27 October 2009

Advice to Webmasters Who Want to Get the Best Hosting

By Bethany Payne

Excellent technical support is the number one thing you should look at when you compare hosting companies. You're a busy person and want to get your problems solved as quickly as possible. You want a web hosting company that respects your time and helps you solve your problems quickly. Support should be available 24-hours by phone, chat, an online "knowledge base", and email or ticket system. Depending on your type of problem and time frame, you may need each of these different services.

Uptime is another factor to review in a web hosting company. When you have put hard work into planning and having your site created, you want to know others can view it. You should look for it to be functional for at least 99% of the time. Most hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee. Beware that a guarantee only means that if they don't meet their uptime standard, you are given your monthly fee back on a prorated basis. They don't usually compensate you for lost traffic or sales.

Additional important items to look at are disk space, bandwidth and the number of domains allowed. In the good old days, you were limited in all three of these. Now most hosting companies give you unlimited amounts of disk space, bandwidth, and domains. Note, however, that if you need a sudden large increase in any of these, contact your hosting company. They may be able to bill you for increases like these. Disk space is the amount of space your files, photos and videos take up on the hosting company's servers, usually measured in MB or GB. Bandwidth is the quantity of traffic between the internet and your site. If you do some great marketing and have a sudden influx of visitors, you will need a large amount of bandwidth. An unlimited amount of domains that you can host means you can have a ton of websites up just on one hosting account. A feature of which I am very fond.

Price, price, price. I think that old adage is true that you get what you pay for. You should balance a low price with good technical support and services. There are companies that offer free hosting, but you usually have to put up with advertising by the hosting company on your site. There are also some free hosting companies without advertising, but they don't last long. You don't need the trouble of moving your site to a new host once you've already been through the trouble of setting it up. Find a hosting company with a decent price and be sure they have excellent services and technical support.

Being the owner or webmaster of your own site is a joy. You may keep it for years and years. Therefore, be certain to pick a hosting company that will have all the services and support that you need.

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