Best Website Hosting – How To Find It

Best Website Hosting – How To Find It If you are setting up an internet based business it is vital to your success that you use a best website hosting service. You must keep your customers happy and the last thing you need is a slow web site or, even worse, a website that is frequently “down”.

Now that Google is taking these factors into account in their search results rankings choice of website hosting provider is even more critical.

You might think that you could simply search for hosting review sites and get an independent view of hosting providers. Unfortunately this is not the case. The number of hosting companies out there is high and so is the number of review sites. These do not agree as to what is the best website hosting service and because they tend to highlight particular services, a direct comparison of reviews is difficult.

So what to do? Well firstly don’t concentrate on price. A free or very low cost service is not appropriate for a business and the price disparity between the top website hosting providers is not sufficient to outweigh the other aspects considered below. Do bear in mind that the monthly prices quoted in ads usually require several months (or years) to be paid upfront and where you can pay monthly, it will be at a higher figure.

Assuming that you are just starting out, a standard shared hosting service will be fine. However you should choose a provider who can supply an upgraded service later if required. The normal progression would be from shared hosting to VPS (Virtual Private server) hosting then to dedicated server hosting.

Unless you are having a website build for you which requires Windows hosting it is best take a Linux web site hosting package. Linux powers the majority of web sites and there is a lot of open source software you can use (it does not matter what your PC operating system is).

The prime requirement is for speed and reliability. A good website host will give a guarantee of at least 99.9% uptime with financial penalties if this is not met. Of course monetary compensation is not the point, you want your website to always be available to your customers. It is well worth undertaking a bit of research to see what users are currently saying about potential hosting providers. Whilst past or current good service cannot guarantee future service it is a good indicator.

The secondary key requirement is for a good help and support service. Whilst email (or chat) might be okay for minor issues, in a crisis you want telephone support to be available (and should be 24/7). Whilst you can check how the service is delivered the only way to judge the standard of service is, once again, to see what existing users are saying.

Obviously there are other factors to consider e.g.

• Bandwidth • Diskspace • Number of Domains • Number of Databases • Control Panel Used • Email Services.

Whilst these are important it is best to consider them later i.e. you select your preferred supplier based on level of service and support (and possibly price) then check that the other services are sufficient for your requirements.