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:
Web 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 requirements will depend on your site traffic estimation. Obviously, a Web site, hoping to attract high traffic will consume the monthly bandwidth allowance very quickly. If so, you need to find a web hosting service, providing a huge bandwidth and 40 GB to 100 GB per month. It depends on the requirements of your website, choose a web hosting service, providing a sufficient number 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 allowances .
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.
Reliability and scalability
First-class Web hosting service provider offers reliable server uptime and high-speed Internet connection. You should only choose a web hosting service, ensure that at least 99% of server uptime, high-speed Internet backbones using at least OC3's (Optical Carrier) lines (155 Megabits per second) or above instead of T1 or T3 lines. A reliable web hosting service providers often invest large amounts of data on high-performance servers, high-speed backbone network infrastructure, multi-purpose center failed to provide a redundant, standby generators and firewall software protection to ensure that they meet the uptime guarantee conditions of service specified.
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.
Customer service and support
The last major consideration in choosing a web hosting service is a Web-hosting provider to find, provides excellent customer service and support. You should always make for a web hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support, experience with highly technical Fielded so that any web hosting problems will be resolved within a reasonable time. You can also consider to consider how to respond is their customer support by some e-mail request to the web hosting provider. In general, a response in less than 24 hours is considered acceptable. It is a sign of poor customer service, if more than one days to reply.
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.
These are some of you choose your web hosting service's main concern. In addition, how long the web hosting service provider and the number of customers, they currently have is also a good indicator of their access to product quality, but also the company's stability. Even in the access network, the cost is also very important, but it should not be your primary consideration. Web hosting services because prices have over the years, due to the decline in competition, so the best price on the Internet to provide quality hosting services functions into a less than 10 U.S. dollars a month. If you do not fall below 10 U.S. dollars a month, you may be in the network business is not for long. Therefore, the price should not be a major deciding factor.
On the other hand, more importantly, to ensure that web hosting services, you choose to meet your website hosting requirements, guarantee that your site is always a satisfactory rate of acquisition, to provide scalable growth and expansion of your site and provide much good customer support. On your web page according to the requirements of the host, you can use the advantages of our web site, cheap web hosting review to find out the recommended web hosting services, with the above-mentioned three main criteria. I wish you good luck on your search.
Khurram Shah is the owner of Web Hosting Services, a website that provides complete and detail reviews on web hosting services. You can visit his website at
http://urswebhosting.com
