Now you understand what web hosting is, you may be wondering how to choose a web host.
If you search for web hosting you will see there are hundreds or
thousands of companies who are offering web hosting services. How do we
decide which is best?
There are a number of important considerations.
Do we want their specific platform, or do we want a generic web host?
What technology do we require from our web host?
Some web hosts offer a complete package including specialised software
to create websites using their platform. For example they might have
created a particular blogging engine, and if we get hosting from them it
must use their blogging engine. This can be very useful as it saves us
the effort of creating our own blog!
However, these platforms may
not be very flexible. Perhaps they can only be used in a certain way,
or for a certain kind of website. Later we may be frustrated that we
cannot do exactly what we want using this platform.
The
alternative approach to this is a more generic web host. For example, a
web host that offers simply basic Windows machines running IIS (or
Apache on Linux) gives us the complete technical freedom to do whatever
we want. We can put up our own HTML files for simple websites, or we can
write complex websites in a server-side language such as ASP.NET or PHP or Ruby.
The downside of this generic approach is that we have to write our own software, which is difficult and time-consuming.
Of course if you want to write a website in ASP.NET then you must choose a host which provides a web server that runs ASP.NET. And the same goes for PHP or Ruby or other server-side languages.
Sometimes there is a tradeoff – perhaps we can use a web host which
provides their platform, but they allow us to customise the code for our
own needs, or to run other sites alongside it for additional
functionality.
Technology is the most important initial
consideration, as you need to ensure your web host is capable of doing
everything your website requires.
Does the hosting company you are looking at have strong support
systems? Do they respond to support tickets rapidly? Hopefully you will
not need much support, but it is inevitable that you will encounter
problems and it is useful to have support.
It is worth noting
that the hosting company is not responsible for everything to do with
your site. They are responsible for ensuring the physical machine your
site runs on is available and accessible, and for any software on it
that they agree to install (for example the web server software).
However if your site has bugs or problems they are usually not your line
of support!
Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether a problem
is to do with your site or to do with the web host not working correctly
– in this instance you want to know that your web host is responsive to
support requests so you can find out and get to fixing it!
Also
always check the reputation of a company you are getting your hosting
from. Hosting contracts can be cancelled at any time, but you should
still ensure the business you are dealing with has a good reputation
amongst its customers.
How much storage space and bandwidth do you get with your web host?
If you are making a small site that you will access only every now and
then (for example, creating a family album just for yourself… and you
don’t want to use a large photo-sharing service because you like the
challenge of making your own website!) then you do not need a lot of
bandwidth.
However if you intend to create a website to rival
Facebook then you will need thousands of web servers and a lot of
bandwidth. Of course you wouldn’t begin by getting all that bandwidth in
advance! And if you are getting millions of hits per day then you
should probably start developing your own computing infrastructure..!
It is important to be realistic and realise you will not have massive bandwidth needs immediately.
But it is important to estimate your traffic accurately. Will you get 1
hit per day? Or 1000? Or 100,000? In each case you need to choose the
right amount of bandwidth.
Which brings us to…
The more computing power and bandwidth we want the more our hosting
will cost. For most sites we don’t expect a lot of traffic so we can
afford to choose a lower amount of bandwidth or computing power. These
days it is easy to scale up the power of a server if it starts getting
more traffic than expected, so it is wise to begin with the minimum
amount of power you think you will need.
You must budget wisely –
can you afford the monthly cost of this host? Paying more than you need
for hosting is not a good use of the money for your business or family –
look carefully at the costs, compare to other hosting companies that
have the same technology and choose one that appears reputable (check
the reviews!), and affordable for you.
There are a number of important considerations when choosing a web
hosting company. On the technical side you must consider the platform
and software they offer, and how customisable it is. It is important to
estimate your bandwidth requirements realistically. And choose a package
you can afford from a reputable company.
Good luck with your hosting!
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