Web Hosting: Seven Things You Want

Nearly every business needs a website. For some, even a few seconds of downtime means the loss of several thousand dollars in revenue from potential customers. Reliable web hosting is an absolute necessity in today’s world, but with so many options to choose from, it can be hard to find your way. When you tell a company “host my website,” you need to know exactly what you’re looking for. Here are seven key web hosting things you should consider when you’re choosing a web host:

1. Cost

A prime factor is how much of a budget you have for hosting your website. Some hosts can cost you hundreds per month, with all the bells and whistles. Others offer bare-bones service for much, much less. Be sure to decide on how much you want to spend before you start shopping around, or you can easily get lost in all the optional extras that add up.
2. Customer Service

Web hosting customer service is one of the most critical things to factor in to your decision. A good host will offer 24/7 customer service and will be focused on making sure its customers have the best experience possible.

3. Technical Support

Similar to customer service, web hosting technical support is vital. If anything goes wrong, there needs to be someone available to fix it as soon as possible. Make sure you pick a host with full-time technical support.

4. Reliability/Uptime

While technical support is great to have when things go wrong or your site goes down, it’s much better not to have to worry about that to begin with. Do your research and find out how reliable a web host is before you buy. Ideally, you want something with as close to 100% uptime as possible.

5. Ease of Use

What’s the point of fancy hosting options if you can’t figure out how to make the most of them? Pick a web host with a simple control panel that doesn’t require a team of experts to use.

6. Number of Domains

If you’re a large company (or hope to become one) then you’ll want the option to add on domains. Many companies buy other versions of their domain names to increase traffic, and you want to be able to easily park these at your web host.

7. Size

Make sure that your hosting will fit your site! If you have an extraordinarily large site, you’ll need a lot of space to match it. Be aware of how much you need to buy and shop accordingly.