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Top 10 Things to Look for in a Web Hosting Company
September 15, 2009
When is comes to web hosting, there are many important features to look for regardless of the type of web site you plan on hosting. We compiled a list of the top ten things to look for when choosing a web hosting company.
10. Uptime Guarantee
You pay for web hosting for one reason. That's to get your potential customer or target audience to actually get to and spend some time at your web site. That would be hard if your web site is consistently offline due to a web hosting company's failure to ensure your web site is online at all times, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. We know even the best web hosting servers can fail from time to time, but anything more than a .1% downtime is too much. It's bad business -- and you can lose money.
That's why you want to always make sure the web hosting company you choose has a minimum of a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Anything less is just simply not enough.
9. Lots of Extras
By extras we mean make sure your web hosting company of choice offers things like Wordpress, Joomla, CGI, Perl, Bulletin Boards, shopping carts, etc. There are by no means mandatory, but it sure makes things easier and smoother should you ever wish to run software that requires any of those platforms. Many web hosting companies today also offer as much as $25 in advertising credits for Google and Yahoo! ad campaigns. That's a nice little bonus to give you a jump-start in getting your site out there.
8. Free Setup
There are far too many web hosting companies out there that offer free setup for you to ever have to pay any setup charges for web hosting. If you come across a web hosting company that wants to charge you for simply a few clicks of the mouse to set you up, run the other way. Better yet, go through our list of web site hosting companies (all of them have FREE set up).
7. 24/7 Support
Good technical support is super-important when choosing a web host. You want to choose a web hosting company that offers technical support twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, because trust us, there will be times in the wee hours of the night where you will be working on something and you'll have an "oops moment" and need some quick help. It's a nice feeling to know you can pick-up the phone and talk to a knowledgeable representative who has the answer to your question.
6. Control Panel
Even if you're well seasoned with knowledge in the web site design and hosting area, it never hurts to have a web hosting company that offers a good, stable user-friendly control panel. The control panel is the main "command and control" center for your web site. It's used to turn features on and off, install and uninstall software, create e-mail addresses, upload and delete web site files, and on and on, etc., etc. Many web hosting companies offer nice control panels that makes it easy to manage your web site -- or sites. More details on that in number 3.
5. Free Domain Name
You can't really have a successful web site without one of these. A domain name is the www.yourname.com also known as the URL that visitors use to get to your web site and it's usually something that's easy for them to spell and remember.
There are several domain registrars including Global Domains International (GDI) and GoDaddy.com. However, many web hosting companies offer your very own domain name for life with the purchase of one of their web hosting packages. While the cost of domain names have come down in recent years, FREE still can't be beat!
4. Money-back Guarantee
Most web hosting companies offer yearly, bi-yearly, or tri-yearly hosting packages at discounted prices to encourage your loyalty to their hosting services that translate into long-term savings for you. That's all good and well as long as they offer a solid, hassel-free money-back guarantee (hey, that rhymes!). There are several, including JustHost, that offer an "Anytime" Money-back guarantee. That means that even if you choose the 3-year hosting package at a discounted price, you can choose to leave at anytime and get the unused months charges returned to you. Now that's what we call a Hard-to-beat money back guarantee!
3. Unlimited Domain Hosting
A web hosting package with unlimited domain hosting is a must if you plan on hosting more than one web site on the same web hosting account. With unlimited domain hosting, you can, for one monthly fee, host and unlimited number of web sites on the same account. So whether you have two or one hundred web sites, you're all set. The best part is the fact that it's all transparent to the visitor. No one will ever know your web site is hosted on the same account as another one.
2. Unlimited Disk Space
It's nice to be able to build you web site (or sites) and not have to worry about running out of disk space, especially if your web site is full of rich content and contains tons of large files including pictures, audio files, or video files. This also comes handy if you are hosting multiple web sites on the same web hosting account too. Always look for a web hosting plan with unlimited disk space to eliminate any worry or fear of ever running out of space. It's like having a hard drive in your computer with NO limits!
1. Unlimited Bandwidth
To us, this is the utmost important feature of any web hosting plan you can get. Every time a visitor visits your web site for the first time, all the files from your web pages including images are downloaded to their computer hard drive from the server your web site is hosted on, so that the next time they visit your web site, it loads even faster. The amount of files being downloaded and traffic is called bandwidth. A web hosting account with unlimited bandwidth allows you to have an unlimited amount of traffic to your web site without the fear of ever reaching a bandwidth threshold. Believe it or not, some web hosting companies want to limit the amount of traffic get to your web site, then shut you down or have extra charges should you surpass that threshold. We agree, it just don't make sense. Be sure to always look for web hosting companies that offer UNLIMITED bandwidth!
We hope this list of the top ten things to look for when choosing a web hosting will help you find the best fit for you. If you think of anything we missed, write us and let us know about it. Click here to see the ultimate directory of web hosting companies.