How to Choose a Website Hosting Company by Danae Cowart
Let's say you're shopping around for a lot to build your dream house on. Your
real estate agent takes you to what she calls "a prime piece of property." Five
acres of beautiful wooded land with a small pond, just off a main highway. It's
a half-hour drive to the nearest town--far enough to have peace and quiet, but
not too far to be inconvenient for weekly grocery shopping. And then the agent
floors you with the asking price--"It's only $12,000."
Twelve thousand? you think. For this beautiful piece of land? What a deal!
You're about to say "I'll take it" when she adds one more thing...
"However, there aren't any utilities here. You'll have to arrange for all of
that yourself."
Not such a great deal now, is it?
This is the kind of trouble you may run into if you choose your website hosting
company based on price. It may seem like a good deal, but if the company
doesn't provide everything your website needs, you're choosing the wrong
company. Here are a few things to consider when choosing a new hosting company
or evaluating your current one.
How much disk space do you need?
One of the criteria that usually separates one hosting plan from another is the
amount of space you get on the server for your website files. This is similar
to space on your computer's hard drive, and is calculated the same way--in
gigabytes, megabytes, and kilobytes. You can calculate the amount of space you
need by adding up the size of all the website files. Don't forget to include
all the graphics and images.
How much bandwidth do you need?
Bandwidth is calculated by the size of each file a visitor to you website sees
multiplied by how many times a visitor sees it. For example, if your home page
file is 11K (kilobytes) and it has two 7K images on it, that will add up to 25K
of material transferred every time someone looks at your home page. So if you
have 700 visitors in a month who look at your home page, that will be 17,500K
transferred, or about 17M (megabytes). This will be calculated for every page a
visitor looks at, as well as any video, audio, or other files they download
onto their computer.
Most hosting companies set a limit on the bandwidth you can use per month
, but make sure that is the case when comparing plans. Remember, one gigabyte
equals 1024 megabytes, and one megabyte equals 1024 kilobytes.
What email options do you get?
Some things to look for are the number of email addresses you can have, mailbox
storage size, POP3/SMTP service (you can send and receive email from your
account), if you can have email aliases or forwarding (an address that sends
all messages to another address's mailbox), online email access, and spam
filtering. Consider your company's current and future needs when evaluating
this.
Can you make changes to your website yourself?
Depending on the level of website expertise in your company, you may want to
handle updating your website in-house, or you may want someone else to do it.
There are many website hosting companies that offer website maintenance as part
of their package, and you may find this an attractive option. But be aware of
two things--one, how quickly will the company make your changes? And two, will
they allow you or a third party (that you hire) to make changes, or do all
changes have to go through them? The term to look for is "FTP access," which
means that you have access to the username and password which will allow you or
someone that you authorize to add new pages or change files on your website
without going through a middleman.
What special scripts or functions will your website use?
Depending on the purpose and functions of your website, and who designs it, you
may need your hosting company to support any of the following: databases (such
as Microsoft Access, SQL, or MySQL), Flash/Shockwave, multimedia, e-commerce,
and various scripting languages (such as ASP, PHP, and ColdFusion, all of which
come in various versions, cgi, and perl).
If you are considering moving your current website to a new hosting company,
talk to the website designer/developer to see which of these, if any, apply to
your website. And if you are planning to have a website created, choose your
designer/developer first and then have him or her assist you in determining
which scripts or functions the website will be using.
Can you easily track and analyze your visitor traffic?
Some hosting companies include a traffic statistics program will all of their
hosting plans. Some offer it as an add-on service. And some don't bother with
it at all. If you want to have any clue about whether your website is making a
positive difference for your company, you'll need to have access to good
traffic statistics. Personally, I favor the program Urchin, which is offered by
several hosting companies. It is easy to use and allows you to look at a
variety of data in various time ranges. You can also export data to Microsoft
Excel or Word or a text file.
What customer support options are available?
Most hosting companies will offer free support by email, but you may also want
to be able to talk to them by phone. See if they charge for that. Some also
offer "live chat" over the Internet at certain times, which may or may not be
helpful, depending on how many customers are trying to use it at once.
What do other people say about them?
Check out third party reviews at sites like www.web-hosting-reviews.org or
www.findmyhosting.com. Focus on the customer's experience with using the
hosting service, if there is good customer support, and what their experience
is with "downtime"--times when the hosting company's server is not working, and
no one is able to visit your website. This should be close to non-existent.
Things to avoid
Free website hosting is usually not a good deal. They are likely to display ads
on your website that you have no control over, to have little to no customer
support, and they may close up shop without warning. Quality website hosting is
available now for a very low price from many companies, so being miserly in
this area will only hurt you.
You will also want to carefully read a hosting company's terms of service
before signing up with them. Some have restrictions on what material you can
put on your site or what kind of email you can send (such as ads that might be
regarded as spam). If there are restrictions, make sure you can live with them,
or find a different hosting company.
Does price mean anything?
I started this article with the idea that you shouldn't choose a company based
on price. But should the price have any affect on your decision? Sure it can.
If two hosting plans are equal in all ways except the cost, go with the cheaper
one. But your main criteria should be the rest of the items discussed in this
article.
Don't freak out!
One last point--if you choose the wrong hosting provider, it's usually not hard
to switch to a new one! So don't get bogged down with trying to find the
perfect hosting company. There are many good ones out there. The important
thing is to get your website on the Internet!
About the Author
Danae Cowart is the owner of Effective Websites. We want to help you take
advantage of the Internet and "make your website your best salesman." To learn
more, please visit www.effective-websites.com.
|
