By ensuring that you select a reliable provider when looking into hosting solutions, you should have few very problems and will be able to offer a good service to your customers.
A good hosting provider will ensure that your website is always available and loads quickly and this is really crucial since Google are now taking loading speed into account when generating their search results so this also affects your search engine ranking.
To decide who the best web hosting provider for you is, it is necessary to understand exactly what you want and what the various terms mean.
Shared, VPS, Dedicated Server
Good website hosting providers offer a range of services with variable resources like bandwidth, disk space etc. If you are starting a new site a simple shared package will usually be sufficient.
A shared package simply means that multiple users are hosted on the same server and share all the resources. Reliable web hosting companies will not overload their shared servers so it should be fine to start with. VPS provides the user with a portion of a server with their own operating system. Since each user has their own portion of the server, there will be no effects in its performance by other users. A Dedicated server simply means that you have your own server which is not shared with anyone at all.
Reliability and Speed
A good web hosting company will guarantee an uptime of at least 99.9%. To get an idea of their loading speed, look at their site and also search online for recent user comments. A site that is not available is a sure way to lose customers and a site that loads slowly will result in frustrated customers
Help and Support
This can be overlooked at the outset but it can be critical if you have a problem. They should offer 24/7 support in addition to chat and email. Netcetera current average ticket response time is 24 minutes.
Disk Space/Bandwidth
Most hosting providers now offer unlimited website hosting with unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth on the shared hosting packages. The disk capacity in the server is however always finite, and so is the provider’s bandwidth, so the terms and conditions will include some sort of limitation.
Price
Whilst price is important, it is most important to be looking at the factors above. Good web hosting providers will allow you to pay monthly but may give a discount for annual payments.
To find out more about how Netcetera can help you when selecting your hosting provider, contact our Sales Team or visit: www.netcetera.co.uk