5 Tips for Choosing a Hosting Company

If you’re just starting up a company, one way to get your name out in the market is to have a website that lists your contact information and services. Your first step in doing this is by finding the right hosting company. Choosing the right hosting company to manage all your website’s data is surely a tough decision to make. This could literally make or break your business. With all the companies that you can find online that promise all the essential foundation in hosting, it can be a bit confusing especially for a non techie to decide what they should be looking for.

Below are some tips to help you make that decision in which hosting company would best fit your needs.

Pricing and Features

You know how the old saying goes that you get what you pay for, this is especially true when it comes to hosting services. Though prices have gone down over the past years, most of the time, the higher you pay for the hosting, the greater the services you get. Sure you can find hosting at $1.99 a month, but choosing the cheapest, isn’t necessarily a good idea. Take a closer look at the features they have to offer, and then compare the prices.

You may also want to base your hosting decision on how large your site is going to be. If you are an e-commerce store with thousands of products and thousands of visitors a day, you may need to have your own dedicated server which will cost more than your basic hosting needs.  Some hosting companies, such as Green Geeks, provide a VPS, which is a virtual private server.

Customer service

For beginners and non techie site owners, this part is very critical. When your site goes down for some reason, your initial reaction would be to call your hosting company for professional help. Having a live person to speak with over the phone would be extremely helpful. A good customer service support should be available 24/7 and the email response turnaround time is within 24 – 48 hours.

Another customer service feature that may be great to look for is a live chat and forum section. Host Gator and Blue Host are two examples of hosting companies that use live chat services which are great for quick questions that need attention right away.

Testimonials

How long has the company been in the business? Testimonials from previous and current customers are very important. This is one way to determine if the hosting company has a good track record and to know what other people say about their services. You can do a Google blog search or look them up on Facebook or Twitter and see what their previous or current customers have to say about them.

Downtime / Uptime

Downtimes and uptimes are vital for a site owner. It is important that you ask the company for their downtime stats, as site downtimes could only mean one thing – losing sales and money. A good web hosting company guarantees an uptime of 99% and some companies offer refunds if they don’t reach the promised uptime.

Packages and Room to Grow

Finally, one important thing that you would also want to consider in choosing a web hosting company is the upgrade options. You wouldn’t know at first how fast your business will grow so you have to make sure that they are capable of growth. Could they easily upgrade your account when you request it? Do they have the ability to increase your bandwidth when deemed necessary?

Transferring from one host to another takes a lot of process and effort so the best solution is to find which hosting company would best cater to your business’ needs as it grows. The tips above should help you get started with your research. Talk to people you know who have websites and have tried different web hosts, get some opinions, and be informed.