Oct 10
17
Finding A Good Web Hosting Provider
Unless the hosting is up to scratch, all the rest of the good qualities of a website will go unnoticed. It’s important to get a good host right at the start, and this can only be done by finding one to match the website’s requirements. Listed below are the main factors on which to base this decision.
Reviews: No web host can exist or do business unless there are good reviews out on the internet. Type in the name of the company into a search engine, along with the word reviews (“xyz hosting reviews”). Spend some time reading as many reviews as possible, because most of the time a single review won’t really cover everything good or bad about a specific web host.
Price: Since needs vary, the price is also subjective. Some sites might need more bandwidth and space than the host offers in a standard package. The usual website can make do with shared hosting, but some might need a dedicated server. There are plenty more options that can vary, such as the number of email accounts, or domains and sub-domains that a site needs.
There are also add-ons to be considered. Some hosts are eCommerce ready, some offer email list management support and design templates, and so on as extras. Depending on what the site needs, the price tag keeps going up. It’s best to figure out everything that’s going to be needed, and then find a host that offers all of it in the base price.
Windows vs Linux: Most site-owners don’t put too much thought into this, and the majority will get a Linux server by default. But sometimes, it turns into a big headache. For instance, Wordpress does not work on a Windows server, so if the site needs a blog, then it’s a problem. Linux servers, on the other hand, cannot run ASP, so for sites that need ASP functionality, it’s better to choose a Windows server. Either way, it’s not a good idea to switch afterwards.
SEO: Anyone who has run a site for some time on multiple hosts will tell you that search engines respond differently to each host. It’s not some insider game, but simply a result of how the search algorithm responds to certain factors related to the web host. This is why it’s important to know about page loading speeds, Class-C IP addresses and sites hosted in bad neighborhoods. It needs a bit of research and stuffy to understand these concepts, but it is important for those depending on search traffic.
Features: Regardless of budget or needs, some things should always come by default with every package. The must-have features include a control panel (cPanel or Plesk), POP/POP3 email accounts with webmail access, FTP access, scripting support (PHP, CGI, MySQL database, etc) and web analytics with access to log files. The list of features every web host offers is huge, but the aforementioned things are the ones which are sometimes left out by a few hosts even though they’re all necessary for most websites.
People tend to fixate on the price and hosting support. But choosing a web host involves making an informed decision based on not just the price, but also the host’s reputation and on whether or not the host offers specific things that the site needs.
We’ve got the inside scoop on how to choose a good webhosting provider now in our complete email hosting review.
