WebSite Hosting Tips

Web hosting choices

Today there are thousands of web hosting services to choose from. And you can host your site anywhere in the world.

Important web hosting considerations

When evaluating which web hosting provider to use you for your commercial niche website, you need to take the following points into account:

Avoid free hosting services
Have your own domain
What is the cost per month
What different hosting plans do they offer
How much disk-space and bandwidth is provided
How reliable is the host
How many free pop3 email accounts do you get
Do they have a help desk
What is their average help desk response time
Do they offer an online sales chat
Will they transfer your existing site for free
What stats do they provide
Do they have a discussion forum
Do they offer free script installations

Lets look at the above critical points in more detail

Avoid free hosting services

A free hosting service is simply not professional and you will not score points with the search engines. If you have a commercial or business website, use a paid web hosting service. We recommend the following:

Recommended Web Hosting Service

Have your own domain

This is more professional. Whether your domain is a dot com or dot net or a country based one like .co.uk or .co.au, it does not matter. You have world wide reach. Just have your own domain. They are not expensive. Mst web hostinf companies offer a domain registration service as part of the package.

What is the hosting cost per month

This will depend on your hosting plan, but a basic adequate plan for a small niche website could vary from $5 USD to about $10 USD per month.

Different Hosting Plans

These should range from an entry level plan to one where you can have your own dedicated server.

How much disk space and band width

The entry level plan should give you about 1000Mb disk space and 100Gb traffic or network bandwidth. This will be plenty for a small niche site.

How reliable is the host

If they offer professional services and modern technologies, chances are good that they are pretty reliable. You dont want a web hosting service where you have to worry about down time. Still, read the forums and reviews. Recommendations from existing clients will be great bonus.

We can confidently recommend these web hosting services

How many free POP3 emails

An entry level plan should offer from 500 to a 1000 free pop3 email accounts, including features such as

Auto-responders
Web based email access
Forwarding
Catch-all mailbox
SPAM protection
MX entry management

Do they have a help desk

This will usually work on a ticket system. When you have a problem or query, you open a ticket on the ISP website. Their support consultants respond to this ticket. If you are not satisfied with the response or need further asssistance, simply re-open the ticket or post a new one.

What is the average response times of the help desk

Mostly you would like to be helped the same day. Siteground's average response is very fast. Most of our queries have been answered within minutes. When an issue is tricky or advanced, it may get referred, so the wait will be a bit longer.

Do they offer a live online pre-sales chat

This is useful for getting answers to questions before subscribing to their service.

Free transfer of your exisiting site

If you have a site hosted elsewhere, will they transfer your site for free? If you run cpanel, Siteground will do a free transfer of your website.

What stats do they provide

You certainly want access to a control system such as Cpanel. You then have access to stats such as Awstats, Webalizer, Analog and so on. Using Cpanel you can also manage your email accounts, your scripts, databases such as MySQL and a whole host of other functions.

Do they have a discussion forum

Discussion forums are useful for exchanging ideas and getting advice and help on many topics related to your web hosting and ecommerce issues.

Will they install scripts for free

If you use Cgi and other scripts, will they install these for you and how much will they charge. Or will they offer this service as part of the hosting plan?

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