How to Choose a Web Host Part 2
Okay so after reading part 1, you should have more or less a good idea of what to look for when choosing a web host. Again, web hosting is a cut throat industry and the barriers to entry are very low. All you really need is to plunk a chunk of money for web servers and hire good server administrators and programmers. Sometimes you don’t even need to do that. You can just purchase a reseller account and pretend that you’re actually a hosting company.
Traffic/Bandwidth
Data transfer to web site visitors or bandwidth is the amount of data (in bytes) transferred from your website to the visitors upon browsing. Some web hosts offer unlimited bandwidth but again please be wary of this unless your site is expected to generate huge amounts of traffic constantly. Check the fine print because usually, “unlimited” means a certain number; beyond that you might have to pay a little extra if the web host is not willing to shoulder the cost.
Tech Support
This is actually the most important part of any web host service. The support function should ideally have a 24 hour 7 days work week. When starting a new website you will be surprised at how things go wrong at the most inconvenient time. Sometimes a flood of new traffic will send your server crashing down thereby decreasing your chances to get a sale. On your free time, you might want to give them a call even on Saturdays and Sundays just to check if they will respond immediately. One thing to take note of is to make sure that they are actually competent. Some will read off of a manual like a robot. Ask intelligent questions to test them.
Email Address
If you have your own website with your own dot com address then you would probably want to have your own email like yourname@yoursite.com. A lot of web hosts offer this service for free so make sure you set up your own email with your own dotcom address. You usually can have it work with your existing mail client such as Outlook or Eudora.
Bruno Auger
Tags: tech support, bandwidth, email address, traffic, web hosting
