Should you Choose Paid Hosting?

A website is only as good as the hosting service hosting it. Good website hosting makes your site available for users everywhere and allows them to access your site with a minimum of problems. Bad web hosting, by contrast can cause problems such as excessive downtime, which can be deadly to your site.

When you decide which web hosting company to use, you will discover that there are free hosting sites and paid hosting sites. Free hosting has the big advantage of being free, but there are disadvantages. The main disadvantage is having to run banner ads over which you have no control. Also, your domain name will have the hosting company’s name as a part of it, and your site will have more restrictions than it would with paid hosting.

You almost always get better service with paid hosting. In fact, for business websites, paid hosting is pretty much essential for e-commerce sites. With paid hosting you don’t have to have the hosting company’s ads on your site, and you can choose any adverts you have (if you have advertising on your site at all). You will have more flexibility with paid hosting than you do with free hosting. Whether you have a basic website, or whether you have huge databases and different media like videos, paid hosting will accommodate you much more easily. In fact, some free hosting sites are very restrictive in how large your site can be.

Even if you only need minimal bandwidth and disk space, you’re still often better off with paid hosting. If your site includes large downloads or large databases, paid hosting will give you the most options as far as shared versus dedicated versus virtual dedicated hosting. Paid hosting will also give you more options as to whether you want to take care of the site yourself or if you want someone else to do it.

There are, as you might expect, large differences in price between paid web hosting services. Even within one hosting service there may be a range of prices for different hosting needs. You can pay anywhere from a few dollars a month to hundreds of dollars per month. Fortunately, it is a very competitive industry, and prices are generally coming down.

Free hosting often comes with its own headaches, and you’ll probably have a harder time getting them resolved. Lack of support is one of the main problems with free web hosting. Such problems are much less likely with paid hosting. In general paid hosting services have much better technical and customer support than free services. Most good paid hosting services have around the clock support involving the help of real people rather than just an answering machine. You’ll also receive statistics of your visitors and other site analytics when you have paid hosting. They also usually want very much to have satisfied customers, so they want you to speak up when you have issues.

Choosing from among the thousands of web hosting platforms can be difficult. If your site targets a particular geographic region, you’ll do better if your website is hosted by a company from that area. You should ask yourself and your potential web hosts what you really need for your website to be successful. A good website host will be able to answer your questions and can become a valuable team member when it comes to getting your site the attention that it deserves.

Is Managed Dedicated Server Hosting Right for You?

If you have dedicated server website hosting, it means that you have a whole server to yourself. The servers actually “live” with the hosting service, but they’re set aside for use by one client. That means that if you need to update your software or add on another piece of hardware, you can do so without asking anyone’s permission.

A managed dedicated server is actually managed by the hosting service rather than by the website owner. This is great because the hosting service takes care of setup, security, privacy, and customer and tech support, freeing you up to focus on the business itself.

There are some people who will have trouble allowing others to directly manage their server. But for most people running a business, it is a relief letting experts deal with the technical things. Most people don’t have the time to learn all the ins and outs of installing an operating system or adding more memory. In many cases it is best to let the host service cope with such things.

Managed dedicated servers are quite a step up from the plain vanilla dedicated servers. When you have someone whose job it is to monitor your website and help you if you need customer or technical support, you can almost always be certain that your website will be up and running 99.9% of the time. In many cases you can get your money back if you sign with a dedicated server host and they fail to deliver on their promises.

Perhaps the best benefit of managed dedicated servers is that the hosting service monitors your server 24/7. If there are technical problems, the host company will fix it. If your business does not have a dedicated team devoted to IT, this is the next best thing.

Sure, managed dedicated servers cost more up front, but in the long term they can cut costs in many ways. You’ll eliminate the cost of having your own IT team administer the server. Security, software installation, and back up facilities come free of charge with managed dedicated servers. That saves you from having to hire another person.

Technical support, however, is where dedicated servers really make themselves indispensible. Your host can be of great help in troubleshooting and resolving problems as quickly as possible. The host takes care of fire and theft security and often has a nifty set of web tools you can use to get your site just the way you want it.

