When business owners are looking to start their first website, they often focus on website design the most. Once they have the right website design that focus shifts to m…
When business owners are looking to start their first website, they often focus on website design the most. Once they have the right website design that focus shifts to marketing efforts. Search engine optimization, email marketing, pay per click marketing, affiliate marketing, banner marketing etc. the world of internet marketing is huge and busy. What these businesses often overlook in all of this is the importance of picking the best and most reliable website host. There are a few points that should help you identify the best website hosting company out of the bunch. Here are the important ones:
- Their Uptime Is Good
If there is a website host that says they have an uptime of 98%, steer clear from them. 98% up time is not good at all. Look at it from a different angle i.e. the downtime is 2%. What this means it that your website will be down for nearly half an hour every day. This translates to your website being down for nearly one and a half day every month. So, it might look like a good figure to see an uptime of 98% but it is actually very deceptive. You should not settle for any website host that guarantees an uptime of less than 99.9% or maybe 99.98%. Having your website down for a full day and half every month can mean a loss of thousands of dollars or more depending on the size of your business.
- They Are Good at a Particular Type of Hosting
If you search around for some time, you will find out that every website hosting company is good at a particular type of hosting. There are many different types of hosting such as shared hosting, virtual private server hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated hosting, managed hosting, reseller hosting etc. If you are looking for shared hosting for your website, pick a host that is known for shared hosting. In a similar way, if you are looking for managed website hosting, look for a host that is known for managed website hosting. When they focus on a particular type of hosting, they integrate and incorporate the software and hardware technology that is specifically suited for that type of hosting.
- They Host Multiple Domains
In a world where buying a domain and starting a website has become so easy, you would want convenience of managing your multiple domains from your website host. You might not realize the importance of being able to put multiple domains on your website host’s server but you will definitely realize it later. Domain names are cheap today and most website owners are not able to resist the temptation of owning multiple domains. You are very likely to face this scenario as well. If your website host allows hosting multiple domains, you will not have to spend more money on picking another host.
- They Have a Good Customer Support
One can write a book on qualities that a web host should have but none of the other points will be as important as this one. You might not realize it but good customer support is more important than you can imagine. There will be many occasions when you will need help from someone regarding your website. Maybe a certain component of your website’s CMS is not functioning properly. Maybe you are not being able to upload a newer version of a web application. Worse yet, your website is down and you want to know why it is down and when it will be up. You need someone on the phone to give you a satisfactory answer. Without a scrupulous customer support, you will find yourself stranded.