Questions To Think About When Looking For Hosting
You should think very carefully before you choose your web host. If you do not select the right one, you may end up losing a lot of money. This is because better websites have better profits. Think hard and ask yourself all of the following questions when trying to decide on a web host.
Have you read any good reviews of the company? People online have a habit of talking a lot when they find something they like, so if you find a good host there should be some reviews online somewhere. Finding all good reviews is not necessarily a good thing since this means they can be writing all of their reviews. Read every review and take all of that together. Also, think about whether the source of the review is very reliable.
Is billing and payment an automated process for your host? This is much more important than you may think. You want things to be automatic so there is no issue with downtime in case of a forgotten payment or one that did not arrive on time. Having the payments pulled from your bank account automatically will assure that your site will continue to run without any interruptions.
Does the host experience outages on a regular basis? Every host may have an issue with outages from time, but if there are outages regularly this is a real serious problem. Every time your site is down, that is an opportunity for you to lose some of your customers. Make sure that you get some statistics that show how often the site is online. If that number is not very high, choose a different host. It is not worth the trouble to continue considering this company when there are so many to choose from.
How good is the customer service? This may seem like it is not all that important, but these are the people that you will have to depend on to give you service when there is a problem. If the people on the other end of the phone have a hard time communicating, how effective do you think they will be when it comes to solving your problems? Do a test call to any company you are considering to see how it goes.
Should you pay for web hosting in advance? This is a good question that many people do not take the time to consider. Why pay for something up front when you are not sure of how it is going to go? That is essentially paying someone for doing the opposite of what they were contracted to do. Try to find a host that does not require any huge lump sum payments up front.
Most people select a web host by looking at price. While that should be part of it, there should be other things taken into consideration. Ask yourself all of the questions above about any web host you have in mind. Choose the one that has the best answers for each of them.
