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How to Select a Hosting Company

Select a hosting company based on their service and support, the reliability of the company, the speed and quality of their servers, cost, the web space and bandwidth they provide, and the availability of features such as pop email accounts, statistics, and autoreponders. Ask your professional web designer for a referral.

1. Service/Support

It's vital that you can reach your host 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year. If your web site is down for several hours, it might cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in sales. Ask if they provide free assistance with installation and uploading of web sites and scripts.

2. Reliability of the Hosting Company

Make sure the hosting company is reliable, has been in business at least two years, and has good ratings with the Better Business Bureau and Dun & Bradstreet. 

A server should be up at least 99 percent of the time. Ask if the host has back-up servers available they can use when the server is down. Request testimonials and a list of satisfied customers.

3. Fast and Reliable Servers.

Choose a hosting company that uses fast and reliable servers.

4. Cost

Hosting for a basic business web site shouldn't cost more than $20 per month. Don't pay for features you don't need.  Larger companies may need more features and could pay higher fees.

5. Web Space

If you want to offer a lot of free downloads like software demos, free ebooks, and similar
items, you may need more space.

6. Bandwidth

Be prepared to grow and get additional traffic. Make sure you won't have to pay additional fees when your transfer volume increases. 10 GB bandwidth will be enough for most sites, even for high traffic sites. If you're offering a lot of downloads, you might need more.

7. POP-email Accounts

Make sure that your email addresses reflect your domain name. POP email accounts allow you to use email software to receive your incoming emails instead of having to log in to a web site to check your email.

8. You need support for ecommerce.

Many hosting companies provide tools for adding your own store. A store is basically an order button or a shopping cart system that provides a secured access page on your site.

9. Statistics

Statistics are important. You need to analyze where your traffic comes from and how successful your advertising campaigns are. You need to know the number of visitors you receive daily, weekly, and monthly, which sites they came from, and which pages have been accessed. Check your statistics often to improve your web site's traffic and performance and turn visitors into buyers.

10. Autoresponders

Autoresponders are one of the best marketing tools.

An autoresponder is an email address programmed to automatically send a pre-composed email message back to the sender when receiving email.

The autoresponder document is delivered immediately. It can automate a lot of work.  Use autoresponders to immediately respond to email subscriptions, send follow-up messages to subscribers, and send a series of newsletters and promotional messages, free reports, and articles.

The easiest way to select a hosting company is by referral. Your professional web designer can recommend a hosting company and upload your web pages to the server.

If you design your own web pages, you will need an FTP program such as WS_FTP to upload your pages.

See Frequently Asked Questions About Hosting