Before You Choose Your Web Hosting Provider

After much thought and consideration, you finally took the plunge and decided it was time to have your own web site. That's a great accomplishment in itself. However, now you're left with another daunting task -- selecting a quality web host.

Selecting a good web host can be a confusing and daunting task but it is extremely important. If your web host is unreliable you will lose traffic and even hard earned organic search engine listings can be lost if your web site is down when the search engine robots come for a visit. If your web host is on the cheap, they may not be updating security holes and security can be a major problem for website credibility. However, with all of the technical mumbo jumbo, knowing what to look for can be very intimidating to say the least.

For good hosting service and support, you should expect to pay $20 - 50 / month. Anything less is questionable and you will either be dealing with real technology issues or supporting uncontrollable and nuisance advertising which the host uses to make up the income they lose on providing services. Here is a list of questions suitable when searching for a web host.

A lower monthly hosting payment may look appealing, but how much is it actually going to cost you in lost sales? Most likely much more than the amount you'll save.

• Do they offer fast connections?
• Do they have a back-up system in place to protect your data in case there is a power outage?
• Do they require a long-term contract?
• Do they charge set up fees?
• How is their customer support? Test them.
• Do they provide you with an online support manual?
• Do they have 24/7 reliable tech support?
• Do they allow your own domain name (www.yourname.com)
• At least 10GB of monthly transfer (traffic)
• Do they provide a minimum of 20MB - 50MB of server space?
• How many true POP email accounts are included?
• Are there unlimited email aliases and email forwarding?
• Are auto responders available?
• Unlimited free access to your server via FTP/Telnet
• Easy access to your log files
• Statistics on visits to your site

Take your time to select the host that best meets your requirements. Contact us if you would like assistance with your decision.