The Importance Of A Good Host And Things To Look For

With all the hosting companies promising 99.9% uptime, knowledge support, unlimited resources and so much more, there has to be a way of cutting through the jargon to select a good company.

After all, good web hosting companies keep your business moving flawlessly.

Through a decent website, customers can access you from anywhere around the world, plus they can learn more about the products/services you're offering them.

Here Are Some Key Points To Consider When It Comes To Choosing A Good Hosting Company

Server uptime
Ability to scale according to your needs
Multiple ad-on domains
Renewal prices
Features
Support

Server Uptime

A good web hosting company will provide the maximum length of uptime.

This means they must operate on a stable server with powerful network connections. Anything beyond 99.5% is good, while uptime that is below 99% is poor.

Thankfully, the are ways you can determine the uptime of a web host before doing business with them. Use free server monitoring tools to get their approximate uptime percentage.

Only work with a company that knows the value of uptime for businesses.

Scale-Ability

When your business grows, your site should also grow to cater for the upsurge in visitor numbers.

Otherwise, it will struggle to survive on the current resources, prompting a downtime in the event that the hosting company is not able to accommodate the growing traffic.

Therefore, scale-ability remains a critical factor to consider, and this is something that reputable companies take seriously.

Multiple Add-Oon Domains

Domains have become so cheap nowadays that it's tempting to want several of them.

However, for you to host these domains, you'll need space for each one of them. That's the reason reputable companies offer extra space for accommodating multiple domains.

Generally, most companies allow up to 25 domains on a single account. But others simply restrict you to one domain, and this puts you in an awkward position especially if you have 10 parked domains waiting to be hosted.

Therefore, you should consider domain capacity in any company you decide to pick.

Renewal Prices

This is industry standard, so unless you're willing to change hosts every 2 years, you will face renewal prices.

Generally, any price below $10 per month is acceptable. Again, if you have a lower tolerance level for price, you need to read their ToS to be sure if you'll be comfortable with renewal prices in the future.

To do it quickly, hold Ctrl + F and search for the term ''renew''. A good company will not take advantage of its clients when it comes to renewal prices.

Features

You'll be surprised that some companies still don't provide features that you'll need on a day-to-day basis.

Think about Cron and how you'll need it for your daily operations. How about Auto-script installer like Simple Script, Fantastico and Quick Installer for saving time?

And lastly, some hosting companies still lack .htaccess access for page redirects, security etc. Only reputable companies provide these features in their hosting packages.

Support

And of course the company should have solid support for its clients. Tech support is the most important thing that a reputable company will have in place. You will find it necessary to contact them during the initial setup process or when you need maintenance work done on your site.

Final word

If the web host you choose is serious enough, they will have a good price for all the features described above.

After all, a website is the lifeline of your business, and this means you must have a reputable company that powers it to ensure it's live on the web, 24/7.