Good hosting is crucial to any website. They are the foundation of your website, your brand, and your business. Any server downtime could potentially hurt and ruin everything you’ve developed over the years. If you are serious about your website, you need to make sure they are in good hands.
It is tough to choose between web hosting companies these days, especially as we are always overwhelmed by tempting promotions web hosting companies are throwing at us.
If you are looking to get a web hosting account, here is an article we figured you might take a look before getting carried away by tempting promotions and marketing gimmicks.
Here are some guides to make you a smarter consumer when it comes to getting your web hosting account.
A free domain certainly sounds nice, however here are some things you might need to take note of before agreeing to the free domains provided:
It’s better to ask questions during the research process to know who will own the domain and also make sure that the standard renewal fees costs are acceptable.
Domain names don’t have to be registered at the same company. Don’t take us the wrong way; we are not implying that your current web host is not trust-able; it’s more about finding a dependable and trustworthy registrar right from the start.
After all, the domain name is your online identity, the most expensive and irreplaceable asset while hosting services are just there to accommodate the website.
You may argue for convenience’s sake. Of course, web-hosting companies would prefer to have your domain registered with them, as it is their other profitable revenue stream.
However, it won’t be that convenient if the web hosting company decides to go down together with your domain.
Bandwidth and disk space are terms often ignored by people shopping for shared web hosting.
You should ask yourself, “What if my website becomes really popular overnight, and draws in thousands or millions of visitors? Will I pay a hefty charge for the huge data transfer?“
Of course, most websites won’t go past their bandwidth quota by high traffic alone, but if you provide some files for downloads on your website, it can potentially happen.
Unlimited Storage seems like a great offer doesn’t it? That’s what some web hosting services want you to think. But, there is no such thing as “Unlimited Storage”.
Have you ever study the TOS of your web hosting service thoroughly? If you’re like many people, you’ll scan it and don’t read it carefully. Somewhere in the TOS, there is a section that mentions CPU/Server Usage.
To sum it up, basically, it says if your website uses more than a certain amount of storage, it violates the TOS and will subject to termination. Of course, it is necessary for just about every hosting service to have something like that in their Terms of Service to protect resources on their servers from improper usages.
However, many web-hosting services are using the CPU/Server Usage to get around their Unlimited Storage promises.
One common way is to insert the following query “web_hosting_company sucks” and see what the results returned are. You’ll be surprised by the number of consumers that had complained about their web host.
This list may give you an idea, but you should not take it for granted because:
In an online business like web hosting service, where companies are ready to pay one year of revenue for one customer, it might be unwise to go shopping without finding for commission rebates or coupons.
Of course, you’ll find many hosts that don’t give out coupons or don’t even have an affiliation program, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good hosts.
The following question might have crossed your mind – Should we trust and rely on our hosts to backup our files? Of course not. While the host needs to perform regular backups, it can be considered unwise not to do off-site backups.
Always use PayPal for the transaction if you are not an American, and PayPal is the only US Dollars you have. It may be impractical, slow, and costly to ask your local bank do the conversion.
If you have no choice but to use your Credit Card, make sure the company is a reputable one to avoid ending up an unpleasant ride.
We’ve seen how companies are giving us a ridiculous discount for paying two years up-front. Unless the web host has an excellent track record, else think twice.
Editor’s note: This post is written by Raja for Hongkiat.com. Raja maintains the community-powered web hosting reviews site HostWisely.com. He regularly publishes interesting articles on web hosting, web development, and the latest hosting deals and coupons.