Criteria of Choosing an Ideal Web Hosting Company
Before we talk about what it takes to be a cheap and good quality web host, let’s
get to the fundamental first.
What is a Web Host?
A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which
is connected to the internet. The term for this ‘computer’ is called a server.
A web hosting provider will typically have a fast connection to the Internet
and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially
rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide
web.
With a well-managed web host, you can free yourself from worrying the up-keep
of complicated server technology and proper technical maintenance. That’s the
whole purpose of the web hosting companies. You should leave the technical work
to web hosting professional while you focus on your own internet business.
Let’s begin…
Feature Offered
The features that web hosting companies are offering are getting quite standard
nowadays.
The followings are some of the common features you’ll see in most web hosting
plans:
- Control Panel
Control Panel is an interface where you can access your site on the web server,
allowing you to set-up and subsequently update and customize your web site.
Though cPanel is by far the most popular control panel, some hosting providers
customize their own so that they can up-grade and expand it at will.
- Diskspace
A vast majority of sites that don’t have tons of graphics, sound and video
clips or downloadable files easily fit in 50 MB of disk space. You should
always leave yourself some room for growth or check if the host has a bigger
plan in case you need to upgrade.
- Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data transmitted or received through a unit of
time. In web hosting, bandwidth is consumed when visitors make requests for
files on your web site and download them to their personal computers.
- Email Account
With POP3 email accounts you can check email from Outlook, Netscape Mail,
Eudora or any other Email software.
- Scripting language
As all our top 10 listings are using Unix and Linux platform, php, perl and
CGI are the languages we are talking about here. It is best to choose a host
that supports the latest version to maximize the latest web technologies for
the fee that you pay.
- Database
If your web site is going to store a lot of data that should be dynamically
accessible (like user accounts, stock prices, maps, Interactive news, message
boards and forum etc.), you’ll need to look for an account that offers a database.
MySQL is a powerful and most popular database program that runs on the Linux
operation system. It is able to handle million of entries all at once. Its
flexibility and speed allow you to also store logs and pictures. MySQL is
designed to scale well under heavy traffic conditions and is ideal for database-intensive
or e-commerce-enabled Web sites.
Customer Service/Support
No matter if you are an expert or a novice in web hosting, you need a web host
with good customer support system. What is the criteria of an excellent customer
support? Let us explain.
- How big is the knowledge base?
This is particularly important for those who want to search for quick answer
without seeking direct assistance from customer support staff. Due to the
huge database, normally it’s searchable. Some web hosting providers will even
make your life easier by making a video tutorial guiding you step by step
in setting up your new account. Very useful for beginner.
- Responsive customer service staff.
If you are too lazy to find the answer out of a big pool of database, get
the direct answer from someone who knows it. Direct customer support comes
in a few forms.
a. Email support
b. Phone support: Normally, sales and technical support uses separate phone
line. A good phone support staff knows what your problem is and answers with
relevance.
c.Web Host like Lunarpages and Globat even have live chat support. However,
it’s not how many support channels that are available but how responsive it
is of the staff. You can find out the hosting
reviews and ratings of each of our Top 10 Cheap Web Host.
Price to Disk Space / Price to Bandwidth Ratio
Are you paying too much for your Web Hosting Plan?
Having done the research on hundreds of web hosting companies, in general, we’ve
come to this conclusion: the more disk space and bandwidth you are getting,
the more expensive is the monthly price.
To help you understand which price is competitive enough for you to take up
the offer, we have categorized 5 different price range. For each price range,
a score of maximum of 10 is assigned. To understand the concept behind this,
please refer to the details here.
Popularity
A web host might have the best feature offered, unbeatable customer support
and reliability in place but without an effective marketing plan, it will go
bust too. Let’s face it. If a web hosting provider does not have sufficient
members and steady growth of new members, it’s very difficult to survive in
this highly competitive industry.
We judge the popularity of a particular web hosting provider by looking at
the number of awards won, the reviews of other websites and the Alexa traffic
ranking.
All the hosting providers listed on our Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory
are among the top 40,000 most visited websites in the world.
Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee
Nothing can hurt you more than this: your visitors come to your web site only
to find that it’s not accessible. You lose credibility and possibly even a sale.
