Finding the right host for you

Sooner or later everyone faces the task of finding a good web host. We have compiled a short guide that equips you with the most important things you should look for when evaluating a web hosting company.

The Myth of Unlimited Bandwidth
There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth. The hosting provider has to pay for its internet connection and prices his packages accordingly. The practice of overselling (assuming that costumers won’t use up their alloted resources and accordingly offering larger, more powerful hosting packages) is very common in the hosting industry and can prove fatal to smaller hosting operations. For the sake of clarity, let us use an example. Hosting company A has one server and 10 clients on it with a package that offers “Unlimited Bandwidth” - As long as each of the clients is using less than 10% of the available resources on average things will operate smoothly. But as soon as one of the customers experiences a traffic explosion, the availability of resources is diminishing. Now assume that a few of the clients start seeing dramatic increases in traffic - The whole venture starts to turn unprofitable and the hosting company is likely to go bankrupt if it were to continue offering these offerings to its clients.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything comes at a price. So if you are being offered incredible amounts at bargain prices you should become very cautious as this occasion may cost you dearly at a later point of time. They are usually what the name implies: Incredible.

Evaluation of the Web Hosting Company
Another thing that is of the utmost importance is to check the company before placing an order. You do that by entering the host name into the search engine of your choice. In most cases you will find a plethora of search results that provide you with ratings and reviews by people that have/had experiences with the company. Evaluate and judge carefully. By doing so you can avoid lots of hassles as customers with bad experiences have a tendency to warn potential customers from bad hosts by letting off steam on sites that feature web hosting reviews.

The Importance of Support
Support is yet another important issue. How savvy is the tech staff? What is the availability of support? Where is the support located? Is there someone able to help you in case your website goes offline on the 24th of December? These are some of the question that come to mind when thinking of tech support. You might want to test the quality of support before placing an order by testing the time it takes them to reply to your requests. In addition, feel free to ask technical questions as well as inquire whether telephone support is available. Our experience has shown that many minor issues are being solved easier over the phone rather than email.

Summarizing, we believe that it all comes down to your needs. In case you are just hosting a site that features photos of your pets, uptime is not as crucial as if you were to operate an ecommerce site. By carefully answering the questions of how much you are willing to spend, how much reliability you need and the features that are crucial to you, the quest for finding a web host will be a successful one.