Choosing a Web Hosting Company

The company behind a web hosting service is just as important as the service plans themselves. When comparing web hosting services, maybe for the fastest web hosting, you also need to review a number of factors that determine whether the hosting company is the one you should be engaging. In this article, we are going to take a look at those factors and learn more about how you can separate the good hosting service providers from the rest – I don’t want to say bad, but you get the picture!

Customer Support

I personally think of customer support as one of the most important things to consider when choosing a web hosting company. The level of customer support a hosting company providers can very much reflect the overall quality of service you can expect from the hosting service. Smaller companies are often better for this as they tend to care more about their clients as opposed to bigger companies who just outsource to a foreign country full of techies who don’t particular care about your website or your custom in general.

Although they are usually advertised as 24/7 customer support, most hosting companies offer ticket- and email-based customer support only. These methods work well, but you will have to wait to get the response you need. Live support, on the other hand, means you can get in touch with a support officer and get help directly.

It is also worth noting that not all hosting companies have technical support officers standing by at all times. The same goes for support officers specializing in billing and sales. A good hosting company will always post the times during which these support officers are available. Of course though it’s quite easy for someone to say 24/7 support but still only be online 8 hours a day.

Guarantees

I have always said that you should take the time to read the terms and conditions of a web hosting service before deciding to sign up for an account. This is especially true when you are looking into the guarantees that a hosting company offers. This company for example offers a 99.9% uptime according to their terms and conditions – this is what you want to aim for.

Offering guarantees means the hosting company is confident with their level of service. Things can still go wrong – a natural disaster, for instance, can bring an entire data center down – but at least you can rest assured knowing that the servers are as reliable as they can be under normal circumstances.

Money back guarantees are a good place to start when comparing web hosting companies. Some offer money back guarantees for as long as 90 days. A few hosting companies are even allowing customers to enjoy a money back guarantee for the duration of their billing cycle. If you are unhappy with the services you get, you can choose to terminate the account and have your money back.

The uptime guarantee is another good warranty to have from a hosting company. A minimum of 99.5% uptime is what you need to be looking for. However, don’t just take the hosting company’s words for it. Find out more about the kind of compensations you will get when the server uptime is lower than promised. Obviously this is only going to be related to the amount you’re paying and getting 10 back from your host when you’ve lost 1,000 worth of sales probably isn’t much of a silver-lining!

There are also tools that can help you check server uptime based on historic data as well. Take your time to review and compare server uptimes of multiple hosting companies to find the most reliable one to engage.

Server Resources and Performance

Finally, always check the overall quality of service offered by the company by reviewing how server resources are divided among users. Not all web hosting companies share the user per server ratio on their websites, so you may have to contact the companies’ customer support to ask. You can also use third parties such as SolarWinds.

It is not a secret that certain, usually smaller, web hosting companies are overselling their servers to more users. As long as users don’t use the full capacity of their accounts, overselling is not a bad thing; it can even bring the cost of hosting your website down a little bit. However, having a lot of resource-intensive websites on the same, limited server could affect the performance of your site greatly.

Figuring out the actual performance you can expect from a hosting account is difficult, but it is not impossible. There are a few steps you can take to get a better picture of what to expect:

• Find websites that are using the company’s hosting services
• Check the server response time using web tools such as Pingdom
• Be sure to do the test at different times and compare the results of several web hosting companies this way

If performance is something you are concerned about, taking the time to complete these steps is certainly worth it. It can even help you identify the cause of slow server response times and allow you to optimize your website accordingly.

Having a good hosting company backing your site could mean better, sustainable growth in the long run; no one wants to switch hosting. It is a time-consuming and difficult task to do, especially when you have big websites with a lot of traffic already. That is why choosing a web hosting company that is reliable and trustworthy is a must. Review these aspects and you will be able to find a good web hosting service provider to work with based on their level of service, performance and customer support. You can also always look at their reviews!