Finding the Web Hosting Co. That's Right for You

By Lee Creek

Whether you're a small business or a large corporation, if you're going to have a web site, you'll have to have a web host. Lee Creek offers sage advice on how to find the host that's right for you. At times, finding a good host for a web site is like discovering a fat guy appearing in an advertisement for a fancy health club -- it never happens unless they need a "before" model standing next to the well chiseled "after" guy. Sure, there are plenty of good web hosts out there, I'm told, but it can be difficult to find one that is right for a user's particular purpose. What may be an excellent choice for one user could be a major mistake for another. And that, my friends, is the first factor to consider when searching for a web host. What exactly do you need?

Finding the perfect host should begin by analyzing what is needed for the web site. If a host doesn't offer the services needed, then nothing else makes it worth bothering with, including price. Knowing what you need can also eliminate wasted time looking at hosts that do not offer services matching your needs. For individuals and some small businesses, the solution sometimes is as simple as storing the web site on the space they got when they chose their internet service provider. Those sites usually cost about $20 a month and come with a limited amount of space or data transfer allowance. Frequently, however, that allowance is too little, and/or the host may not offer other services that a small company may require, including e-commerce or CGI-bin access or even customer service. Further, the ISP may also charge a punishing fee for those who exceed their allotted storage and usage amounts. That is why it is important to not only consider current needs but to allow for future growth. Another thing to think about is the location of the hosting company. While brick and mortar businesses are sometimes limited geographically, internet businesses have the world in reach at the touch of a button. Thus, if you cannot get a good local company to meet your hosting needs, look around for the company that best suits your needs and billfold, and don't worry about location. However, you do want to make sure they have a toll-free number to use to contact them. People are often lured by free web hosting sites, but that comes with a cost that is sometimes too high. The dollars may be right, but users are forced to build their site with the hosting company's online builder, costing time to make changes, more difficult, and often virtually impossible to customize. Another factor with free web hosting is that it can require the user to put up with ads or aggravating watermarks that appear on all the pages on their sites. To eliminate that problem, users should choose hosting companies that allow 24/7 FTP access. Changes that need to be made can be made as the user needs, and they can be customized to the user's desires. Is the host reliable?

The next item to check out are the ISP's downtime history, for obvious reasons: If the server is down, so is your web site. My current host site was great at first, but recently the server has been down almost as much as my stock shares; thus, I am on the lookout for a good ISP (and an even better stockbroker). It is very frustrating to pay for something you don't get, and how many of us have gotten home from the local fast food restaurant only to discover the beef is missing. That is probably the same feeling users have when they (or anyone else) cannot access their web site or e-mail. When considering a host site, ask them what their uptime percentage is, and it should be just under 100 percent. Any lower than that, you'd be better off posting your web site at that fast food restaurant. Clearly, failure to stay up and running can be costly to e-commerce businesses, but it is just as costly to companies that depend on the web for part of their advertising and public identification. One way to get a true reading on a hosting company's reliability is to check with some of its existing clients to determine what they think about it. Any one of them can be an eye opener, so make sure you check with several to get a real picture. Give your host a call - if you can!

Free telephone support from your web hosting company is critical. Why? If the server is down, there goes your e-mail capabilities, too. I recently found a company of interest to me, but when I asked them for their 24/7 telephone support number, they said they only offered e-mail support. Perhaps they are expecting users to write letters to report their problems when the server is down, but I'll never know because I immediately scratched them off my list. Some companies may not have a toll-free number to call, but at least the support itself is free. Others charge for the support, which means you pay that in addition to the cost of the telephone call. Perhaps the best way to determine how reliable a web hosting company's support is, is to send an e-mail to them on Saturday night. If you don't get a response until Monday, then you will know that in the future that if problems occur early in the weekend, your site will probably stay down until the work week begins on Monday. That could be quite costly. At this point, if your ISP has not met the criteria discussed above, it may be time to be looking for another home for your web site. Moving to another site can be a pain, but your domain registrar can usually be of help, and so can the host you choose to replace the old one.