10 Questions To Ask When Choosing A Web Host.

Without a doubt web hosting is one of the most important things you must consider when setting up a new website.  In many ways, it is the most important.  After all, if you web host is not reliable, neither is your site.

Here are a list of things I look for when choosing a new hosting service.

1.  Does the hosting company have experience?  Have they been around for a while or are they brand new?  Now, brand new companies may be totally fine, but that’s a risk I’m usually not willing to take.  Yep, I prefer the ol’ “tried and true.”  If a company hasn’t been around for at least five years, I don’t want to play with them.

2.  Are you dealing with the actual hosting company, or a reseller?  Let me start by saying that there is nothing wrong with buying hosting from a reseller.  I’m a reseller for hosting services myself.  The point is that you need to know who you are dealing with.  Is the company you’re paying able to answer your technical questions?  Are they able to work on the server if your site goes down at 2 a.m.  Most resellers (myself included) have agreements with the data center that provides support for our servers, but not all resellers do this.  It pays to know who you’re dealing with.

3.  What is there up-time?  If the hosting company does not average at least 98% up-time, run away quickly.  Lower up-time numbers either mean that their servers are overloaded, their equipment is outdated or their tech support staff doesn’t have a clue.  At any rate, you don’t need that kind of aggravation.

4.  How many sites do they host on the server your site will be on?  This may not seem important, but it is.  If they are hosting hundreds of sites on the same box, all of you are sharing resources.  The more sites sharing the resources, the slower it is for everyone.

5.  Will you be sharing and IP address?  Odds are you will if you are using a shared server.  Why is this a concern?  Well, if another webmaster on that IP address happens to be a spammer, you could find e-mail from your website being blocked by ISPs all over the world.  I know.  This has happened to me in the past.  There are few things more annoying than to send out e-mails only to have them bounce because your website’s IP address has been banned by the recipient’s ISP.  Sure, you can get the ISP to unblock the IP address (sometimes), but do you really want to go through that hassle.  This is especially important if you are using your website for business. 

As a general rule, you will need a static IP address if you want to install an SSL certificate to have a secure shopping cart for credit cards, etc.

6.  Do they offer 24/7 tech support?  If your site is a personal site, this may not be as important, but, if your site is a business site, this is critical.  Websites have a bad habit of going down in the middle of the night – long after “bankers hours.”  Will you hosting company have someone available at “O’ Dark: 30.”

7.  Are their servers running Windows or Linux?  There are different schools of thought on this one.  My preference is to run websites on Linux servers.  I especially recommend using a server running Red Hat Linux and Apache.  That combination makes for the most reliable and easiest to use server (in my humble opinion).  Now, if you want to build a site using ASP (Active Server Pages), you may have to use a Microsoft box, but for most other platforms, Linux is the king.

8.  Do they offer an easy-to-use interface?  Unless you’re a computer whiz, you’ll probably want to have an intuitive user interface that’s easy to understand and to use.  I really like hosts who offer C-Panel.  It’s a feature rich user interface that is point-and-click simple.

9.  Does the hosting company offer any tools to help you build your site?  Once again, this is why I really like servers running C-Panel.  Many hosting companies offer builder tools through the control panel.  One of the best is Fantastico.  This tool allows you to install applications (such as WordPress or other CMS software) automatically.  You don’t have to know how to set up a MySQL database, upload files, CHMOD directories or any of that.  Is that cool or what? 

10.  The last question I would as a web hosting company is, “what kind of guarantee do you offer?”  If they don’t offer at least a thirty day guarantee, I wouldn’t give them the time of day.  You see, you need that long to determine if their service will work for you.    Most legitimate hosting companies will be more than happy to offer you a risk-free trial during the first month.  Most also offer a “downtime” guarantee which gives you a credit if their service is down for an extended period of time.

Of course, there are more things to consider, but these will give you enough information to make a fairly informed opinion.