Do You Have The Best Hosting Plan For Your Business Website?

The Internet is a global marketplace and setting up a website for your business has become a commodity that many businesses could ill afford to do without. Before you even begin to look at web design, filling your site with optimised content, and improving your online ROI you must find the most appropriate web host. Every website is different and has different requirements, so the first step is deciding exactly what you will require from your host.

Operating System

The first choice you will need to make is whether you require the Windows operating system or a Unix based server. If you want to use ASP then you will require a Microsoft Operating System. However, the more popular Unix server is cheaper and arguably more stable. There are also a vast amount of free plugins and scripts that are widely available on the Internet for Unix based servers.

Reliability And Network Uptime

Reliability and customer service are two related items. Every minute that your site is down, is a minute when you are losing potential revenue. Commercial web hosts should provide an uptime guarantee and this guarantee needs to be as close to 100% as possible. A 99% guarantee is nowhere near good enough for a business website and will mean that, on average, your website will be inaccessible for an hour every four days. You should look for a minimum of 99.9% uptime.

With a lot of hosting providers it is more a case of when your site will be inaccessible and not if. Try to choose a responsive host that gives adequate warning when they know that a server will be offline. The best hosting providers will ensure that, when a server requires routine maintenance, a backup server is in place and ready to be used for this period, ensuring there is no outage for your website.

Customer Service And Technical Support

You will need to rely on customer service and technical support in the event that something goes wrong with your website. If you are shopping around for a website host then pick up the phone and try calling the numbers that are provided. Ensure that calls are answered in reasonable time at seemingly unreasonable times of day. In the virtual world, 24 hour support is near essential although marginally less important if you only offer a local service from your own site.

Disk Space And Bandwidth

Disk space and bandwidth seem like the most important factors to many hosting hunters. In reality, though, the majority of websites will never come close to using even the smallest shared hosting allowances. Ignore the hype of unlimited bandwidth and disk space, because there will be limitations in the terms of agreement. By all means ensure that you will have reasonable disk space and bandwidth but unless you are building a behemoth of a site you are unlikely to need masses of space.

Compatibility

If you are planning on having a dynamic site developed then you will require more than just HTML hosting. Most hosts offer a variety of PHP, Perl, and other compatible languages but be sure. Be careful that you do not need to gain prior consent to install CGI scripts or similar scripts because it can take time to gain this consent with less responsive hosts. You will want to install new features as quickly as possible and a delay may prove troublesome.

FrontPage Extensions

If you are developing the site yourself and will be using software like Microsoft FrontPage then you should be aware that FrontPage uses proprietary extensions that are not supported by every by default. You will need to look around for a hosting plan that does offer FrontPage extension support. If the software you use creates HTML pages then this won't be a concern.

Email Options

Email accounts are another feature that are included with almost all commercial hosting accounts. As well as ensuring that you have an adequate number of accounts included with your hosting, look for catch-all accounts, auto-responders, mailing list management features, and even anti-spam scanning. If you, or anybody that will be using your domain email, intends to use an email client to download the messages check that the account is compatible.

Control Panel

The control panel is the hub of your website management. A good control panel enables you to to quickly and easily navigate around the administrative backend of your website without trouble. It may also let you manage your hosting account, especially important if you have multiple email addresses, domains, and subdomains.

Final Points When Choosing A Hosting Plan

You must consider all of these factors before looking at the price. While budget is obviously an important factor in any business decision it should not come at the cost of reliability or functionality of your website. Also bear in mind that what might suffice for your website now, may not be enough in the future. Websites, like businesses, grow and expand over time so be sure that you have the ability to increase your hosting plan accordingly.