, server uptime, etc.
Ask your self what you need from your web hosting company and then search for your type of web hosting company and evaluate what they offer you and compare it with other well know hosting companies. Now, you have good idea about which web hosting company most suitable to your business.
But before join any web hosting company you must keep watching on pricing structure. Pricing is not only important task for choosing a web host but you should also consider following things:
1 Reputation of web hosting in industry
2 Reliability and Speed of the connection
3 Main features that affect your business
1] Reputation of web hosting company in industry
This is the fast and obvious things you must consider before selecting any web hosting company. You need to do deep research about the web hosting company profile in market. Web hosting market is very competitive and number of web hosting company start up or shut down every day. Some web hosting companies offer eye catching plans and features at cheap rate for successful launching of their business. So, it's always necessary to keep watch on the reputation of your web hosting company.
Here are some important tips:
- How much long the company serving their customer? If the company is in market since long time then they have big data base of customer. You can ask any about the company in market.
- Read articles, news and reviews about web hosting companies. Reading news and reviews is the best to judge about the company. There are lots of web hosting directories that have their review section will help you to know about company. Some genuine users submit their experience with the company, speed, connectivity and reliability. Web hosting industry news will make you up to date with what's going on in the industries. Web hosting news provide you information about web hosting companies reputation in market as well as if they launch any other features that may be useful for you.
2] Reliability and speed of the server
The performance of your website and business depends on the speed and reliability of the web server where your websites hosted. The speed of the server depends on many factors; here we have listed some important factors like internet speed, effective bandwidth management, system platform configuration and reasonable network speed.
- Reliability of the server is an important task. Server consists of hardware and software and this is the main factors that affect your online presence. If web hosting server not properly configured then it might cause slower connection. Performance of the web hosting server mostly depends on the CPU, Memory (RAM) and disk space. So, the reliability of hosting server depends on the system configuration and if system is configured
- Web hosting company must have reasonable network connection speed.
- Hosting companies must have sufficient internet speed. T3 internet connection is highly recommended as its 40 times faster then T1 connection. Also hosting companies must have alternate internet connection in case of internet failure they switch their user on another T3 line to give their customer optimum output. Small companies do not have budget to provide T3 connection to their client.
- Effective bandwidth management is also important for fast connection.
3] Main features that affect your business
Here is the list of some basic features that may be useful to your business. You need to consider these features while you are planning to go for a web hosting provider.
- BANDWIDTH (Data Transfer or Traffic) : Bandwidth is also known as data transfer or traffic of the web site. The term is associated with the bytes transferred from your web site to the visitors of your website.
Ask your self how much bandwidth you require for your website. If you are running commercial website that allow web surfer to download software, songs, movies and games then you probably need higher bandwidth. But if you are running a small site then the usage will be less. Some web hosting companies offer unlimited bandwidth but beware of such companies because they will not pay for the over usage of bandwidth as they has to pay for the bandwidth.
- DISK SPACE : Disk space or website storage space is also important. Web hosting companies provide you some space on their server to host your html pages, graphics, images, flash and other files.
- SSL (Secure Server), Data Base Support and Shopping Cart : Keep these features in mind if you want to start your online business. SSL is abbreviation of Secure Sockets Layers and is designed to create a secure connection to the server to avoid hacking and to provide secure transmission of confidential data through internet.
Before signup ask your web hosting company about Data base support. Most of all web hosting companies provide My SQL and MS SQL database support.
If your website offers online shopping then you need shopping cart that use to operate online store. Shopping cart is software that responsible for catalog and online ordering process.
- Email Accounts
You probably need email accounts to contact your client at your own domain name, for example info@yourdomainname.com . Ask your web hosting provider how many email address they provide with the package. Also it is important that hosting provider also provide POP and SMTP address because it will help you to configure Outlook Express.
Also email forwarding, email aliases, email auto responder are also some other features that may help you in some way.
- Control Panel
Control panel give you access to your hosting account. By logging to your control panel you can add or delete email accounts, manage your account, and you can change your password, etc. It is bad choice if web hosting company do not provide control panel, because without control panel you have to ask to their customer support representative to do even small change.
- Customer Support or Technical Support
If you have any question or problem with the service, who will go to help you? Of course your web hosting company. Hosting company must have expert technical representative that entertain their customer while they are facing any kind of problem or need help for the service. Technical staff must be available for 24 X 7 and 365 days. Web hosting company should provide live chat support, email support, telephonic support and knowledge base that will help you to solve any kind of query.
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