Web Hosting -So Many To Choose From It’s Giving Me A Headache
So…. You want to be on the internet…. You’ve got your website sorted out, you’ve done all the finances, and now you want a GOOD webhost….
The trouble is… do a search under Google for web hosting – you get 217,000,000 results – how on earth are you supposed to find a good one?
The sad truth is that not all of the hosting companies (including some pretty well known ones) will live up to that potential. You may find your website down about 5% of the time (and that’s a looooonnnnnnng time if your only business is on the internet) – that’s about 1 hour 15 minutes per day, or you may just get kicked off for no good reason.
The first thing I got “sucked” in about when first signing up to a hosting company was finding the biggest deals – The ones with the biggest bandwidth (and I’ll be honest – I didn’t already know what bandwidth was – but hey – as long as it was the biggest that was OK), the ones that offered you the biggest storage capacity, the most emails, the most MySQL databases, the most domains, the most sub-domains etc…. and of course – for the LOWEST price!
The 5 big reasons you choose a webhost are:
1) BANDWIDTH – Unless you are bigger than the beatles you are not going to need that much bandwidth – 2GB should well and truly suffice. Don’t look for the biggest bandwidth!
2) STORAGE CAPACITY – Try and go for a big storage capacity – if you are running a large shop with loads of photos you’ll need a big storage (but having looked at a lot of medium sized shops, they get away with 100MB no problems – small shops (20-50 items) can get away with 30-50MB. Do look for a big storage capacity – but you will probably need no than 200MB.
One thing to observe is that a lot of the hosting companies use the space/bandwidth that you don’t use – so they might allocate 100MB to you – you use 10MB and they use the other 90MB. There is nothing wrong with this – but hopefully the other 90 will be obtainable when you grow!.
I have heard (whether this is true or not), that some of the companies kick you off if you get near to your limit in addition (e.g. if they potential you 700MB and you use 600MB), because they were only planning for you to use 100MB – and they’ll send you an email saying your bandwidth is chewing up their resources – but whether that’s true or not…. (best to stick with the main players).
3) EMAILS – who on earth needs unlimited emails??? I’m nevertheless trying to figure out what to do with the 1000 emails I’ve got with my plan – I have been contemplating putting my enemies names to them (you know [email protected]) and then sending awful emails to other people I don’t like, but other than that…. (ok – kidding about that! (kind of)).
4) MYSQL dATABASES – alright – this one is fun – if you have more than 1 MySQL database you can muck around and put all sorts of forms/chat rooms/shopping carts and more on your website – but realistically – most of the time you’ll need 1 (depending on the kind of business you are running) – if you have a shopping cart – go for 1 (any more is a bonus) – if you have a portal (directory / chat etc..) – go for more than 1.
5) SERVER UPTIME – This is the most important thing you need to look for in a web great number. Like I said before, if you are down for already 5% of the time that is 1.5 hours – and with the internet up 24 hours a day, you will soon end up looking like a turkey.
Remember – if you don’t look specialized – customers will walk and find a good competitor. You need to find someone that is up at the minimum 99% of the time (if not 99.5% of the time), and will guarantee that. If they can’t guarantee it, it method they don’t have backup servers in place – and that is a no-no.
If they guarantee 100% uptime they are liars (who can guarantee that? It’s like promising you will win lotto) – Stay away from those players!
So, to conclude…. don’t look for those that have the biggest deals, for the smallest prices – look for those that have good prices, good storage capacity and most importantly guarantee very good server uptime.
Shirlene Grizzlynut
