Choosing thebest web hosting company to host your website is no easy feat. If you’re just starting out, then the decision of what web hosting company to choose may be easier as you’ll most likely be fine going with a starter package from any hosting provider. Issues like customer service, technical support, high reliability and good value for your dollar will most likely be of outmost importance to you. But, if you’re looking to host a website that you will be using for business purposes, then your needs will be different.
Business websites often include programming languages and ecommerce capabilities, and this puts these types of websites into a more complicated category. In order to choose the best web hosting company for a website with special features, one must deal with numerous issues and these issues will help determine what hosting company fits one’s website.
Here are the main issues that one must deal with:
- Unix Vs. Windows? You’ll definitely need a Windows hosting account if your website code is written in .Net or Active Server Pages as these types of websites will only function using Windows hosting. This is also true for Microsoft databases. If you are not using any of these technologies, then it is safe to use Unix. The rule of thumb is that the best web hosting company for you will preferably give you the option of either Windows or Unix hosting.
- Shared Vs. Dedicated Hosting? For small to medium sized websites, shared hosting accounts are perfectly fine because these types of sites will do not usually see a high amount of traffic. However, if your website will be experiencing large amounts of traffic, then dedicated hosting would be the best solution for you. Also, if you desire a substantial amount of administrative control over your website, or if your website will be running a complicated sets of scripts, multimedia content or databases, then the best web hosting company for you would, once again, would offer dedicated hosting plans.
- Quantity of Domains and Subdomains? Some web hosting companies have a cap on how many domains you can have within one hosting plan. Therefore, if you plan to have many domains then the best web hosting company for you would enforce no or very high limits for domains. There is nothing worse than having to expand and switch from one web hosting company to another solely because you chose the wrong web hosting provider to begin with.
- Amount of Disk Space? Before you decide what hosting plan to choose, you must consider this. More times than not, a web hosting provider will include an extremely large amount of disk space in a plan – more space then you will probably ever need. But, if you are planning on having a website high in multimedia content like videos, lots of space is a must. Look out for the levels of disk space and bandwidth available in hosting plans. The best hosting company for you must offer disk space suited to the space you will require.
- Ecommerce Features? Planning on selling products or services on your website? Then the best web hosting company for you will offer affordable and straightforward plans that include eStore features. Make sure they are clear about any extra charges.
- Scripts: If you’ll be using scripts like PHP modules, etc., then your hosting account must support them. Sites with blogs, MYSQL databases, guestbook’s, etc. must have the hosting backend to run them.
- Support: The best web hosting company offers a very high level of both technical and customer support free of charge.
- Uptime Guarantee? Any hosting company that offers a 100% uptime guarantee is lying. Downtime will always occur. Make sure the hosting provider has at least a 99% uptime guarantee, but 100% is not possible.
- Email Features? If you plan on using auto responders or other email features, make sure to see if they are available. Also be sure to check limits on email accounts you can have.
With small, uncomplicated websites, hosting is fairly straightforward. However, as seen above, the bigger and more feature-loaded a website is, the more hosting requirements it will need. In order to choose the best web hosting company for you, always make sure you go through the above list to determine what’s most suited for your website.
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