Choosing a web hosting company is one of the more important things you’ll have to do when you’re setting up an online business.
Not all hosting companies are created equal – there are vast differences in the areas that count, like service, performance, responsiveness and so on.
There are ways to make sure that you choose the right hosting company from the start, and more importantly, ways to make sure that you can switch hosting companies quickly and easily when you get let down.
How To Choose A Web Hosting Company
There are hundreds of thousands of hosting companies out there. They all offer different packages, different pricing and different levels of service. Here are a couple of sneaky things to watch out for.
1. Many hosting companies expect you to pre-pay for 3, 6 or 12 months in order to get the low prices they advertise. Think about what happens to your money if they go out of business. I would always choose to pay slightly more for a month-to-month contract.
2. Many hosting companies make extravagant promises about up-time.
3. Hosting companies will promise you huge amounts of disk space and bandwidth – much more than you can possibly use. However, hidden away in their Terms of Service will be a list of things you can’t do with the disk space and bandwidth. If you want to start the next YouTube, for example, you won’t be able to do it on a shared hosting account. Make sure you know what the real limits are.
4. Make sure that your web host supports CPanel. CPanel is the most popular ‘back-end’ control panel system. Although it is by no means perfect, it is easy to use and fast.
5. You’ll want a hosting account that allows you to use multiple domain names. That way, there’s no increase in the monthly hosting fee when you add new domains.
6. If you’re in South Africa, and your target market is South Africans, there are some advantages to using a South African web host – there is a small speed advantage and a slight SEO benefit over using a host in the USA or elsewhere in the world.
However, South African hosting tends to be more expensive, because of the iniquitous cost of bandwidth and (presumably) the higher cost of hardware in this country. For example, one of the bigger hosting companies sells an account capable of running ONE WordPress installation (ie with one MySQL database) for R99.00 ($13.51) a month, plus a R199.00 ($27) ’setup’ fee. For that price, I’ll set up and host a Wordpress site for you…
Most importantly – Never, ever sign up for hosting with the same company that registers your domain name. Why not? Because if your domain name is registered somewhere else and you have a problem with your hosting company, you can redirect your domain name to another host within hours. Of course, keeping up-to date backups also helps.
I recommend that as your business grows you consider splitting your money-making sites over a number of web hosts. Remember the maxim, “Two is One and One is None.” Three is the smallest “safe” number of hosting companies.
I’ve been using Hostgator for the last 3 years, with very few problems. I also have accounts at ResellerZoom and Innohosting.
One Comment
This is an area that is often underestimated. Too many people just go with the first web host they find without doing sufficient research. It’s an important choice that needs plenty of thought.
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