Match Your Web Hosting Needs with These Four Tips
All you have to do is type the words “web hosting” into a Google or Yahoo search engine and you will literally receive millions of results. With so many choices, how can someone new to web hosting pick a solid company out of all these options? It can be a frustrating ordeal but keeping these four elements in mind should help you narrow the field.
1.) Responsive Technical Support
When it comes time to choosing a web host, support should be one of the first items on your list. This is especially true if you have no experience maintaining a website. Although some companies will try to sell you service wherein their only means of contact is a email address, don’t fall for that. Make sure a phone number is also available so that you can immediately address urgent issues. An ideal hosting solution comes attached with support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When considering that technical issues could occur at any give time, this is only practical. There is nothing worse than having a web that refuses to come through in your time of need.
2.) Track Record
You should also take the hosting company’s reputation into consideration. What is their status in the industry and what other customers saying about the service? While many web hosts often post testimonials on their website, you should never put all your faith into them. Instead, check around the web in message boards and forums to get an ideal about what real customers have to say. Even then, you want to take such feedback with a grain of salt as some negative comments are merely coming from disgruntled users. It is indeed a very fine line and truthfully, there is no surefire way to predict a company’s longevity. You can however, weed out the pretenders from the beginning and better the chances of landing yourself a reliable service.
3.) Useful Features
It is wise to make sure a particular web host as all the features and services you need before hitting that sign up button. You may only require a few web pages at the moment but what about the future? You need to plan ahead and seek out a flexible solution that can be easily scaled with the growing needs of your site. An experienced user will tell you that it can be a rather time-strenuous task trying to pack up your files and move to a new host that can offer what the last one couldn’t. Likewise, purchasing add-ons for features you overlooked can prove to be a cost prohibitive venture.
4. Reasonable Price
Though maybe not as important as the elements above, price remains very critical to your decision. On the hosting market, the prices range from cheap to astronomically high. For the most part, this all depends on the type of service you require. With that said, it is a good rule of thumb to never jump on a hosting plan merely because of a low price and do all you can to find one that is reasonably priced and inline with your budget.
