How to find a good web hosting company ?
There are hundreds thousands of hosting companies out there. Most of their services are similar, so how to find a REALLY GOOD one ? Here are some things you may want to look for in a hosting company, especially if your website is part of your overall marketing plan to sell products or services.
1. Instant Support - I particularly emphasize this element is the most important element when you choosing a web hosting company. Admit it, no web hosting company can guarantee for no error occurs for your web hosting services. So, how fast is their response to your website error is critical, at least, you know what is going wrong and when it can be recovered. Before you sign up to a hosting plan with a web hosting company, You can try to write an email, asking some common questions and see how long is their respond time, or , try call them up.
2. Find a local hosting - Why ? because you won't spent too much money on calling them when you need instant help. Further more, if your website is targeting on local market, then finding a local web hosting company can help to minimize your website download time.
3. Daily Backup - Sometimes you may accidentally delete or replace some files when you are using FTP to upload your webpages to your website. With the daily backup, you can ask the web hosting provider restore it back.
4. Email antivirus and antispam - This is must-have features in today's web hosting service. it will give your extra protection besides the antivirus software installed in your computer, and minimize the junk mails you receive.
5. Control Panel - The Control Panel where you control all aspects of your account, such as managing email accounts, reading statistics, and configuring autoresponders. Make sure your hosting company has a control panel for your needs.
6. Website Statistics – From a marketing perspective, it's important to know who is visiting your site and what pages they read. Your hosting company should keep track of all of this information for you, and present it in an easy to read format. Make sure your statistics are updated on a daily basis.
7. SEO Friendly - Yes, the quality of web hosting is also affecting the SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Unfortunately, it is very difficult to prove that their web hosting is SEO friendly. Here is a tip : try go to search engines like Yahoo, MSN or Google, searching "web hosting in Malaysia" ( Replace Malaysia if the hosting company is in other country) , If you can find the provider website, it mean this web hosting company is SEO frienly.
Others features such as support CGI/PERL, Front page extension support etc is too common to discuss here. Remember, price is not the most important element, the SUPPORT is ! Paying USD 80 per year for a good service is better than paying USD 50 per year for a lousy service. The different is only USD 30/year or only USD 0.08 per day and you can afford to pay the price.
The source of this article is written by me and from http://webhostingmalaysia.blogspot.com/
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James Tan
Malaysia Professional Web Design Company
Managed Hosting in Singapore and Singapore Web Hosting Provider
demonhale posted this at 15:24 — 23rd October 2005.
He has: 3,278 posts
Joined: May 2005
good article, thanks...
forumbulge posted this at 05:31 — 28th October 2005.
They have: 3 posts
Joined: Oct 2005
I disagree with finding a local host though. not everyone can do that and also any host worth their salt should offer quick email response to support requests.
Phone isnt really a big deal (to me anyway)
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Busy posted this at 10:04 — 28th October 2005.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
My findings are hosts will always give fast pre sales support, no matter how good or bad they are. Once you're signed up it's a whole different kettle of fish.
As for control panel, stats etc, just about all of them use Cpanel or similar which houses all that stuff so they don't actually give support for it, they just offer the bundles.
The things I like to find out (and you don't ask these things you snoop).
Do they over sell their severs (watch their member forums)
Do they have basic problems - can't automate CC payments, back up problems, limited DB connections, instant suspenion on over limits ... all can be found on their forums.
The biggest thing I watch out for on the forums is how many posts they delete. Most hosts will say they don't delete posts - that's crap. if the forums have a "how was your experience" type thread, watch and count the negative and netural feedback posts over a month or so and see how many get removed (you'll probably miss a lot of them) - this to me shows how good, honest and reliable a host is. If the host is good then they are expected to make mistakes, they are human but if they lie about things be sure you will get a raw deal.
jamestcs posted this at 14:27 — 28th October 2005.
They have: 24 posts
Joined: Sep 2005
Thanks for your input, BUSY, yes, you are right, i miss out that point- looks in their forum (if they have ) and view others people comment.
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James Tan
Malaysia Manufacturer and Supplier
Singapore Managed Hosting
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