The net effect of going with managed dedicated servers is that your data will be more secure. And if you’re not well versed in things like server setup then you’re far better off going with a firm that manages all that Internet stuff for you. Managed dedicated server hosting is one of the best choices you can make as far as taking care of your website properly.

Is Free Web Hosting a Good Idea?

Anybody who has considered having their own website has probably thought of using free web hosting. Is it a good idea? There are a lot of factors to take into account when you decide to use a free web host. It’s a good idea to take a critical look at all those factors.

First, you need to know about the host’s reputation for reliability. How long has the host been in business, and how many people use them? You can probably use Google or another search engine to find out how long the hosting service has been around. The size of their forum will give you a clue as to how many users they have. Of course, what’s in the forums will give you a lot more information that you can’t really get anywhere else.

One important thing when it comes to free hosting is that host’s resources. How much disk space and bandwidth you get are the two most important parameters. If your site uses MySQL, you’ll need to know if the host supports that.

When it comes to free web hosting, you also need to check on the finer details. Sometimes with “free” web hosting you get what you pay for. Little things like customized error pages are things you might not need very often, but for those times when you do need them, they can really be important.

It’s a good idea to check out any reviews on the free web hosting site you’re interested in. There are plenty of web sites that make a specialty of reviewing web hosting, both free and paid. Often you can find out quickly if a host you’re considering is worth looking at. Also check out other sites they host. Do they load fast? Are they decent sites? Checking out their current clients can help you a lot when you’re evaluating whether they’re right for you.

Before signing on with even a free web host, be sure you read their terms and conditions. Sometimes they will be very restrictive in what kind of websites they host. Plus, you may have to run banner ads that are garish and detract from your web design. It’s a pain to read the fine print, but it’s important even when no money changes hands. Are there any bizarre clauses on things like acceptable use that could restrict your site from looking its best?

To sum up, free web hosting can be a perfectly acceptable choice for those who are running personal sites or who are trying out different website designs. There are plenty of them out there, and it’s easy to find out how much disk space and bandwidth you’ll be allowed. Do your homework and make sure the free web host is good enough to meet your needs.

Finding Good Web Hosting

There are more choices in website hosting than you can shake a stick at. Everywhere you look hosting companies are offering you “the best” web hosting at low cost, or even for free. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? It will take a little research, but you can figure it out and best of all, if you end up making a poor choice, you can almost always get your money back and go elsewhere.

There are a bunch of things to consider when it’s time for you to choose a web host.

You must consider how fast a web connection the web host provider has. You want them to have a “backbone” connection of at least T-3 speed, and you want them to have multiple connections in the event of a connection drop. Data speed is very important because if your customers or readers can’t get your site to load quickly, they’ll go somewhere else.

A stable connection is good too, as is a 99.8% or better guaranteed uptime. It is a wise idea to find out about your candidate host’s stability by asking other customers about their experiences with the host. People will tell you flat out if they had problems, and it’s easier learn these things up front before you lock yourself into a multi-month contract.

Of course, they must have adequate equipment. If a hosting provider doesn’t have hardware sufficient to support your business, they’re no longer candidates. They should also perform daily data back ups and provide plenty of bandwidth at peak periods and throughout the day.

When choosing a good web host, compare prices and see that you’re getting the features you need at the best possible price. Consider your future needs as well. Does the host company offer upgrade packages? The good ones almost always do. They’re as anxious for your site to grow as you are. And by the same token, don’t let a host provider sell you features that you do not need. Only pay for what you need in a web host.

If you will be hosting an e-commerce site, check to see what kind of e-commerce software and goodies the hosting provider has. Most have things like shopping cart programs and secure transaction programs. If you already have this software, choose a host who can run it or who has software you’ll be comfortable using.

Security is of huge importance in choosing a web host. When you’re wondering whether your data is secure, it’s hard to sleep at night. You don’t want to compromise on this. Make sure that you discuss with any web host you consider what kind of security systems they have in place to cope with fire, flood, and theft. Think about it: if your site gets hacked, your customers are going to blame you, not your host company, even if it’s the host company’s fault.

