Finding Your Hosting Solution

 

What is the most important thing to look for when starting the search for a company to host your website? That would depend of course on what your needs are and what your goals are for your site. However there are some basic things that one should check out before joining any hosting firm. Here are few but certainly not all.

1. Up time – This is where a lot of host fail their clients. Up time. Sure, almost everyone these days has something like a 99% up time guarantee but what does that really mean? To me I would think that means my site will be up nearly 100% of the time. However this is not the way most hosting companies read it. And it’s never explained in their terms or anything really. But I have hosted with sites where my site was down 2 or 3 times a week for 15 minutes – to- hours and this never seemed to be quite enough to break their 99% uptime guarantee. So pay less attention to what the claim is on their site and more attention to what customers are saying. You can usually find this on their support forum or by using google. If the host is a bad one there will be many negative posts about them and their up time will be among them.

2. Resources – What do you get for your money? It’s hard to believe in this day and age there are still some companies out that only provide you with 1 or 2 databases in your low end hosting plans. And even with the Business Plans some still only give you about 5. Then charge you $1.00 or so for each one you need after that. While you will not need unlimited databases, you do need a decent amount without having to worry about if you install a program it’ll use up one of your databases.

3. Support…Support….SUPPORT – I can not stress this enough. This is the hardest part of your search. Here is what happens. Young companies or those just starting out will often times provide the best support. Why? Because they are just building. They do not yet have more customers than they can handle and they have the time to handle your request. As they grow you will often times notice that your support tickets no longer get answered within an hour or so. In fact it may be the next day before someone gets to you. And if you try to add something to your “open” ticket, it will get pushed back to the bottom of the queue so no matter how long you have been waiting, you’re LAST again.

There are a few who give excellent support I am sure but the only one I have found lately is a company called “Wired Tree”. They are top notch and only time will tell if this changes once they become a powerhouse in the Dedicated Server Side of the business.

There are many more things to look for when you go shopping for your web host and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have about The Megaphone Network’s services. Simply contact us:

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