Compare Web Hosts for Satisfaction and Not Sorrow
I have been a web master for about 8 years now. In this business that makes me an ancient. One benefit of experience is having already stumbled over a lot of newbie mistakes so I can (hopefully) avoid those mistakes in the future. I am sure I can find plenty of new mistakes to make.
One of the most important aspects of my business, and one thing that can make or break me no matter what else I do right, is finding a reliable web host. Most of us who build, promote, and maintain websites do not keep our own servers. We usually rent space for our websites from a web hosting company.
Servers Need To Be Up and Fast
If we build the perfect website, but the servers are not kept up most of the time, we cannot make any money because nobody can get to our website. Even worse, we may have paid for website traffic through search engines and other websites. Or we may have worked very hard to develop articles and links to drive traffic to our own site. None of this will do us any good if our website is down. Instead of getting the word out about our business so we can make money, we will be clenching our teeth and watching our money evaporate.
And not only does the website need to be on a hosting server which is functioning, if we have a lot of traffic, it also needs to be fast. I do not believe that anybody has a shorter attention span than a web surfer. If a potential visitor clicks the link to your site and has to wait for several seconds for it to load, they will most likely give up and try another website. We have too much competition to have our own server working against us!
Hosting Needs to Be Flexible and Reliable
We may have a small account with only one website, then expand to a product called reseller hosting which allows us to have multiple websites, and finally rent our own server that we can control. So it is also important to find a host with flexible plans so that you can expand when you need to. If your website starts out small, you may purchase a basic plan. But if your website grows, you want to be able to upgrade your hosting plan without any trouble. So I would suggest looking for a company that has a variety of flexible plans from starter hosting to dedicated servers, and that has a policy of making it easy to upgrade.
The last thing I look for is a host that has been around for awhile, and that will be around in the future. I have had to change hosts three times because the company went out of business, and believe me, it is really a pain. It is always difficult to transport complex sites from one host to another, and it almost always involves downtime. I consider the task of moving from one hosting company to another almost as difficult as moving homes, and it is expensive, time intensive, and frustrating.
It is also nice to be able to choose between Windows and Linux as an operating system. Both types of hosts have many of the same features, but they also have some critical differences. You should be able to decide which operating system you are comfortable with. |
