Many small business owners try to control costs in any way they can, and that includes web hosting costs. However, a cheap web host can cause you many problems, which can lead to lost profits. In the article below you will find some great tips and tricks to help you find the perfect web host.
Look into the history of downtime from the hosting company. If you are planning on running a business from your website, downtime means no sales. Downtime will mean that both you and your customers won’t be able to reach your website.
The only thing worse than a long outage, is a lame excuse as to why it happened. Although a company’s excuses for outages may be plausible, companies that make excuses at all, aren’t as good as the ones that make sure that your site stays up almost all the time. Regardless of what good things you’ve heard about a web hosting company, don’t sign up if it makes excuses for outages.
Make yourself welcome on any of the web hosting message boards that deal with outages, just so you know what’s going on with your host provider. If multiple web hosts are down, you will know it’s not your particular host’s problem, and that the issue is being worked on. If your outage lasts a long time you can post about it to seek out information and report the poor service you’re receiving.
Make sure you know about the reviews on various web host companies before making a commitment. Online, clients will discuss extremely good, and also really horrible, services they receive from providers. Read plenty of reviews and choose a company that has a long history of good service.
Always opt for a paid for web host if possible. Free is great if you just want to have a simple site for yourself, but anyone with a company site must have a paid account. Free hosts tend to place ads that you can’t control on your site. A lot of visitors will be annoyed by these ads and not trust your website at all.
Should you wish to own your domain name long-term, do not register it with your hosting company. While the convenience is there, you can risk the ownership of the domain name should something unforeseen happen with your web host or your relationship with them. Pick a different company so that you have ownership of the name.
Check out the web hosts maintenance schedule. It should happen less than one time a month. This means your site won’t be down that often, which means you get more visitors or business.
The routine downtime that any web host has needs to be very carefully scrutinized. You should find out exactly how often the hosting service performs maintenance and how often the host suffers from downtime due to it. If they’re down peak hours over over a month or multiple days in the course of a short amount of time, find another host.
If you’re considering moving hosts, be sure you investigate if your domain name can transfer with you. There’s some hosts that don’t allow this, and this can result in a loss of your site’s brand equity and reputation.
Be sure you know how much bandwidth and disk space you will need. Both these factors will depend solely on the site you’ve designed. Several companies offer unlimited options for both storage and bandwidth, and those options are worth considering. Your website cannot function as it should if you don’t obtain an adequate amount of these core services.
It is important to be certain that the web hosting service you obtain is dependable. Use reviews and the host’s website to find out if they tend to have problems or if they offer an uptime guarantee. It is important for your web page to be accessible the vast majority of the time; you do not want to work with a business that does not make sure this happens.
Do not assume that your web host will store a copy of your information. Schedule this task regularly to ensure that you do not lose all of your hard work, in the event of technical issues. This is especially important if you have done a great deal of SEO work for your site.
When the company that is hosting your site is not keep your site online, you need to work with them to ensure that it stays up and running most of the time. When your site is down, you are losing web traffic and revenue.
Back up your website as often as possible. While your host may provide routine backups of your data, having your own backup will ensure that your data is never lost for good.
Email and talk with the customer service team of a web hosting company before you decide on using them. They need know they will be courteous, professional and experienced. Understanding the type of service to expect will be useful going forward.
If you are certain you will be using the same host for several years, try finding one that may give you a discount for years of continuous business. This may save you a lot of money.
When obtaining a web hosting solution, you should be aware of the specific services that you will be receiving. Find out what makes your package so inexpensive, and make sure you are getting your money’s worth. Before jumping into any package deal, make sure you know exactly what is included. Making careful choices is the only surefire way to ensure that your package will cover your needs.
Choosing low prices over service and features is not a good solution. Anyone needing to maintain an online presence must be able to depend on their web hosting service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Put the suggestions and information from this article into use. It will help you steer clear of the mistakes often made by small business owners when deciding on their web hosting service.
