One of the first obstacles everyone starting up online faces is that of
choosing the right hosting and domain name deals for their sites. This is an
issue that is consistently present throughout one's online presence. With a
large number of hosting companies competing for your attention, how can you make
sure that the deal you choose is indeed the best one for you?
The following are a few attributes that you need to look at before choosing
any hosting package:
1. Cheapest is not best - One of the biggest mistakes you can make is
choosing a plan based on what is the cheapest web hosting package out there.
Instead, learn to compare the relative value of each hosting package with its
competitors. The best thing to do is to choose a yardstick or a comparative
standard against which you can compare all the hosting packages you see. So once
you are fairly certain that hosting company A is a good option, then look a
little more and see if you can find a cheaper deal. Then compare the features
that both of the companies provide and choose the better one. Weigh the relative
price and the relative features to see which one is better.
2. More is not better - Many hosting companies intentionally or
unintentionally mislead people by showing them the extremely high bandwidth and
disk storage space. You will almost never reach even 10% of the bandwidth limit
on any of these packages, so don't even use that as a yardstick for measurement.
And if you do plan on receiving that high traffic, you should be using a
dedicated server anyway.
3. Popular is not better - A more popular company is not necessarily the
better provider. A classic case is that of iPower. It was once a very popular
hosting company with many satisfied customers. As the company and the name grew,
the quality of the service went down the drain. When looking for the cheapest
web hosting package, don't take gross popularity into account, take the actual
reputation into consideration.
4. How many domains? - This is an important question any more. Very few
people use only one domain throughout their online existence. Most use two or
more, and many use more than 5 or 10. It is important to see what your hosting
provider's policy on more domains is. There are still many hosting companies
that will only host a single domain with each hosting account. Relatively few
will allow you to host many domains and even less will allow unlimited domain
names to be hosted on their account. If you plan on increasing your scope of
online activity, consider these packages. Usually the cost is barely higher.
5. How many sites? - Among the hosting companies that allow you to host
multiple domains, see how many of them allow you to host unlimited SITES. Some
hosting companies give the illusion that they allow unlimited domain hosting. On
further investigation, you may find that all this means is that you can store
your domain on their server, nothing more. For all practical purposes, that's
useless. What you need to look for is how many sites are allowed on a given
account. There are very few web hosts that are still cheap that give these
options, but they are definitely there!
6. The Customer Service - Before signing on with any given company, contact
the customer service with questions, even if you already have the answer to
them. This will give you a first-hand view on how efficient, courteous and
useful the customer support is. Use at least 2 mediums. Usually, you can contact
support by phone, e-mail, or live chat. Definitely use the phone, and choose
from the other two.
As is clear, there are many things that need to be considered before making
the decision about signing on with a specific web host. All of these issues and
attributes need to be fulfilled to your satisfaction before purchasing from a
single place.
