Are you looking to start up a website, but don't know what steps to take to get it done.
Finding a reliable and affordable web hosting provider can be one of the most important decisions you can make. Once you choose your web hosting provider, many people will not change companies if they are unhappy. Instead, they will just complain about the bad service and unreliable hosting. They figure it will be too much of a burden to change web hosts. This being said, it is increasingly important to choose a good reliable web hosting provider to begin with.
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So, what should you look for?
Well, for starters you should look for reliability. Find out what the web hosting companies "up-time" is. That is the amount of time that the website will be available online. An uptime of 99.9% is obviously good, but believe it or not, 97% or 98% is not that great. 98% uptime means your website was offline for over 3 hours that week. That's three hours that a customer can't get to what you want to sell them. Think about this; have you ever tried to go to a website and had it not come up? Did you go back to that site later, or did you find what you were looking for somewhere else.
The next thing I look for is ease of use. How difficult is it going to be to host a website with that provider? Am I going to have to use my own editor and learn how to upload files and manage the pages? Or do they have a site builder, or templates I can use. How are you going to manage the website? Do they have a good control panel?
What kind of support does this reliable web hosting provider offer? Do they have 24/7 support? Is that support over the phone, or chat? Or do you have to e-mail them or put in a "support ticket" and they'll get back to you? I don't know about you, but I prefer phone support or online chat.
One of the last things I look for in a web hosting provider is price. I don't want to sacrifice any of the above for a couple of dollars a month. But, all things being equal, I don't want to pay per month when I could have paid per month for the same thing.
You need to be careful here, there are a few web hosts that offer free hosting. You've heard the saying "you get what you pay for". You need to ask yourself if you are going to get a reliable, easy to use hosting account that offers good technical support. If it is for free, you will definitely be sacrificing something. Is that worth saving or per month? Also, the free web hosts usually place ads on your site. This is putting your competition directly on the top of your website! You're going to save per month in hosting fees, but what's it going to cost you in lost sales that went to your competitor?
The biggest thing I look for with price is "How much does it cost if I pay one month at a time?" Most web hosting providers offer great deals if you pay 12, 24, or 36 months in advance. You definitely should take advantage of this BUT, find out if that provider is going to suit your needs for the next 1, 2, or 3 years first. Try it out for a month at full price before you choose to pay yearly and get the discount. Or, better yet, if they offer a 30 or 45 day money back guarantee, go ahead and pay the lump sum up front if you wish. This way after three or four weeks, if you don't like the provider, simply get a refund.
Basically, you need to define what your needs are and match them with a suitable web hosting provider. Somebody that has no technical skills and only has a basic understanding of how to use their computer shouldn't be trying to design their own website on their own and uploading the files to the web hosting provider. Those people should be looking for a provider that offers a good "site builder" and templates so you can create your website easily online. Someone that has good computer skills and can use their own editing program such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver should be more concerned with the unlimited domains, and web pages.