If your web host does not guarantee at least a 99% uptime, leave the web host
now!
To ensure maximum uptime, installation of redundant back-up systems is essential.
Each web host has their own management systems to minimize downtime. “Redundant”
means that if any of the Internet connections get interrupted, the alternate
Internet connection will take over.
We use Alertra software to monitor the uptime of each of our top 10 web hosts.
As for speed, even though routing, web server set up and local area networks
play a part in determining the speed of a site, the main concern of how fast
your site is depends very much on the types of network connections.
Many hosting providers still connect to the Internet through T1, or T3 connections.
This is not the case for our top 10 hosts- they are using OC (Optical Carrier)
lines.
A T1 line will offer data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbps (megabits per second),
while a T3 line can supply data transfer rates of 43Mbps. OC-1 refers to a circuit
that transmits 51.85Mbps. Higher levels are multiples of that speed. Ultra-High
Speed OC3 and OC12 lines offers 155Mbps and 622Mbps respectively. Some hosting
providers have connections to major internet backbones at the speed of OC48
(2488Mbps) and OC96 (4976Mbps).
Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory - Provides extensive review of top 10 web hosting providers.
Website Hosting Directory - Directory of reliable web hosting services and resources.
Domain Web Hosting Checker - Find the right web hosting solution for you.
Tags: cheap web hosting, web hosting criteria, web hosting reviews, web hosting servicesWeb Hosting Resources
Your designers have given you a promising website. Now your next job is to get it hosted. First timers usually fall into the trap of bad web hosting companies. You come across scores of them in every nook and corner who sound capable and promise to do their job well but the resultant is a website that does not have much of bandwidth resulting in a slow and unprofessional website, and to make it worse the customer service is poor as well. So, finding a dependable web host is really tricky. You can find them through search engines and forums but before you zero down on one, you need to check a few things about the web hosting company. Get to know about the company that are you are hiring.
Credibility of the Company
Make sure that hard-core network engineers run the company and they are on the block for at least 2 years. Avoid the companies that are run by amateurs even if they give you a cheap bargain because your ultimate aim is to put your best step forward and that is your website. You need to check their credentials thoroughly, Read the ‘About us’ page ‘Terms of service’. Also read the web host forum and reviews. Please check for the credibility of the posters as well. Check the technology used by the company and go in for the one, which has at least 95% of the uptime for most of its servers. You need to know if the company publishes its address because after all you need to be sure if the company is legitimate since you are putting your company’s future in the hands of another.
Bandwidth
There is nothing called unlimited bandwidth. If you buy the unlimited service, your host might shut you down claiming that your website has been using unfair amount of system resources. And beware bandwidth usage and system resources are two different aspects when dealing your host. Always go in for the bandwidth one or two sizes bigger because finally your aim is to grow. Initially you might need less as the traffic is poor but eventually when the traffic builds up and your site is popular you would have to grab for the entire available amount.
Space
The web host gives you a certain amount of space on its servers. The need and the usage really depend on you. If you buy 5 MB of space it is plenty for the web pages and images of most of the business websites. But you need to confirm if this includes the mail, log files etc as well. A web host that includes everything usually gives at least 15 MB space minimum. And make sure that you don’t get sold into buying space than you really need.
Dedicated vs. shared servers
The web space you rent might be shared by a number of other clients of the company you choose. This is a very common trend. This should be your proffered choice if the number of hits is less and the website you own does not have a huge traffic but if you are moderately popular and the graphics and images take time to download, then dedicated servers are the best bet. If you go in for shared hosting then check if the same server does not host any adult or red flag site because some search engines weed all the websites hosted on this kind of server and you don’t want to be weeded out.
Support
A simple and quick tool to determine the online and offline support that you may require once your site is hosted is to mail your pre sales questions to the company. The response time will tell you a lot about the dependency of the company. So before signing the contract be sure that you will get response even at 3.00 am in the morning if needed.
Lastly always think ahead of time so your intention might be to grow bigger as compared to what you predicted. So to save time and money always have enough bandwidth and space so that you can grow into it without a second thought.
For more details, kindly visit our website http://www.bluent.co.in
BluEnt eSolutions - your one stop destination for all your professional web related requirements catering to website design, web development, SEO, corporate training, web hosting, VoIP services, flash presentation, and other web related applications.
