Before you choose a hosting company for your business hosting needs it is imperative you do your research. There are numerous companies who provide exemplary business hosting options, but you must determine what is best for your company.

A website business hosting service is not just storage or bandwidth. There are many factors that determine a quality hosting company. Review the tips below to get on the right track.

·         A top-notch service is useless without customer support. Your hosting provider needs to be there for you 24/7 and give you the instant support you need to solve your problem, so you do not lose customers and money.

·         There is no host which is safe against different types of technical failures, so make sure the hosting company runs scheduled backups.

·         There is no unlimited bandwidth, nor unlimited web space. Host’s pay for each GB of bandwidth themselves. Hard drives also are not free. When a hosting company says unlimited it is false advertising in order to allure potential clients. The average website does not use more than 1GB of bandwidth per month. However, if you have a website using more bandwidth than an average site does, and you signed up with a business hosting company offering unlimited traffic, your host could suspend your account and inform you your site was using too much bandwidth.  For example, there are hosting companies who offer unlimited bandwidth and have a statement on their terms of service explaining that unlimited bandwidth means 40GB.

·         You should check if there is an uptime guarantee offered. A quality provider will give a money-back guarantee, offering a discount or free service as compensation for downtime. Do not select a business hosting solution promoting 100% uptime. There is no server with 100% uptime.

·         Do not sign up for a free business hosting plan because it does not provide the required features and security options necessary to operate your online business.

·         Finding a reputable hosting company is crucial. You can discover the reputation of hosting companies by searching for reviews on the internet. In addition, hosting forums are available where users discuss business hosting companies, their plans, etc.

·         Website hosting companies can have hundreds of clients per server; therefore you should check your business hosting company’s acceptable use policy. You do not want to put your business at risk and have your website hosted on the same server with illegal pornography and software websites. Hosting your site on a neglected server can result in low speed. Also, if someone on the same server sends SPAM the server’s IP address can be blacklisted and you can have problems as recipients stop receiving your emails.

·         Cost is important and you should compare different business hosting provider plans, but features and reliability should be given priority.

·         Remember for an ecommerce business, security is essential because you have your clients’ personal information – credit card numbers, social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, etc. This means the business hosting company you select must provide superior security to protect the data from theft.

*Did You Know— A network is only as powerful as its weakest link. Running a low-end server for network management may slow your entire system. Think of a server like an extension cord, it has to be able to pass enough electricity (or allow enough data through) to run everything.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.