Good Web Hosts? What am I looking for?

Most Good webhosting companies offer all of the following and more as part of their standard packages. We will talk you on some of the components of webhosting facilities -- they actually appear as TIPS, well they are. Everybody's needs are different: cheap webhosting, dedicated hosting, co-location hosting or virtual private servers (VPS). Some things to keep in mind when looking for a suitable webhosting solution may include:

• Location of servers. While dedicated hosting packages provide a great value, customers who have already invested in their own hardware will benefit from co-location packages. Co-location packages require customers without their own equipment to invest in these resources prior to inception of any agreement. These customers without equipment may instead opt for a dedicated server package.

• Price and billing period. When shopping for a host, you’ll find that they vary widely in terms of target and pricing. Some hosts skew their servers to accommodate many small sites, while others prefer to take on fewer, high-volume sites. If you inadvertently exceed the monthly "cap" on your site’s permitted volume, you could quickly find that a little success can be your worst enemy, as your monthly fees make a significant jump. Be sure to strike a good balance between price and volume flexibility.
  
  Many hosts will quote you a monthly fee, but bill in larger increments. You could sign on for a month, and find yourself promptly billed for a year’s service. Ask about the billing period, and initially sign on for a small service term (60-90 days). If you’re happy with the service after this trial period, extend the term.

• Speed. Connectivity time will fluctuate on a cyclical basis with the flow of daily traffic, but you should insist on a guaranteed connectivity rate of 95% when seeking a host. The more powerful the server, the faster it can serve up website pages. Slower, smaller servers may result in frustrating lag time for viewers. High traffic can also slow servers that are not powerful enough to handle high volumes of data exchange. This lag time should be a concern if you are shopping for a web host. Most web hosts have a page dedicated to sharing technical information about their web server, including speed, capacity, network configuration and other details.
  
  In theory, web servers stay connected to the Internet 24/7, 365 days a year. In truth they experience occasional downtime due to maintenance and technical problems. Web servers with consistent records of an uptime of 99.5% or better are considered reliable.

• Disk space. As your customer base and revenue grows, your site may require the addition of server-side scripting, eCommerce and database support, and a large bandwidth to accommodate audio and video streaming. Free hosting sites never offer these kinds of advanced features, but many commercial hosts don’t offer them either. Make sure your host is big enough to accommodate your future needs, as well as your present ones. You can always buy additional disk space or switch plans as your site grows.

• Data transfer. Always put prime consideration to the speed with which data can be transmitted from one device to another. Data rates are often measured in megabits (million bits) or megabytes (million bytes) per second. These are usually abbreviated as Mbps and MBps, respectively. Another term for data transfer is rate is throughput.

• Support – just email or also phone. No matter how renowned your host is, technical problems will occur. As such, demand 24-hour, 7-days-a-week technical support for all your applications. If a host claims to already offer this, check! Call their tech line at 3:00a.m. on a Sunday to see if anyone is really there. Ensure that there is some sort of written agreement regarding service, which ideally will provide you with financial compensation in the event of failure.
  
  Webhosting customers should receive priority email support staffed by qualified technicians ready to help. It is the recommended method of sending support questions if you are unable to phone in for support.

• Pre-installed features.  The Control Panels should have everything from Message Boards to chat rooms to Photo Galleries to Integrated Shopping Carts and much more. It should be all there, all included.
  
  
• Add-ons – free or paid.  Check the pre-installedsoftware list and consider the “at no extra cost” claim.
  
  
• Domain name –included or extra. If you need a domain name, your webhost may offer very low pricing on domain name registration. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages. For example, in the URL http://www.fwhn.com/support/, the domain name is fwhn.com. A domain name allows someone to access your web site through a web browser.