Choosing Commercial Web Hosting - Web-Feet Blog

Choosing the right web hosting can be a tough and scary task for any business owner when they don’t know what to look for.

So we wanted to give the basic minimal requirements when searching for a trustworthy host. We obviously kept a close on the recent “accident” with 123Reg, and have numerous businesses approach us for support as we were able to offer effective solutions, our now clients didn’t receive the service they should off from their agency and hosting, we endeavor to provide an uninterrupted and responsive service and that’s why we are going through what’s below so you don’t fall victim.

• Reliability & Speed.

  It should be fast, very fast, it should guarantee its uptime. Look around for at least 99.5% or higher. The host should provide a guaranteed refund should the service fall below the standards set. Note though that guarantees are often hard to enforce from your end, especially if the host denies there was any downtime. (Your agency can always check this) However, without that guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time.

• Data Transfer.

  Data transfer loosely referred to as “traffic” is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.

  “Unlimited bandwidth” is rubbish. The host has to pay for the bytes and if you use a lot of it the web hosting provider will not sit quietly about this. Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. In summary, make sure you find out what is unlimited and if they continue to say that it’s endless then get that in writing because you will get a bill eventually.

  To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that don’t provide video or music on their site use less than 3 GB of bandwidth per month.

  But make sure you find out that information regarding data limits as once again you could be in for a big fine otherwise.

• Disk Space

  For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those “unlimited disc space” schemes. The web hosting company is also aware  that you will be enticed for this and treat it like your mobile phone data, which is why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there. So don’t fall for it, use what you need and work upwards.

• Technical Support

  Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? If they don’t then its a definite no from me. You would be surprised at how often things go wrong over weekends and evenings. Furthermore even if they say they do why not test them a complicated question and see if its real or not. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent.

• FTP, PHP, Perl, SSI, .htaccess (optional), SSH, MySQL, Cron

  If you are paying for a web hosting account, you really should make sure you have all of these. Some hosting providers may provide different web servers, most commonly Nginx and Apache. In the case of Apache, the .htaccess file can be specific to a directory and is, therefore, accessible from within shared hosting. On the other hand, Nginx can only have its configuration file changed by a user that has direct access to the entire server. This may be worth considering if you feel you may require more control over you hosting environment if you do decide to go with shared hosting.

• SSL (secure server)

  If you are planning on selling any goods or services through your website, you may want to see if the web host lets you set up SSL (a secure server). You may have seen this on other websites where their web address begins with a “https://” instead of “HTTP://”. Setting this up will normally involve additional charges or a higher priced package. At this point, the main thing to do is to check if they are available at all before you commit to the host.

  You will definitely need to have SSL if you plan to collect credit card payments. If you’re relying on a payment gateway instead and are not otherwise collecting sensitive or private information from your customers, I doubt you will need this. For those who are wondering about what this is, but are too lazy to click through the link in the previous sentence, a payment gateway is just a third party company, like PayPal, that collects credit card payments on your behalf.

• Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding

  Running a business from a website you will need specific emails like sales@domain.com. Does the host allow you to set up whatever email addresses you want on your domain so that mail can be forwarded to your current email address, or placed into a mailbox on your web hosting account itself?

  Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software?

• Control Panel

  They all allow you to manage most aspects of your web account yourself. As a base, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. Do not touch a host where you need to requst each and everytime you need access.

• Multiple Domain Hosting and Subdomains

  For those who are thinking of selling web space or having multiple domains or subdomains hosted in your account, you should look to see if they provide this, and the amount that they charge for it.

• Web Server and Operating System

  In general, most people will want to sign up for a web host offering a Unix-based system (like Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD) and running the Apache web server. The most web-based software assumes your website is running on such a system, and you will usually experience fewer compatibility issues with it. There are also a lot of guides available on the Internet on configuring such systems, so finding help when you need it is easier as well.

• Price

  I wasn’t confident on listing this one as its a very touchy subjuct that can upset most hosts. However, I would caution that while the price is always a factor, you should realise that you often get what you pay for, although it’s not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best. Sorry 123reg.

• Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans

  Most web hosts allow you to select an annual payment plan that gives you a cheaper rate than if you were to pay monthly. My current personal preference is to pay monthly with all new web hosts until I’m assured of their reliability and honesty. Paying monthly allows me to switch web hosts quickly when I find that the current host does not meet my requirements: this way, I’m not tied down to a bad web host because I have prepaid for an entire year. I do this even if the new web host guarantees that they will refund the balance if I’m dissatisfied, since at the point I sign up, I have no assurance that they will honour their guarantee. Later (usually after a couple of years), when I’m satisfied with the host, I may change payment plans to the discounted annual plans.

• Resellers?

  Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don’t know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon). However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.

• International

  If you don’t stay in the USA, you have the option of hosting your site with some local provider. The advantage here is the ease of dealing with them (they are after all easily accessible by phone call or a visit), your familiarity with the local laws and easy recourse to those laws should it be necessary. It should be your choice if your target audience is local (eg a local fast food delivery service). On the other hand, hosting it in the USA has the advantage of faster access to what is probably the largest number of your overseas visitors (particularly if you have an English-speaking audience). You also have a large number of hosting companies to choose from, and as a result, cheaper prices too.

• Is There Such A Thing As A Perfect Web Hosting Provider?

Perfect is a pretty wide term as each business needs something different, but I believe there is no “perfect” web hosting businesses around. Note that even if you are prepared to pay a huge price for your hosting needs, it does not guarantee that your host is any good sadly, but they will definitely be a lot better then a cheap service. This is an interesting industry where a high price does not necessarily yield quality hosting and support.

On the other hand, one thing you can probably be sure of is that you will not get top-notched support if you only pay rock bottom prices. When the price charged is extremely low, which company can afford to hire enough good help to cater to all its users?

Let us know your thoughts below.

Content and insights courtesy of MarkITWrite.