As you might have heard, we recently moved our web­site to HawkHost. The shift was based on the fact how unre­li­able our pre­vi­ous host was, their ser­vice was just appalling. Any­way, it made me real­ize how impor­tant it is to choose the right host that best suit your needs.

I used to go for cheap ser­vices (first for price, then inevitably qual­ity), but after my hor­rific expe­ri­ences,  I’ve learned my les­son - just pay more and have a peace of mind.

It’s not a sur­prise to know that your web­site needs a web-server, which is pro­vided by either direct host­ing com­pa­nies, or resellers. They “host” your web­site on the inter­net, and nat­u­rally you would expect it to be up most of the time, if not all the time.

Unfor­tu­nately, this can­not be guar­an­teed because there’s bound to be crashes or server upgrades, but you can min­i­mize this down­time be choos­ing the right web-host. There are myr­iad com­pa­nies offer­ing all lev­els of ser­vice, but which one is right for you? Arm your­self with the fol­low­ing tips before you go look­ing for a home for your website.

What are YOUR require­ments?

It’s impor­tant that you real­ize the most sig­nif­i­cant fac­tors before com­mit­ting to a ser­vice. These fac­tors can range from cus­tomer sup­port to con­tract lengths, all depend­ing on your pref­er­ence and require­ments — how­ever, here’s a die-hard list of the most basic yet cru­cial attrib­utes that you need to keep an eye out for.

Cus­tomer Service

Host­ing com­pa­nies can some­times try to hide their tech­ni­cal sup­port staff (if they have any) behind FAQ lists, con­tact forms and even premium-rate phone num­bers. You are likely to need help, espe­cially when set­ting up your first web­site, so find out what level of sup­port you can expect before you choose. It’s worth pay­ing a lit­tle bit more if it means you’ll get a bet­ter service.

Shared or Dedicated?

Web-hosting ser­vices range from “ded­i­cated host­ing”, where your web­site is the only one on the whole machine, thus reduc­ing any lag or inter­fer­ence with any other web­sites on the same server. Obvi­ously this will be heav­ier on your pocket, but if you plan to run a busy web­site you’ll need ded­i­cated server some­time down the road.

Sim­i­larly, “shared host­ing” is exactly what it is. Your web­site “shares” the server’s resources with sev­eral other web­sites. Even though it’s a cheaper option you might fig­ure out its not suited to your needs, espe­cially if your web-host OVERSELLS and cramps up the servers — you might expe­ri­ence a lot of downtime.

A really big-downfall in shared host­ing is that if any sites on your server gets banned from Search Engines for what­ever rea­son, you might unfor­tu­nately cop the con­se­quences too — so it’s bet­ter to get at least a ded­i­cated IP Address.

One, two or more domains?

Do you need your server for one site. or do you want to make more? If you do plan to make more sites in the future, you need to make sure your web-host pro­vides the fea­ture to host mul­ti­ple domains. Usu­ally a “site” is denoted by the fact it has a unique domain, such as “www.blogussion.com”.

Money talks, so make your host walk

In today’s world, with economies crash­ing and prices soar­ing — you need to make sure your get­ting a bang for your buck! The range of pos­si­ble costs for web-hosting is immense, going from free ser­vices to as much as you want to pay!

Free ser­vices (there’s a mil­lion) can be per­fect for sim­ple projects, but as soon as you grow past the ‘sim­ple bar­rier’ you will real­ize the restric­tions. There is ALWAYS lim­i­ta­tions or other down­sides to free-hosting, whether it be a service-advert posted on your web­pages or restricted FTP access.

Just keep in mind, that you get what you pay for and don’t expect per­fect host­ing for $0.99/month either. Some­times it just pays to pay.

Your needs, their services

One of the most impor­tant steps prior to build­ing a site, is plan­ning. Once you have decided on the features/facilities you will need for your site — make sure your hosts pro­vides them.

Little-little things like add-on email addresses, mul­ti­ple FTP accounts, mul­ti­ple MySQL Data­bases and such need to be ver­i­fied that your host pro­vides. Try your best to elim­i­nate any fea­tures you don’t want, because you shouldn’t be pay­ing for things your not using.

Always read a review or two!

It’s impor­tant to read how satisfied/dissatisfied pre­vi­ous cus­tomers were in your poten­tial web-host. It’s absolutely vital that you read a cou­ple of ‘unof­fi­cial’ reviews at least before com­mit­ting to any­thing. A good place for feed­back from other peo­ple are Dig­i­tal­Point, WhirlPool and Web­Host­ingTalk.

Crack-down on CHEAP Host­ing Companies.

Just like any­thing in life, you get what you pay for. The rise of unbe­liev­ably cheap host­ing ser­vices seem to be grow­ing expo­nen­tially and when I mean cheap — I mean dirt cheap. Some of these ser­vices are going for just a few cents a month!

I seri­ously can­not see how any host can profit this from directly, unless they were cramp­ing the servers 10x over their lim­its. As shock­ing as it is, I even saw a ser­vice at Dig­i­tal­Point offer­ing “unlim­ited every­thing” for $0.99/YEAR! You tell me what you can expect for that much..

Stay clear of any “unlim­ited host­ing pack­ages” because it’s not pos­si­ble to have that, no mat­ter how tech­no­log­i­cally advanced your host is. Ignore the mar­ket­ing mumbo-jumbo and take my word, it is non-existent.

Many web­mas­ters believe that they have the lib­erty to upload any­thing in their space and the “unlim­ited” host­ing account can han­dle any kind of big traf­fic; but it is false. Most of the time, it’s too late when they real­ize that their CHEAP OVERSELLING HOST just sus­pended their host­ing account.

As a web­mas­ter you need to under­stand that the price is a reflec­tion upon the qual­ity of the ser­vice your get­ting. You can­not expect a 99cent host to even come close to the ser­vices offered by Blue­Host, Hawkhost and such — it’s just not practical.

My only advie to you would be just for­get about these sort of cheap hosts, unless your an estab­lished web­mas­ter try­ing out and exper­i­ment­ing new things. It’s murky waters and can’t be noth­ing but trouble!

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