What to consider when choosing web hosting provider

Be it your company website, online shop or personal blog, you need a reliable hosting provider. But not everyone is familiar with IT specifications. Even for IT savvy people, there are many areas unknown when it comes to choosing a hosting company.

Here, we provide you a list of criterias to consider. These are based on our own experience, from moving from host to host until we finally set up our own hosting company.

1. Price - yes, this is important. Anything around S$100 per year is reasonable. Don't get those that offer less than S$50 per year. Because these host typically overload their servers. To run a server, it cost around $10k per year. That means a hosting company can easily put 200 domains in one server, charge S$100 each (S$20k return). 200 domains per server is ok. But imagine if it is priced at S$50, then a hosting company must put in 400 domains. Thus result in overloading

2. Utilisation - you are sharing a server with a few hundred others. Make sure the server is less than 60% utilised (in terms of space, RAM and CPU). 90% utilisation will make the server very very slow.

3. Space and data transfer. You don't want to get a bill at end of each month because of extra traffic.

4. Location. Get one that is in the same time zone. So if you are based in US, get a US server. If you are based in Asia, get an Asia server. If you are based in asia and you have US server, you might experience unexpected downtime. US server do maintenance in their night time, which means during your morning time. This is very bad especially for business website.

5. Support - try calling their phone number and send emails. See how fast do they response. I have one customers who switch to me because their current host cannot be reached by any means. All phone no are not in used. So, it is a bit dangerous to go with a host that you can't reach.

6. Domain name - beware of all these free domain name promotions. Many of the host will put their own name as the owner of the domain. By the time your domain get popular, you are stuck with them. Or, in my client's case, the hosting company close shop. So they loose the domain name that they have been using for 5 years.

7. features - i am not talking about blog or osCommerce shopping cart etc etc. All of these you can download and install yourself. Web hosting package these in just to make you feel good. Look at things like
- no of email account
- no of sub domain
- scalability - can you upgrade to next plan easily?
- MySQL or MS SQL - very important if you want to run blog or forum or free php programs.
- programming language support - php, asp.net
- antispam - this is a must have!

8. money-back guarantee - a reliable host will give you 30-day money-back guarantee. if you don't like the host, you can get 100% refund within the 1st 30 days.

9. uptime - no server will be 100% up because there are maintenance to be done, or sometimes Windows hang (microsoft problem, nothing we can do). 99.9% uptime per year is ok.

10. transparency - some host give you 1st year $50 then 2nd year $100. Or domain 1st year $18, 2nd year $30. So beware. Too cheap is hard to believe, and you better trust your instincts. Try to find a hosting with price freeze. That means price will never increase.

11. technology - look for a company that deploy industry standard control panel and technology. That will make your life easier to load programs and manage your hosting (such as creating email address, do backup, create sub-domain etc etc). For windows, look for PLESK; for linux, look for direct admin/cpanel. Companies who has these control panel can response faster to problem and generally show that they are serious in hosting business

HK Loo is the owner of Netsarius LLP, a one-stop design and web solutions company in Singapore. He has been in Internet line since year 1997, almost 10 years now as a professional web developer; quite a guru himself. His website can be found at Singapore web design, web hosting - Netsarius LLP

Please Rate this Article...                  5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5  # of Ratings = 1 | Rating = 4/5

More Articles From - Home | Internet And Businesses Online | Web Hosting

• A few tips to choose a right hosting - By : Valentine Belyakov
  
• Choosing the Right Web Hosting - By : Mike Bowden
  
• The Different Types of Web Hosting - By : Mike Bowden
  
• Why You Need a Paid Web Hosting - By : Mike Bowden
  
• Choose a Hosting Provider Based on Client Service - By : Frank Collins
  
• Shopping for a Webhosting Provider - By : TheTopTens
  
• Start with Free Hosting Services - By : Gen Wright
  
• Little Known Facts About How To Get Paid For Web Hosting -- Learn About Useful Facts Now - By : Nathan Knightley
  
• Low Cost Web Hosting – What To Look For - By : Lou Costas
  
• Webhosting –Reliable web hosting packages - By : Jon Almgren