Hundreds of hosting providers are competing these days to
attract customers in different ways. In most cases, their offers
look very similar, especially to those who are new to web
hosting, making the selection of a good hosting provider a very
difficult and confusing task.
If you are new to web hosting, you first need to know the basics
of web hosting. You should know the answers to the following
questions: What is a web host? What are the available host
server platforms? What are the differences between server types?
What is the bandwidth? What is a domain name? How Can I get one?
How can I create web pages? What are scripting languages? What
can I do with them? What is FTP? What features do I need for my
website?
If you don’t know the answers to the above questions, you can
find answers and hints here.
If you are only intending to build a small and simple personal
website to publish your pet’s (or family) pictures, then you
don’t need to worry, almost any hosting plan will meet your
needs. You can go for the cheapest provider, even free ones.
However, If you are about to build a business site to sell goods
or services, then you have to be careful about all the details
of your new web host. You must read, research, compare and then
decide. You don’t want to spend your time, effort and money to
attract customers to a website that is not up to your business
requirements; this will really hit your image.
It is certainly important to study the features required in the
hosting plan. You must know what does storage capacity,
bandwidth, platform and scripting languages mean, and how
important each one is for your new website, but this is not
enough, not at all.
After you shortlist the candidate hosts to only include the ones
that meet your requirements, do some research on providers’
history, read some unbiased reviews about their services and
explore some customer experience. These are the factors that
should make your final decision.
Be careful when researching such information about a provider.
Performing a quick search on google about “best web hosting” or
“top 10 hosting companies” will not directly return the right
and honest information. Most of hosting reviews sites are not
actually providing honest reviews. Instead of giving it based on
the quality of service, the highest ranks and best reviews are
actually given to the companies paying higher commissions to
their affiliates. I’ve seen this on quite a lot of review sites.
So, after you have narrowed your web host choices to several
providers, you’ll need to take a more in-depth look at them
before deciding which one you should go with. You have to
perform a thorough evaluation process which might take hours, or
even days, for each choice. Sources of information that can
support your evaluation process can be in:
1. At least three honest and unbiased review sites.
2. Several reviews in more than one web hosting forum.
3. Direct feedback from real customers of the candidate
providers.
Web Hosting Review Sites
Hosting directories and review sites are useful in the process
of narrowing your search, especially those who provide an
automatic search utility based on price, space, bandwidth, OS,
etc. which can save your time and effort in this aspect.
Avoid review sites with “top 10″ sort of recommendations. Go for
those which provide user reviews, and read the reviews
carefully. Compare reviews and user opinions from as much review
sites as you can, at least three. As stated above, be careful
when reading customer reviews as some hosts might encourage
their new customers to write favorable reviews by offering some
advantages.
Web Hosting Forums
Open forums are important source of reviews and customer
experience. They are open places where customers can write their
reviews and opinions about their hosts. However, they can have
the same problem as review sites: a provider can write very
positive reviews about his own company. The opposite might also
happen: competitors can write very negative reviews about their
competitors. In some forums, this activity is not permitted.
Moderators are strictly monitoring the forums for such
activities and deal with them in away that preserve their
honesty and credibility, but this cannot guarantee that all the
reviews are 100% accurate and honest. Keep in mind: what fits
with other users’ needs might not fit with your needs.
Search for “web hosting forum” in any search engine and you will
get hundreds of them. My favorite one is www.webhostingtalk.com.
Almost all forums have a search services from which you can
search for your candidate hosting provider’s name or URL. If you
get results for your search, read as much related threads as
possible. If you don’t get results you can post a thread asking
for customer reviews about the intended provider(s). Again,
don’t base your final decision on one opinion. Read reviews in
different threads on more than one forum.
Feedback from Customers
Some web hosts list samples of their customers. Others have
forums on their websites for support, where you will see
examples of issues raised by real customers and how did the
company dealt with. On those forums you might get addresses of
some customers. Try to contact those customers to find out what
they think about the service and support.
At this point, you can make a decision based on a combination of
the gathered information. You will most probably be satisfied
with the host you choose.
Author: Abbas Alafoo
Source: articleage.com
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