Choosing a Great Web Hosting Provider
No matter how good a website is, it’s all a complete waste if the hosting doesn’t meet the basic minimum standards. Before starting anything, it is absolutely essential to find the best web host that matches the purpose and needs of the website. Here are some tips that will help narrow down the options.
Reviews: Good reviews are the life blood of this business. There are many of the best web host review sites out there, but it’s easier to find reviews of a specific host directly through search. Do a search for “xyz hosting reviews” and read all the reviews. One review will not cover every aspect, so take some time to find reviews and make sure the host is reliable and capable of providing the level of service required. Note: Be careful what you see on the review site as you may notice the same companies are in the top 10 for each review site. This is because these companies pay the highest affiliate commissions. These review sites earn their income by recommending the best web host to customers. The problem with this is that the additional cost is actually paid by the customers, as they are paying much more for a mostly lower quality service.
Awards: A better measure of the quality of a web host, although be careful with these too. There are many sites that are dedicated to rewarding web hosting companies; they also give the prizes to the affiliate programs that pay the most. A good resource is the Web Hosting Directory at webhostdir.com. They do not use web hosting affiliate links and are not paid to award prizes. Customers vote for each company and the results are tabulated by the system. They have the best system for awarding prizes compared to other sites, but this is also not without its problems. Some of these same top 10 hosting companies pay people to vote for their company, ensuring that they receive more votes than the other companies.
Price: Rates are subjective as it depends on many factors. For example, how much space and bandwidth does the website need? Is the project big enough to warrant a dedicated server or will shared hosting suffice? How many domains, subdomains and email accounts are required? Then there is the additional price to consider. Some hosts offer free domains, while most will ask site owners to purchase a domain. Some hosts are eCommerce-ready and others offer free design tools. There are so many things that a website can need, and it’s best to find out the needs and then find a host that offers everything you need below the base price.
Windows vs. Linux: The server’s operating system is an important choice to make, because it’s difficult to change once the site is up and running. Some scripts like WordPress do not run on Windows servers. On the other hand, Microsoft’s ASP will not run on Linux web servers. If all this doesn’t make much sense, it’s better to go for it now because later on it becomes quite difficult if a website needs a blog and it’s hosted on a Windows server. SEO: It is an open secret that search engines respond well to some web hosts while giving them little importance to others. It’s not favoritism, just part science and part algorithm. Each host offers different page load speeds, IP ranges, and hosts specific types of websites. This is why you need to understand things like a class C IP address and what it means to have a website stuck in a bad neighborhood. It may sound like a lot of geek talk, but it has a huge impact on search traffic.
Characteristic: Regardless of budget or needs, a few things should always come by default with every package. Must-have features include a control panel (cPanel or Plesk), POP/POP3 email accounts with webmail access, FTP access, scripting support (PHP, CGI, MySQL database, etc.), and web analytics with access to log files. The list of features offered by each web host is huge, but the things mentioned above are the ones that are sometimes left out by some hosts, although they are all necessary for most websites.