What Should I Look For in a Web Host

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No matter the size of the website you are trying to build, whether you from a large company, or a small one, or just toying around on the internet setting up a website to display photo’s of your vintage toy car collection. You need to consider the same aspects regarding your web hosting, just at different degrees.

Reliability
Under no circumstances, should your host be slow, unstable and unreliable. Especially today, as server technology has improved so much, networks have become more redundant, any host you sign up with should guarantee their uptime. The minimum should be no less than 99%, many hosts say they guarantee this however, many of them neglect to include downtime due to server upgrades and hardware failure. Check with your host that their uptime includes these.

Data Transfer
This is the number of bytes that can be delivered from your server, your website, to your visitors browser. Almost all of our hosts offer unlimited traffic, with very few restrictions. The average website uses around 3GB per month, unless they are archiving or offer drop sending. Be sure to check that your host will be able to handle the amount of bandwidth that you require.

Disk Space
Again, most of our hosts offer unlimited disk space. With few restrictions to protect the service from abusers and maintain the servers reliability and stability. Most websites however rarely exceed 10 – 30 mb of disk space. However, if you host doesn’t offer unlimited, be sure to account for the space that you will need when you website grows.

Technical Support
Your host has to offer 24 / 7 support, if it doesn’t. Find another one, problems will arise and you are going to need support to get through those rough patched. Before signing up, test the support to see if it is any good, many hosts claim excellent support, but many hosts can’t back it up.

Technical features
What once were luxuries are now necessities. Fact is, you simply must have all of these. There are many commercial hosts that require getting their approval to install PHP or CGI scripts, which means that you cannot implement a feature on your site when you so desire. You need these functions if you want to customize error pages, maintain databases, set up additional security measures and so forth. Make sure you have full access to these tools, and find out about any restrictions on their use.

Email Services
You have your own domain now, so you probably want e-mail addresses with the domain name. Although the vast majority of plans include e-mail services, find out about the quality and level of auto-responders, mail forwarding and list management. Ensure that you also have web access to your mail (“webmail”) and investigate the spam tools that are provided.

Control Panel
It may be called this, it may be called your “Net Tool Kit,” but all hosts give you a set of utilities to manage the particulars of your web account, and a web page from which to do it, too. You need to be able to manage your e-mail, change passwords, block spammers and so on. These are all standard maintenance chores for webmasters and if you have to wait on your host’s tech support to take care of things, you will lose important control over your business.

There’s a lot of information to sift through, but your visitors to your website will thank you for it. You can’t afford to host your website on an unreliable host, especially with so many affordable web hosts out there that truly do offer excellent service!