Wednesday, January 8, 2020

How to Avoid Crappy Web Hosting

Unless you’re a big time player with your own servers, data center and internet connectivity, you’re going to need a web hosting provider to host your site. Web hosting makes up one of the most fierce industries and there are literally thousands of companies competing for your services. With so many hosts in the sea, you’d think that picking a good one out of the bunch would be fairly easy, right? Not exactly. Take it from me - if you don’t take the time to evaluate your needs and research, you could find yourself with a crappy web hosting company - make that two crappy hosts in my case.
Let’s get this out of the way - settling on the first web hosting provider you run across is a bad move - even if it’s a good company. The tips I will give you in this article can be followed in any order. The goal here is to provide the critical factors that must be considered when it comes time to choose a web host.


Determine Your needs

Before even clicking your way to Google in search of “good web hosting companies”, you must to sit back and figure out exactly what you need. Why do you need a web host in the first place? Do you plan to indulge in the world of online business? Got something interesting to say? Web hosting affiliate marketing perhaps? Determining your needs goes a long way in finding a good web host. When you come across a company, you can scratch off the qualities that suit those requirements.

Cost of the Service

This is why I say the list of web hosting factors can be placed in any order. Many people will say that price is the last thing you want to look at. I tend to disagree. Price is very important, especially in these hard times. Although web hosting is cheaper than ever, there are a few companies that put high-end tags on their services. Jump the gun and you could find yourself paying twice as much as a service of equal or even better quality.

Reliability

Reliability is one of the most essential aspects of web hosting. In general, every web host looks the part, but that doesn’t mean you can rely on them all. Many have failed and taken their customers right down with them. So how do you find out if they are reliable? There are a few approaches you can take - read some web hosting reviews, ask a few partners if they know anything about the company. You can also look into their technologies and learn more about the network infrastructure. If a web host doesn’t make their track record easily accessible, they probably aren’t worth your time.

Technical Support and Customer Service

I think anyone would agree that support is the most important factor of all. You’re storing your vital information on someone else’s computer and unfortunately, anything can go wrong. Even at the slightest hint of worry, you need to be able to get an expert on the phone immediately. This is especially true if you’re a bigger. After writing countless tutorials and articles on cPanel, I purchased my own cPanel hosting solution and was completely stomped. One-click Fantastico installations gave me a technical brain freeze while figuring out the simple drag-and-drop site builder was nearly a month long process. There is a lot of technology behind this web hosting stuff and you should have the luxury to get the help you need, when you need it.

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