Tags: linux, unix web hosting, Web Hosting, web hosting providers, web hosting services, web site hostingWeb Hosting - How To Choose The Right Provider For You
Thousands of companies, tens of thousands of different plans and only a few of them are really suitable for your web site and for your online needs.
This is what you are confronted with when choosing a web-hosting provider.
Nowadays being part of the informational revolution that the Internet has brought along, it is compulsory for a business and also for individuals. No need to explain here why having a web site out there on the World Wide Web is such a must, instead we’re only going to point out a few things related to choosing an adequate web host for your web site.
As complicated this entire business might seem, once you know what to look for, it’s really easier to find it.
Analyze your requirements and stick to them
When evaluating their needs in terms of space and bandwidth many inexperienced web owners often buy more than they will ever need. As this is unbelievably common, many web-hosting providers size their web servers taking this into account and actually over sell the space and bandwidth thinking that customers will never make full use of it. To avoid web hosts that result to just that or crowed their web servers to get an extra profit per customer, simply ask them their client per server ration. As a diligent buyer, you should do this with all the other companies you find interesting to do business with and are eligible to host your web site.
A web site is almost like a living creature. It grows. So try to leave some room for it, don’t just buy a web-hosting plan that will fit your needs just perfectly. Buy a little more so when the time comes to expand you would have the resources available. Think of the possibility that your initial bandwidth evaluation proves itself insufficient. You might find yourself in the position not to be able to use your web site because you have exceeded your bandwidth. So leave margin for error too.
Most web hosting plans come packed with features and some even offer pre-installed scripts and programs that might come handy for both knowledgeable and less knowledgeable web owners.
As you could consider any extra feature a plus, don’t forget to look for the things you actually need like the OS (Operating System) or the PHP support. You decide what you need, don’t let the provider talk you into something you don’t want or is less than you have expected.
Support - can you get enough of it?
Support is something you might overlook when you consider an offer that suits you in terms of space and bandwidth and is packed with all the other features you will ever going to need. It might be good to understand that the road to all those features goes through Support city. If the web-hosting provider is careless about the support he offers to his customers, any technical problem concerning your web site could be solved only after long hours of waiting and making plenty of irritating support calls.
To test the quality and the responsiveness of the support personnel, e-mail them some pre-sales questions. Is the response fact enough for you? Imagine that your web site is down and your company is just attending a congress many clicks are expected, but is your web site online to get them? Is the response you are getting from the support team thorough or is it merely scratching the surface? Is the response easy to understand for you?
A provider concerned about the quality of his support, would make available as many as possible ways to communicate with its clients. So find out as much as you can about its online support staff, help desk, message boards etc.
Information on the reputation of a web-hosting provider is something you might find on forums or discussion boards. Any disgruntled customers there? Would you like to be one?
Reliability is another aspect of the problem. Ask for the uptime of the company’s web servers. Some hosts offer an uptime guarantee, usually 99.9% (100% is not a realistic figure in the computer world). The guarantee means that if your web site is not available 99.9% of the time, you will be refunded the money for that month or you will receive free web hosting for a month as compensation for your web site being unavailable.
Price
Well, true it’s paid web hosting and this means you have to pay for it. My advice would be don’t try too hard to find the cheapest possible web host. You will probably end-up wasting an incredible amount of time and is very likely that within two weeks after you have bought it, you will stumble upon a better deal. Apart from the irony of it and the loss of time, cheaper is not always better.
The other extreme, paying big money to get what you could have gotten for less is equally bad. At $50 for 200 MB of space with 2 GB of bandwidth you are definitely getting robbed, but the same service for $5 or $10 is a good deal.
The thin line between a profitable and, why not, enjoyable web presence and a nightmare with slow server response, unreachable support and irritating server downtime is drawn by you. By you choosing the web-hosting provider.
Choose carefully: there can be only one a few that will live up to their promises and deliver for you good quality web hosting!
Calin Indre is editor at HostPinPin (http://www.hostpinpin.com), a Cheap Web Hosting Directory Resource.
HostPinPin.com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company. Providing web hosting reviews, articles, tips.
This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the “About” and “weblinks” are kept intact.
Tags: choose provider, choose web hosting, web hosting plan, web hosting provider, web hosting services