Business nowadays is heavily dependent on email to communicate with their associates and customers. Therefore one of the most crucial decisions that most online businesses have to make is choosing the best web hosting service. With a popular or well known and reliable Internet Service Provider (ISP) you won't face many problems, however with a poor web hosting service provider it can be a nightmare.
Choosing the right kind of web hosting service can be a very daunting task for the new business owners at times as there are some technical features that you need to make sure of. Here you can find below what exactly to look for when choosing the best web hosting service.
Amount of web space: A web hosting service provider would usually assign you a certain amount of space on their server. You need to ensure that does it have the right amount of space for your website , emails and your business requirements. You might want to expand your online business tomorrow and would require much more space. So it's imperative for you that the web hosting company should be able to provide you with ample of space especially if your website is rich in graphics or has video clips. You will also need to take into consideration the number of email accounts for your company, a typical set up of 5 staffs will require individual email quota between 100MB to 500MB depending on the staff job scope and requirements. Therefore you should take at least a web hosting plan with 3-5GB of space.
FTP access: FTP access is very crucial since it provides the ability to upload new pages that is crucial for website updates.
Degree of reliability, security and speed of access: Speed, security and reliability are extremely important for the success of any online business. While choosing a reliable web hosting service you need to ensure that this is taken care of. A site that is not available, not updated on time or is down, will lose many online visitors. If an online visitor finds your site listed on a search engine, and he tries to access it but finds it down, he is sure to move on to the next link and you lose an important customer or visitor. Even slow working websites are very frustrating. So how do you know if a hosting company is reliable or not? By word of mouth or feedback from others! If that's not possible then you can yourself try accessing your site during peak hours and non-peak hours too. Your site has to be secure of intruders at the same time, especially if it's an ecommerce website. Many hosting provider provides Secure Sockets Layer or SSL to protect and encrypt sensitive data such as credit card information while passing it from your website to the credit card company data servers.
Dependence and support: Does the web hosting service provide 24x7 supports? Do they respond rapidly to your issue? Can you depend on them? If you need 24-hour technical support that larger companies need then expect to pay substantially more. In fact, people are much more expensive than machines.
Pricing plans : Price is also one factor that you should look out for when choosing the best web hosting service. It's not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best. Simply compare prices and services before you finalize one.
Data transfer (Bandwidth): You also need to see if the hosting company provides you with sufficient bandwidth for efficient data transfer. After all it's your website and you need to ensure that you are getting the best services for the money you invest.
