Thursday, June 12, 2008

Choosing The Best Web Hosting Provider For You

by: Heris Yunora

The use of good web hosting is badly needed to secure your web site remains online, in addition to the cost that you spend become less. Currently there are so many web hosting companies which respectively have different pricing plans and different features among each other.

Following are the points that you need to observe in choosing a web hosting company:

-Web Space

It constitutes the storage capacity of the whole data as required by your web site. Depending of the type of web site you design, it is better that you also consider your future needs. For example, if you want to build an article directory website, you will need a hosting with large web space.

-Bandwith

Bandwith is the amount of data that is transmitted from your web site. The more visitors visit your web site, the more bandwith you require. It is to be noted that your requirements for web space have not certainly comparable with the requirements for bandwith. For example, if you set up a web site with an Amazon Store script, the web space required is not big, but you need to prepare the bandwith that will possibly consume several Gigas. Keep in mind that other than web site visitors, don't forget that various search engine bots that will make effort to crawl the whole webpages.

-Reliability

The web hosting company you are choosing should have uptime guarantee amounting to at least 99%. In that way, the presence of your web site will be secured for 99% of a time span.

-Speed

Having a web site that can always be accessed is not enough. Your web site must always be loaded rapidly. Otherwise you will be missing a lot of visitors.

-Customer Support

The presence of reliable customer support has to become one of your considerations in choosing a hosting company. A good hosting service provider must be able to be contacted anytime. This is particularly useful to overcome technical problems. If a hosting company provides an online chatting facility for communicating with their customer service, try to submit some requests and observe the way they are serving you.

-Cost

So as to get the best price, compare the pricing plan from several hosting providers that have similar features. Don't forget to conduct checking to the guarantee as provided and whether or not there are other additional costs.

-Technical Features

If later on you have an intention to use certain scripts, check whether the web hosting has complied with the criteria as required. Otherwise, it is better for you to choose a hosting company that has Linux/Unix as the operating system with PHP and MySQL features. There are so many online business support programs such as autoresponder and various CMS's that need server using Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL. Besides, various free open source programs usually need to enable them for being used. Don't also forget other technical needs, such as whether you will use Audio and Video Streaming or requiring Frontpage Extension.

-Number of Web site

If you have a plant to set up several web sites, choose the one that allow you for hosting your web sites as mentioned in one account (multiple domain hosting). In that way, there is no additional cost that must be spent every month.

Whatever web hosting provider that you choose, it depends on your requirements and the amount of budget that you want to spend. It is to be noted that cheap is not always equal to inferior and expensive is not always equal to good. Some hosting companies which are realiable and having complete enough features, it turns out that they are charging lower monthly cost than other companies which are offering equal or even less complete features. Make sure the web hosting plan you choose will fit your needs.

Happy Choosing...