Searching Out the Best Web Hosting Services

By Scott F Simmonds

At one time it was quite rare for companies and even individuals to have a web site but with the extremely affordable web hosting services available nowadays it makes sound business sense to build a web presence and to not do so can even harm your business.

Many customers and clients expect you to at least have an email address and quite often a web site where they can read up about you or your company and become more familiar with who you are, fortunately inexpensive web hosting makes this a reality.

Therefore, building a web site has now become an essential part of marketing your business, however in order to get the most benefit you need reliable web hosting services combined in a good package that offers value for money.

So how do you go about choosing such a package?

The first step you need to take is to decide what you will be requiring from a web hosting service. This can be difficult if this is your first web site but one essential decision I would advise you to take is to purchase a web hosting service that is outside of your broadband or internet service provider package.

There are two reasons for this, one is that you get to choose the domain name and make it relevant to your business and secondly that you get and retain control of your email accounts and web site files.

Free web hosting services are okay for hobby or family sites but not a good footing for a serious business.

I also recommend that you do not buy your domain name and web hosting package from the same provider. This is because if for some reason your web hosting fails you will be able to swap to another provider with relative ease as you will have a copy of your web site stored on your local P.C. which you can re-upload to a new hosting account.

3 Items To Consider When Choosing Web Hosting Services

How much disk space and bandwidth do you really require? You will see a lot of large figures advertised by web hosting services and to be honest, unless you are operating a site that offers free downloads of large video files, you will never get anywhere near these figures. Therefore, if you have a simple 5 page site then just choose the cheapest option, it is bound to suffice and if you need expansion upgrading at a later date is a very simple process.

What level of support do you require? It is very common to see the best web hosting services offering up-time rates in excess of 99% and these are certainly achievable. However, do not believe the claims of 100% up-time, this is impossible, even the best web hosting services need to have a little downtime for essential maintenance works. 100% is not a realistic offer.

Do you require software packages such as web site builders? If so then you will find several inexpensive hosting providers that offer branded software for this purpose as well as other packages on offer.

In conclusion, identify your web hosting services needs first then go shopping but watch out for the extreme claims of unrealistic features.

Scott F Simmonds has built many websites and had experience of many hosting providers. Visit Scott's site that profiles top web hosting services to discover the best and most reliable hosts around right now.

5 Things You Need to Know Before Choosing a Web Hosting Package

By Mark Bellinger

Ensure that Your Business or Reputation is not Damaged by a Bad Web Host

Whilst by opting for an affordable hosting plan does not mean settling for poor support or less features, it is however important to be able to differentiate the cheap hosting companies from the cheap & nasty hosting companies that can cause you financial harm as well as to your reputation ...

Choosing the Right Web Host

It is important to be able to choose both the right web hosting plan for your needs as well as to ensure that the web host will live up to its promises and leave you in the dark with no service, website or email...

5 Key Things to Consider Before Selecting a Web Host

1. The Web Hosting Company's Credibility, Reliability & Track Record

   Probably the worst thing to happen to a website owner is for your Web Hosting Company to disappear from the face of the planet overnight.

   Not only are you are left totally in the dark, without email, without an online presence & without a website but your only choice is to look for a new host (a reliable one this time) and start from scratch again.

   So please make sure the hosting company is financially stable, has a sound track record and is in the web hosting business for the long term.

   For instance any reasonable person would probably choose a well known hosting name over a name like "Bubba's Red Hot Web Hosting"

2. What Type of Hosting Plan & Features Are Needed?

   Generally hosting companies provide the following sort of hosting options;

   
   
   • Shared Hosting - cheap options as many accounts & sites are hosted on one server
   
   
   • Reseller Hosting - also shared but allows you to create unlimited web sites under your own packages, prices, and brand.
   
   
   • Managed Hosting - similar to dedicated hosting but with fully managed solutions - much more expensive than shared hosting
   
   
   • Dedicated Hosting - provides a higher level of security, speed, and uptime.
3. Find Out What Their Former/Current Clients Say About Them

   Can your prospective host provide you with success stories for clients with similar configurations to yours? Are they able to provide references from clients who can tell you about their experience using that company?

4. After Signing Up with your Web Hosting Company, How Quickly can you have your Website Up and Running?
   
   
   You need to be able to start uploading files to your website's server within a few hours to minimize your site's downtime.
5. Disc Space & Bandwidth Requirements

   Disc Space is the amount of space measured in MB that your site's files use up on the host's server.

   Beware of hosts that advertise "unlimited web space" as somewhere in the fine print the host will have a provision to charge for exceeding a certain amount of space.

   However, having said that, most websites use less than 10MB of disc space & that is probably why hosting companies feel comfortable selling the "unlimited disc space" feature - many low cost hosting packages offer at least 500MB of disc space though.

   Data transfer or bandwidth is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site - or simply put the combined total of bytes uploaded to or downloaded from your site.

   Again many hosts offer unlimited bandwidth but again this is a sales pitch that may not really exist in reality - but again many hosting plans come with sufficient bandwidth allowance.

In conclusion make sure you get the best bang for your hosting buck from this high profile, professional web hosting company.

6 Things you need to know before you sign up for cheap hosting