Access to high quality technical support is vital if your website has a problem that you can’t fix. Find a provider that has 24/7/365 live support. Hosting is a very competitive industry, and this is a common feature to have. Read up as much as you can about their technical and user support capabilities. It’s also a good idea to call the toll free number late at night or at an odd hour to see for yourself how prompt they are at answering your phone calls. And ask other clients what their customer service experience has been.

Finding that perfect web host depends mostly on your needs as the person or business who needs website hosting. Know what your needs are, evaluate as many candidate providers as possible, and make the most informed decision that you can.

Could Co-location Work for You?

Co-location is one of your options for web hosting. If you’re thinking about exploring co-location, you probably wonder if it is a good idea for you. While there are several advantages to co-location, there are also disadvantages. The first step, however, is to understand what co-location is.

Co-location Defined

When you transfer your hardware, servers, and other systems equipment to the physical premises of another company that will give you the space, power, and bandwidth that you need for your site, the setup is called co-location. There are a number of benefits to co-location, one of which is the amount of floor space you’ll free up at your own business site. You can, in some cases save a fair amount of money.

Systems that you use for things like data management, data storage, telecommunications, web hosting, or e-commerce sometimes require specific types of storage environments. Maintaining this environment, which includes things like narrow range air conditioning, can cost a lot of money, and there are also the man-hours involved with making sure the equipment is running properly.

When it’s time to talk to a data center you’re considering for co-location, you’ll find that you use their equipment housing facilities at a nominal price. Data centers are designed to hold a lot of equipment, and economies of scale allow them to store one company’s worth of equipment at a lower price than you would pay outfitting your own premises. The more clients the data center has on its books, the lower the amount they have to charge you to make a profit because their overhead costs are far lower.

Services to Expect

Sometimes the services include a secure setup, power supply systems with back up generators in the event of a power failure, battery backup for the time during the switchover from a main power system to the back up power supply, and specially designed storage cabinets and racks that are designed to house computer equipment properly and safely.

Co-location companies also have fire prevention and theft prevention security. Some data centers will let you work physically on-site or remotely from your office. If this is something you want to do, make sure up front that you’re allowed to. Co-location gives you the benefits of more in the way of usable office space, houses your equipment securely, and takes the burden of monitoring the health of your computer equipment off your back. It is definitely worth considering.

Web Hosting Directory Can Help Find Cheap Website Hosts

You want to get a good deal for your money, but you don’t want to sacrifice quality just to get cheap web hosting. That’s the benefit of selecting a company with the help of a web hosting directory.

What is a web hosting directory?

A web hosting directory is a list of hosting companies. This type of directory will tell you what services each company has available as well as their prices (which can range from really cheap to really expensive).

How do you benefit from a web hosting directory?

Good web hosting directories benefit you because they provide information on multiple hosts all in one place. You can review the various hosts listed and find one that provides the quality services you need at a price you can afford. A well run web hosting directory includes only those hosting companies with the experience needed to host your site regardless of what the Internet throws at it each day.

Is it a good idea to choose cheap website hosting?

It’s a good idea if you approach this decision with the correct definition of cheap website hosting. Keep in mind that cheap should refer to only the price and not the quality of the hosting service. Approaching this decision with the wrong definition in mind could end up getting you hosted on a cheap server whose owners are too cheap to hire support technicians.

This is where a well run web hosting directory can benefit you. How do you know the directory is good? Keep reading and find out.

How do you know if a web hosting directory is good or not?

A good web hosting directory maintains enough listings of top web hosting services, especially cheap website hosting companies, to give you enough options when making an informed web hosting choice.

One extremely important thing you should look at when deciding whether or not to use a particular web hosting directory is whether or not they allow users to post their experiences with particular companies. This is important because it allows you to learn what other people have experienced with the hosting companies listed.

Your decision on where to host your website is extremely crucial. Getting help and advice on making your choice is imperative if you are going to find a professional company with good service and support. Be sure to only depend on a well run directory to assist you in choosing a hosting company.

Learn the Basics of Web Hosting

Lots of people use the Internet every day for work, play, shopping or just getting information. Although a lot of them are confident about how to use the Internet and what they can gain from it, there are many who have no idea of how it works or how to set up their own website.

