If you follow certain basic steps while choosing a web hosting provider, your web hosting experience with them, can prove to be fruitful and productive as well. The following tips should prove helpful for you before choosing a web hosting provider. It is important for you to research the hosting plans and services offered by different web hosts.
A) Avoid falling in the traps of Prices :
The simplest way in choosing a web hosting provider is to avoid falling prey to the price tags offered by web hosting providers. Give least importance to the price of the web hosting packages. Instead, you must look for the services they offer, check if they are available whenever you need them. Even today, people give more preference to price and least priority to the services offered, whereas it should be vice-versa. One must understand that it is the service offered by web hosting provider that plays the most crucial role in the success of any website/ business. You can instead opt for a web host that believes in offering Value for money. It is required that the website is up and running everytime.
Here is a simple calculation:
More Uptime = More Traffic
More Traffic = More Sale/Conversion.
One can find number of web hosting providers that offer web hosting services at Cheap prices. As far as you have a small business ,Cheap basic packages can be just fine, but as the traffic to your website grows, it is required for you to shift to higher plans for the website to perform better. It is necessary to find a good hosting provider at the start up. You should make sure what features the web hosting provider offers.
To help you out with this, you must consider the following services while choosing a web hosting provider:
o Back-up options
o SSH access
o Uptime Guarantee (Expect atleast 99.9%)
o Payment options and modes of payment
o Ability to host additional sub-domains
o Check if they provide FTP accounts
o Option of Domain Parking
o Check if they offer a Money back guarantee
o Check for the OS they offer
B) Uptime Guarantee
It is very crucial to have the maximum uptime. Though it is a bit tougher to understand that before signing up with a Host, but you can find some statistics tools to determine the uptime. Web Hosting forums too are the best places to determine such a host. Ideally 100% uptime is best, but practically it is hard to find such a host. But, as per the industry standards, 99.9% is acceptable. You can check the uptime of the server by the following link www.pingdom.com
C) Its better to share the server with the known people:
If you have chosen to have your website hosted on a shared web hosting account, it is better to find people who too are interested in the same package. You can lease a single VPS or dedicated server and create shared accounts on it and can resell it. Or else you can join the affiliate program of the web hosting provider and earn good revenue from it, this tric helps in covering your expense of hosting your website.
D) Research on Web Hosting Provider
It is always better to do some research before choosing a web hosting provider. One must select a reputed web host inorder to have a good hosting experience. You can ask friends about the host, check web hosting forums for educating yourself about the reputation. While doing this, understand that you are going to find some negative comments also, it is next to impossible to satisfy the hosting needs of every customer. There might be many reasons for a negative statement, some competitors too use this trick to damage the reputation of their competitor. So its completely your call to decide the authenticity of such statements.
E) Don’t fall Prey to Marketing Techniques
It’s a common practice to use attractive keywords to attract customers
Keyword “Unlimited”
Understand that nothing is unlimited in web hosting. Web hosts often attract customers by using keywords such as Unlimited Bandwidth and Unlimited Diskspace. They dare to give such false promises as you probably never use the entire allotted
F) Post Sales Support
Once you have signed for a web hosting package with a web hosting provider, it is important that you get good and up-to-date post sales support. The web host should be available whenever needed. They should offer the service of contacting them via. Live Chat, E-mails/Tickets/ HelpDesk and Phone. They should be in a position to offer instant solutions, there staff must be competent enough to handle any server issues.
Following these few points can land your online business in safe hands and can add majorly for your website to succeed.