To some people finding a web hosting provider can be a scary thing because they are new to this “world”. WebHostRanking was there and understands how some of our readers feel. That is why we have put together a list of five things you should be looking for when choosing a web hosting provider. The great thing about this list is that is can be used by a novice web master or a web master looking to move to a new host.
Customer support- Customer support is the first thing that we are going to mention because we feel so strongly about it. It doesn’t matter if you are a novice or expert web master, you are going to need some help at some point during your web hosting contract period. When looking for a web hosting provider we like to look at two key features when it comes to customer support- What type is offered and what is the cost of it. Yes, some web hosting providers charge for customer support! Customer support should be free by all the top web hosting providers. No questions asked! When it comes to what type of customer support is offered, we like to see web hosts offering toll free phone support, email support, live chat support, and online tutorials. When a web hosting provider offers all those types of customer support, they earn high remarks by us.
Number of domains allowed- Now if you are a novice web master, you probably are going what the heck does that mean? This doesn’t refer to how many domains the web hosting provider allows on their servers, it refers to how many domains you are allowed to have on your account. Some hosts only allow one domain per account while others allow multiples or even unlimited domains. Take BlueHost for example. They allow you to have unlimited domains on your single web hosting account. To some people this may not sound like a big deal but if you have more than one website, this can only save you money in the long run. BlueHost allows you to host and access all your websites in one account. That means you only pay one monthly fee, not one for each website! The fact that a web hosting company doesn’t offer unlimited domains doesn’t mean they aren’t a good web hosting provider, it just means you may end up paying extra money for extra accounts down the road.
Control panel- The good old control panel. The control panel can cause you great pain or offer you all the ease you need to navigate around your web hosting account. One of the best control panels out there is the cPanel control panel and most of the top web hosting providers offer it. When looking at control panels, you want to find one that is easy to navigate, well laid out, and offers you all the tools you need to modify your account. This is also where you are going to access your customer support, renew your web hosting account, and add third party applications to your account.
Amount of data transfer/bandwidth- This is another area that web hosting providers can milk some extra money out of you. Data transfer or data bandwidth is basically how much data you can send across their web servers to your readers. If you have a well designed website that gets some good traffic, your data transfer is going to be higher than a website that gets no traffic. Every time a person views your website, you are transferring data. Some cheap web hosting providers only offer you 100 mb of transfer and if you use more than that they charge you an arm and leg! Oh, and they don’t bother to tell you that you are over your monthly allotment. Reliable web hosts consider data transfer as part of the business and offer you unlimited. iPage is one of the web hosting providers that offers you unlimited data transfer.
Price- In today’s day and age, price has to be looked at when choosing a new web hosting provider. The reason for us mentioning this is that there are some good web hosting providers out there can’t offer cheap web hosting like some of the big name hosts. The reason is they just don’t have the numbers. Hosts like BlueHost, iPage, InMotion, GoDaddy, they have a ton of customers so the overall cost divided by the number of customers is lower. Thus they are able to offer some amazing web hosting coupons to their potential clients. A solid web hosting plan should cost you no more than $3.95 a month. There are a couple that offer web hosting promos every once in a while that get it under $2.00 a month! Either way, paying $3.95 a month for web hosting is a great deal, especially if you factor in our other tips in this article.