Web Hosts – 7 Tips to Use When Looking for a Web Host

Before you are able to launch your own website, you need to look for a reliable web host. However you will not be able to find a good and reliable one unless you know what a web host is. A web hosting service is a kind of internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web.

In short web hosts are businesses who would be able to provide you with space on their servers for a specific fee. In order to put out a website online, you need a Web host. The Web host stores all the pages of your website and makes them available to computers connected to the Internet.

Choosing the right web host for you is important. The web host plays a major role on the overall user experience on your site. Finding a good web host shouldn’t be too hard, since there are thousands available.

So here are some things that you have to look into when choosing your web host.

Web Host Tip# 1: It should be reliable.

More often than not people will look into the disk space and the bandwidth offered by a certain web host. Unless of course your website is very popular you will hardly use even 10% the bandwidth on most hosting plan. Bandwidth is important yes, however that should not be your main concern, the main factor on your decision, therefore, should be the reliability of the host.

Reliability would pertain to the speed of the servers and the up-time. Your web host should have a minimum up-time of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low it really should be 99.5% or higher.

Web Host Tip# 2: Data transfer

When we talk about “data transfer” this simply means the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.

There are some web hosts who would advertise, “Unlimited bandwidth.” Do not be lured by this marketing line, they simply cannot afford to offer unlimited bandwidth because the web host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, then they are in trouble.

There are many website owners out there who felt good because they were able to take advantage of the “unlimited bandwidth” offer. However the surprise came when they got their bill which is of course way more than what they were expecting all because they have “exceeded” the “unlimited bandwidth”.

Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. I personally always stay clear of any host that advertises “unlimited transfer”; even if the exact amount is specified somewhere in their policy statements. Usually you will find that they redefine “unlimited” to be limited in some way.

Web Host Tip# 3: Bandwidth allotment

Currently, free web hosts are imposing a limit on the amount of traffic your website can use per day and per month. This means that if the pages which includes graphic images on your site is loaded by visitors beyond a certain number of times per day or month then the web host has the right to disable your website which is of course not good for your business.

It is really hard to set a specific number of bandwidth because it is dependent on how your website was designed, your target audience, and the number of visitors to attract to your website.

But to give you a rough idea 100MB traffic per month is too small for anything other than your personal home page and 1-3GB traffic per month is usually adequate for a simple site just starting out.

Web Host Tip# 4: Do not deal with “over-sellers”

Sometimes it is so tempting to deal with a web host who offers plenty of disk space, Terabytes of monthly bandwidth and unlimited domains. More so if they will only charge you with $6.00 a month for those things. But don’t you think this is like overselling? It sounds too good to be true right?
When choosing a web host look for a company that offers reasonable specifications for a reasonable price.

Web Host Tip# 5: Check the support service

Before you commit yourself and sign a contract you need to make sure that their support service is dependable.

What you can do is send a couple of emails to the sales support team and check how fast they were able to answer, how friendly they are and what degree of technical knowledge the operators have. If a company has a poor customer care department then most likely the other departments would just be as crappy.

Their technical support should be functional whenever you need it which means it should be available 24/7. If the web host does not have people working on weekends or holidays then that will not do at all.

Just because a web host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. To make sure that what they are saying is true it would be better if you put it to the test by sending an email at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond.

Web Host Tip# 6: Disk space

For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those web hosts who offer “unlimited disk space.” Most sites need less than 10 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 200 MB or 500 MB, keep in mind that you will not be able to consume that space so do not let the lure of “unlimited disk space,” be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts.

Web Host Tip# 7: Do not be cheap

If you are really interested to launch your website then you should know that there is a need to invest money on a good web host. If you want a reliable web host then be ready to shell out $10 to $20 per month on a web host. It is a bit more expensive than others however you can be assured of good service.

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