Finding a good web hosting company

I’ve been through this several times: looking for a good web hosting company. The first two times I didn’t even know where to start. So the first two web hosting companies I went to were GoDaddy and iPower. The first was GoDaddy because at the time he was the only one I knew of after his famous Supwerbowl commercials. I heard about iPower from a colleague – we did domain name registrations with them and learned that they also offer cheap web hosting. Right around that time, we needed to host some websites, so I signed up for iPower Virtual Private Server, which was only $35 per month.

To make a long story short, since then I have changed some hosting companies. With some of them I had a lot of headaches and frustration, but some of them are really good. I’d like to share a few things I learned during the process, as well as give some tips on choosing the right one for your business. To help you select, here are the main criteria to consider:

Uptime, service monitoring and backups

Uptime guarantee is crucial if your business website is bringing you customers and revenue. How would you feel if your site was down due to hosting company network problem or if a server where your site is hosted was SNAFU or FUBAR? What if you lost all your data? You would start losing your customers and revenue. That’s why you should look for a company that offers the best uptime for your hardware and network. Additional questions to ask the company are about the security of their facilities and bandwidth redundancy.

Second, you need to know if they monitor your service or discover a problem only after calling tech support.

And finally, you have to know if they offer daily backups. If your site’s server goes down, and trust me this can happen, it happened to me, then you risk losing your site and more importantly your data, especially if you have an eCommerce website or of content with all the data stored. in the databases. Ask the hosting company if their backups are onsite or offsite. Offsite backups help keep your data more secure.

Support for

Good and fast technical support is extremely important, and I would say, vital. In this area you should get answers to these questions: Is your support proactive or reactive? The difference is that reactive support takes care of the mess once it happens. Proactive support makes sure no mess happens. Second, what is the availability of technical support? Is normal business hours 8-5 EST Monday through Friday when you live on the West Coast, or is it July 27? Trust me, there may be instances when you need tech support up late at night. And lastly, you should have an idea of ​​how long you would have to wait to speak to the support specialist and how quickly they typically respond to support tickets.

Data center location

If your target market is concentrated in a certain geographic area, then one factor you may want to consider is where the data center is located. The idea is that the closer the data center is to your site visitors, the faster the pages will load. Next, I will explain why I went to host in Los Angeles.

hosting plans

Here you would have to start with assessing your website requirements and your budget. Is your site static or does it use web applications and databases? How much traffic do you expect for your site? How much hard drive space do you need to host your site? Do you need Windows or Linux hosting, or does it not matter? And finally, how much can you pay for hosting, as hosting plans can range from $4 to hundreds of dollars for a managed dedicated server. If you have a static 12-page site and it doesn’t attract thousands of visitors a day, basic hosting is for you. It will cost you only $4-$10 per month. If your site will offer dynamic content, especially multimedia content such as audio or video, you will need a more advanced hosting plan. In general, the idea here is to have all the necessary features and more than enough bandwidth included, and stay within budget or even consider a higher budget if necessary.

Control Panel

The control panel allows you to perform multiple tasks related to your hosting account, such as managing email accounts, editing DNS settings for your site, managing FTP users, passwords, viewing system performance and bandwidth reports, etc. The most popular control panels today are cPanel and Plesk. I have used both and prefer cPanel, but am comfortable with Plesk. The choice of control panel really depends on who will be managing your site: yourself or your IT staff.

Prices and rates

I already mentioned that when choosing the hosting company and plan, you need to consider your budget. But first there is something you need to learn about the hosting company like setting their setup fee, excess bandwidth fee and you need to know if they will charge you for every little thing you ask them to do or will they do minor things for you? free? Otherwise, you could end up signing up for what appears to be a cheap plan, but then end up paying more than you anticipate when all the other fees add up. Also, find out if the company offers a money-back guarantee. If they do, you can walk away from them within the first two weeks if their service doesn’t suit your needs.
Hosting with your web design company

Usually the hosting offered by your web design company is a scam. They charge much more for their hosting service than a web hosting company would and offer no additional benefits. You’d be better off signing up for a hosting plan on your own, this way you’ll have more control over your cost, your website, and your data.

Now, I would like to give you some practical tips to select the right company.

Things to do before subscribing

• Do some research: read reviews about different hosting companies. An excellent online resource on web hosting is WebHosting Talk. Don’t rely on testimonials from hosting company sites, ask current customers.
• Try their technical support: it’s okay to call their tech support line. Why would you do that? Well, at least you’ll get an idea of ​​how long you’d have to wait to get a live person. With some companies it can take less than 2 or 3 minutes, with others, sometimes more than 30 minutes. With iPower I could even spend more than 40 minutes waiting.
• Speed ​​Test: There are a few ways to get an idea of ​​how fast a certain hosting company’s servers are: you can ping or track them, or run a speed test.
• Try them: Many hosting companies offer a 7-30 day money back guarantee. Feel free to sign up for their service and try it out, and we’ll refund your money if you’re not satisfied.

conclusion

Finding the right hosting company is an extremely important step in building your business’s online presence the right way. When it’s not done right, it can cause a lot of frustration and even cost you time, customers, and money. On the other hand, the right hosting can keep you worry-free. Second, as with all other purchases, you’re looking for the right balance between cost and value.

And finally, here is a short list of my favorite hosting companies.
My favourites

• Shared Hosting: Elief.com. Since we are in the Los Angeles area, my main criteria for the hosting company was geographic location (their data center is in Los Angeles, so visitors to our site from the area get great download speeds ) and attractive packages. Also, Elief is not a big company, so you get a more personalized service. And their tech support response time is really good.
• Virtual Private Server or Dedicated Server: for these I would definitely choose Liquidweb.com. I have had your dedicated server for about two years and was almost 100% satisfied with the quality of service. Their hardware is excellent, they have two secure data centers with external backup. And most importantly, their support has always been excellent: proactive service monitoring, ultra-fast response to support tickets, almost no wait time on the tech support phone line. Highly recommended!
• Shared apartment: if i needed a color i would go to ISWest.com. First of all, this is because we are in Los Angeles and both of ISWest’s data centers are in Los Angeles. I visited two of their data centers and was impressed with their infrastructure and security measures. They are not cheap but they are definitely worth it.