Regardless of the personal or business reasons, customers may need to create a website, for example, a blog to share something interesting with the social network; a business website to do e-commerce. In general, people in modern society use website as a method to manage their company and do business on the Internet.
No matter which kind of website you want to start, you have to choose a good web hosting provider first. There are some important factors you may take into consideration to make sure you get the best possible service.
Space and Bandwidth
In hosting plans, space and bandwidth are important factors. The amount of space you need depends on the number and size of the files you will have on your site. Most companies promise to provide unlimited disk space, which means the company offers you enough disk space to host your website rather than a real unlimited disk space. You also need to know that you can not use a shared web hosting package as a network mass storage.
Bandwidth is used to describe how much information can be transmitted in a given period of time. The more bandwidth is, the lager the monthly transfer is. So make sure you have enough bandwidth to accommodate your needs. If your site has large traffic, choose a web hosting plan coming with unlimited bandwidth.
Reliability
As a vitally important part of web hosting, reliability (or uptime) should be considered at first by customers when they choose a web hosting provider. Some unexpected problems or scheduled maintenance may cause your website to be out of service for a short period, it will bring data loss and even thousands of dollars in revenue lost, especially for a business website. Therefore, it is necessary to select a quality web hosting provider offering at least 99.9% uptime guarantee.
What you should pay attention is the actual uptime percentage of the company and the server your website resides. You can check the uptime percentage with reference to company’s historical data. In general, web hosts with advanced technologies can provide an uptime guarantee. Here, we recommend you go with web hosts that utilize UPS, diesel generators and many other techonologies to ensure there is no power failure in the data center.
Customer Service
To save money and energy, people need to choose high-quality customer service including pre-sales questions, billing and technical support, which also occupies an important position of web hosting service. Many web hosts provide customer service which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a variety of methods to make sure customers can get prompt solution to their issues.
Some of the main options:
1. Telephone Support
You can call the support team up to deal with your issues. But be careful that whether it is available for 24 hours a day or for business hours only, as well as holding times an
d knowledge of the representatives.
2. Email Support
You can send an email to their help desk system, and see how fast you receive a reply. By this way, you can get a sense of the response time and how effective the response is.
3. Live Internet Chat
By this way, you can actually chat with the representatives on line, which is the most convenient and effective way to solve your problems. And you should consider the amount of time the operator takes to response and the available time for the service.
Pricing
Research the cost for the hosting companies you are considering to check whether their price is competitive and satisfy your demand and also you narrow down the choices to the best ones. Choose the one which is best at the cost and features. In addition, many web hosts may offer a discount if customers pay an entire year up front. It’s necessary to consider the payment plans to see whether it is convenient to you.
After finding web hosts that offer cheap hosting solutions with short billing cycles. Go with these companies guaranteeing at least 30 days money back and allowing people to pay via PayPal. With them, you can make a payment easily and safely. Besides, you can also ask for a refund if you do not happy with the service.
Some people may consider a free web hosting. In fact, it’s not recommended, especially for business users. Most free hosts make money by adding ads to their users’ websites, which will bring negative feeling to your visitors and then lose the business eventually. Also, free web hosts always have a lower uptime percentage and poor support. To learn detailed reasons for not go with a free web host, read this post.
Company Reputation
As companies come and go, the web hosting industry might be disappeared over night. So company reputation is critical. Industry experience is often an indication of company reputation. If your host is experienced in the industry, you can acquire a stable and very professional support from it.
Besides, you should also consider the customer satisfaction of the company, which indicates how satisfied the real customers are. As well, you can learn about some details from verified customer reviews.
Many web hosts provide various graduating packages allow you to upgrade to additional resources if needed. However, you should comprehend the cost of the plan and the specifications about how to handle it.
There are also many other aspects you may consider. Consider these most frequent questions to ask about a web host, you may save a lot of time and energy in the long run. Also, with careful research, you can choose best web hosting with a high-quality service at an affordable price. At the same time get you needs fulfilled.