All websites have the same basic principle, whether they’re one page personal sites or large company websites, which is that they have to be hosted by a web hosting company or they won’t be visible to anybody. At its most basic level, hosting is providing the ability for your website to be viewable online. Only web hosting companies can provide this service because they have computers connected directly to the Internet, and which are used only for serving up websites to the Internet (hence the name “servers”).

Most hosting companies host thousands of sites and therefore require super fast Internet connections. These companies have a fixed amount of Internet access which is rented out to webmaster for hosting their websites. This has become a very financially rewarding business since the Internet has grown in popularity.

Due to this many companies are jumping on the bandwagon. You might find either that your hosting company owns the main server directly or that you’re renting server space from a company who is renting is from a larger company. If this is the case, the server you’re renting space on is actually linked to a larger company’s server. From your end, though, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with the larger company or the intermediary company.

You now have basic knowledge on how the Internet and websites work. You also need to know that renting space from a hosting company is only the first step to having a website. Once you have this step taken care of you’ll still to create the site. You can choose to do this yourself or hire somebody to do it for you. Whatever you do to create your website will be completely useless, though, if you don’t have a hosting company to serve it up online.

Hosting Company Choices – Four Things to Look For

Your Internet business is important to you and the right web hosting company can make all of the difference. Many things need to be considered when you’re choosing a hosting company. Follow these tips for choosing a hosting company and you’ll be well on your way.

1. Know Your Needs
Before you start shopping for a hosting company, you’ll need to have a general idea of what you need. The pricing for hosting packages vary greatly depending on size and bandwidth requirements. You’ll have a hard time getting a price from any company without providing this information to them

2. Hosting Company Reliability

You always need to find out how reliable a hosting company is before you choose them, and asking them directly isn’t a good way to find this out. Instead, ask them how much downtime they experience and whether or not that amount of downtime includes regularly scheduled maintenance.

Keep in mind that your website will be down when the web host is experiencing downtime. During this downtime, customers who might have bought from you will be forced to find what they need elsewhere. Due to this, downtime is money lost.

3. Hosting Company Reputation

It is extremely easy to access information online. Many forums exist that cater to webmasters and website owners. During your search for a good and reliable hosting company, these forums can provide valuable information.

There might already be information on the hosting company you’re considering and if not, you can ask other forum members for recommendations. The key is to find a really active forum with threads related to web hosting. If you can’t find any recent posts then you should post a question. Reading over existing posts can also help you get an idea of what hosting companies are good and which ones you should avoid.

4. Customer Service

The hosting company you choose needs to have available and responsive customer service. You should review the website and see what kinds of customer service options are available. If you can’t find customer service information, or it’s difficult to find it, then you can expect you’ll have the same difficulty getting assistance when you need it.

The best scenario is to choose a hosting company with several contact alternatives and which allows you 24 hour access to their customer service. Good hosting companies provide live chat, technical support via email and toll-free technical support numbers.

Keep in mind, though, that simply providing customer service contacts and information doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll actually get good customer service. Before settling on a particular hosting company, make use of the different options provided so that you’ll know what their customer service is actually like. If you don’t get a live person or it takes a long time to get a response you need to move on to another company.

Four Methods for Advertising Your Web Hosting Company

Advertising Your Hosting Site

When you start a hosting site you’ll find out there is a ton of competition and that it will be hard to establish yourself. To succeed you’ll need to offer quality and reliable low host hosting to your clients.

Regardless of the quality of your service, you won’t have any customers if nobody knows about your business. This will make it impossible to make money each month. All successful companies got that way by having a good advertising plan. Keep reading to learn about the many types of advertising that will help you generate more sales.

Search Engine Advertising

Most Internet users to find what they’re looking for use search engines and consequently search engines can provide a lot of revenue to websites. It isn’t any different for hosting companies.

Web hosting companies have to receive top ranking for popular search terms, such as hosting, web hosting, shared hosting and reseller hosting, in order for search engine advertising to do them much good. Because of the large amount of competition for these popular terms, however, this is an extremely difficult thing to do.

Two main types of search engine listing exist: free and paid. When your website is listed using the free method, it’s place in the search engine results is determined by backward links, website content, inbound links, etc. A paid listing’s rankings are determined by how much the advertiser pays, the amount of which is based on either a set time period or the number of user clicks.

