What to Look for in a Hosting Company
If you’re building a website, you won’t get very far without a hosting company. Think of your website as a home. The hosting company is the landowner who owns that real-estate you’re building that home on. As such, you pay them regularly for the right to stay there. While this may seem like a fairly straightforward relationship, there are countless hosting companies out there, and none of them are the same. Continue reading to learn about what you should look for in a hosting company.
Attentive Support
No matter how well you design your website, there’s no chance you won’t experience issues at some point. This is just as true when it comes to the server you’re on. The best hosting companies out there can’t guarantee 100% uptime, so your site is bound to suffer some issues in the future.
While your hosting company can’t do too much about these issues, it certainly has a say in how it handles them. You’ll want to research any of your candidates to learn about their technical support’s reputation. Remember, even when your website is down, you’re paying to keep the lights on. The sooner the technical support team can handle the problem, the sooner you can be back up and running.
CMS Friendly
Content management systems have been one of the best things to happen to the Internet. Called CMS for short, the best example of these systems is WordPress. The website started out by letting people easily develop blogs, but over the years it has been one of the favored methods for creating fully-functional websites.
As hard as it may be to believe, some hosting companies still don’t recognize the potential of CMS and haven’t made the effort to accommodate them. Even if you already have a website built, and you’re simply looking for a new host, take this point into consideration. You may want a blog for your site someday, and there’s no easier way to handle that than with a CMS.
Handles Growth Well
If you’re creating a website, chances are you have high hopes for the future. Whether that means a bigger site with more features or a better blog with more readers, you’ll want to make sure the hosting company you’re considering will be able to handle this growth in the future.
For example, you don’t want to be charged for abnormally large amounts of traffic. You might write the perfect blog post, see it goes viral and then find out that all that exposure came with a bill. While this is fairly typical in instances where a significant spike occurred, you should still find out what the amount would be.
Professional Add-Ons
Any hosting company you buy through will try to add to your sale by offering other features. While there’s nothing wrong with that, you should expect a clear explanation from them for why a certain add-on would be worth your money. If you see add-ons that you simply know aren’t worth it at any price, reconsider doing business with the company.
While a hosting company is important, don’t jump into picking one immediately. You can save yourself a lot of money and trouble by considering the above aspects as they relate to any of your options.
Source:
http://www.managedits.com/blog/entry/5-things-to-look-for-in-a-web-hosting-company.html