3 Things To Consider Before Deciding On A Hosting Service

Hosting and You:  3 Things To Consider Before Deciding On A Host.
When it comes to hosting a website, there are hundreds of companies, packages and options to choose from. The process of choosing a host is often one that is given little thought despite the importance of the decision. While the choice is not a lifetime commitment, they are usually for a year or two and changing providers can be a hassle. Before deciding on a hosting solution, there are a few quick things to think about.

What Are You Looking For?
This may sound like something everyone would think out, but you would be surprised as not everyone fully understands what hosting is and what they may need and instead make a choice based on price or some other factor.  When it comes to hosting there are three major types Shared, Dedicated and VPS. A shared host is the most commonly purchased on the market today and manages to meet the needs of the majority of sites. The servers on a shared host will have several sites on them, which allows for reduced costs but can also create issues with stability and latency if your site is a high traffic site.  For those sites, a dedicated host may be the appropriate solution as it is a server dedicated strictly for your site alone which allows for a bit more customization and substantial amounts of traffic, but this comes with a rather steep price tag.  The in-between option is VPS (Virtual Private Server), which is optimal for sites that may occasionally receive high traffic but at other times it is minimal.  A VPS will shift resources to allow for the increase in traffic and minimize the impact on the site. This option costs a bit more than shared hosting but substantially less than dedicated and is an area that many hosting providers are really focusing a lot of their resources as it is a very fast growing segment within hosting.

Having a basic background of the types of hosts available will greatly increase your chances of finding a host that meets your needs and also reduce the amount of time it takes to find it.  As hosting is not something people buy on a regular basis, like household goods or electronics, most people are not familiar with what distinguishes a great host from a terrible one.  The process of buying a host should be met with a similar approach to buying one of those products with the company’s reputation being one of the first things to look into.

Check Their Reputation
A strong reputation for a hosting company speaks volumes about the service you will be receiving when it comes to hosting your site. There are numerous hosting forums that one can look into to find some reviews of people’s experiences, which are quite useful but does require a bit of extra work as they are not all concentrated in one area.  There are also sites which work as independent 3rd parties and allow for a combination of user reviews as well as editorial reviews.  The biggest thing to look into with their reputation is the quality of customer service and the site uptime.  Strong customer service is vital with hosting, particularly if you are running a business on the site as you need to know that someone will be available to help you if the server goes down for whatever reason.  Many hosts offer 24hr call centers but others may only allow for 24hr online chat with set phone hours during daytime operations. Site uptime is an issue to look into and most hosts will make this information very noticeable on their site or profile as it is quite important to users. Unless you are looking into a relatively new company or a smaller local company, the odds are that the site uptime percentage will be in the upper 90% range. The major hosting companies have become a major host for a reason; if their products and services were atrocious they would have a very difficult time staying in business in this very competitive market.  As it is a dog eats dog industry, pricing becomes one of the primary tool hosts will use to lure in business, but it is important to look beyond the façade of the price.

Pricing Should Not Make the Decision for You
With the global economic slump, people are much more aware of where their money is going and seek out areas to save even more.  It is definitely possible to find a great host that is affordable, and perhaps even cheaper than your present host, but that should not define what a good host is.  For instance, if you run a business or site that has advertising on it and you chose a host that has less than impressive ratings but saves you a bit of money but the site goes down repeatedly, then you are losing more money than you saved by choosing that host.   The options that come with the package could give your site the added boost that it needs to run efficiently in any given setting.  There are many different option packages available but they are mostly variances on the amount of space available, the amount of transfer that is allowed (meaning the amount that can be downloaded on your site before it is closed for that month), and the type of server used.

Finding a suitable hosting solution does not need to be difficult but it is something that requires a bit of work from yourself, but the peace of mind that you have in knowing that you chose a company who can meet your needs more than makes up for it.  The majority of the difficult work has already been done for you by individuals on forums or companies who review hosting providers, it is just up to you to decide what you need and choose a host that can meet those needs and at a budget that is acceptable for you.