Advertising in Web Hosting Directories

Similar to search engines, web hosting directory advertising has the potential to provide high revenue for a hosting business and can be a fairly cheap way to advertise. As long as you offer quality service your company shouldn’t have any difficulty getting listed on the top web hosting directories. Just keep in mind that the listing requirements for each directory are required and some have continual operating requirements.

A lot of website hosting directories allow you to submit your hosting site for free. This can provide many benefits to you, including direct traffic to your site and improved search engine rankings. You’ll also see some website hosting directories offering paid listing and paid advertising.

Cost-per-click Advertising

With cost-per-click advertising, you’ll be allowed either a text or image advertisement and will pay a set amount for every click your advertisement received. The only places you should utilize this type of advertising is on web hosting related sites. This can include sites about web design, web programming or a hosting forum site such as Web Hosting Complete. CPC advertising is very cost effective because users will usually only click on advertisements they are actually interested in.

Web Hosting Forum Advertising

Some hosting forum sites (such as Web Hosting Complete, http://www.whcomplete.com) allow web hosting companies to advertise on them. For example, WHC offers text links and banner advertising. This type of advertising can generate revenue while lowering your advertising costs. There are also subtle ways to advertise for free on web hosting forums.

Although you normally can’t include direct website links within a post, you’ll usually be allowed to put one in your forum signature. By responding to posts on a forum site and including your website link in the signature, you can generate a ton of free and highly targeted traffic. This method of free advertising can be very time consuming since you have to post relevant posts (not nonsense) or you’ll be banned from the forum.

Conclusion

Several advertising methods exist for a web hosting company to use for generating targeted traffic. Some are free and some you’ll have to pay for, but either way you should create an advertising plan before starting any kind of advertising campaign. Your plan should include a set amount per month to spend on advertising as well as where your advertising dollars are best spent.

Different Types of Web Hosting Accounts

No Cost Web Hosting

The most basic web hosting you’ll find is completely free. Companies can provide it for free by inserting advertisements on your pages and limited the number of features you have access to. Free hosting is a good choice for people who only want to put up personal sites that won’t receive much traffic.

You’ll either get a subdomain (yoursite.example.com) or a directory (www.example.com/~yoursite). You won’t get much storage or bandwidth and can expect minimal if any support for MYSQL, PHP, more than one email address, and site statistics.

Shared Web Hosting Service

The most used type of web hosting is shared hosting. Most small businesses, professional sites and medium to large sites consider shared hosting to be perfect for their needs. Since none of these types of companies need an entire server to themselves and would have to spend hundreds of dollars to get one anyway, shared hosting works for them.

As you might have guessed, shared hosting allows multiple sites to be hosted on only one server. They provide system administration, which keeps people from having to deal with running a server and multiple users and sites.

Even though the hosting plan you’ve chosen determines the specifics of what you get, most plans will include PHP or ASP, MySQL, more than one email address, and increased bandwidth and storage compared to a free host. The main disadvantage to a shared host is that you’re open to possible security risks since you’re sharing a server with multiple other sites.

Unmanaged Dedicated Hosting

If you need more bandwidth, storage and features than what’s provided by free or shared hosting, then unmanaged dedicated hosting is perfect. A dedicated server will provide you with more bandwidth as well as an unlimited amount of email addresses and databases. Most dedicated hosting plans provide you with 500 to 1,000GB bandwidth each month and another hard drive can be purchased if you need more than that.

The main disadvantage of unmanaged dedicated hosting is that you have to be the server administrator. There isn’t anybody else there to do it for you. You have a couple of options open to you if you don’t know how to do this. One, you can go and learn how to be a server administrator. Alternatively, check out the next hosting option.

Managed Dedicated Hosting

So you’ve decided that you don’t want to become a server administrator but do want the capabilities provided by dedicated hosting? Then managed dedicated hosting is for you.

Taking this path means there will be somebody there to get your server up and running for you. You’ll have help if anything ever goes wrong. When looking into managed dedicated hosting, however, you should get a referral from somebody you trust or complete some diligent Internet research. How much this type of dedicated hosting costs depends entirely on reliability, security and amount of support you want.