How to Choose a Good Hosting Company for your Business

Choosing a good Hosting company can be tough for many people. With all the hype about how you can get unlimited services, 99% percent uptime guarantee and more from every other company out there, it pays to know which one has the ability to keep its word. A good hosting company also saves you the worry about your heard earned work getting lost or compromised. In deed as web security becomes an important issue for many people, you should at least be concerned choosing a reliable host.

What do I want in a Web Hosting Company?

Even before you go shopping for a host for your blog, website or company; it’s important to at least know what you are looking for. For example if all you want is to learn about databases for educational purposes and you are not keen on hosting anything serious, go for a free host. I am not a big advocate of paying to learn. However if you are thing about hosting a professional blog, a standard Shared Reseller Hosting can be what you are looking for. If you want to start a big social website that gets lots of traffic then you might think about getting a Business plan. Most hosting sites usually offer at least something for everybody.

Quick Installer and Automatic Software Installation.

If you have visited the web of late, people rarely build pages from scratch any more. There are popular blogging software, Content Managements Systems (CMS) and more open source projects where you can find excellent blog or website software that works for you and a million more people. The problem is where you want software but you don’t know how to install it. Automatic software installation helps you install software in a few clicks. One popular installer is Fantastico Deluxe.  A good hosting company like this one offers the service for free.

Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and other CMS

Some of these CMS have become so popular that you can no longer go without mentioning them. You will need to know whether you hosting provider offers hosting for such. Some providers give better and specialized services for the above. Research to find out whether you’re supported and whether you are eligible for offers.

Hosting options

As mentioned before, there are different packages to cater for different needs. For example you can choose Shared Domain and Sub-directory Hosting, Free, Shared, VPS (Virtual Private Server), Dedicated and Managed Web hosting. I will try to explain each of those.
Shared Domain and Sub-directory Hosting
If you have ever used popular blogging platforms Blogger.com or Wordpress.com then you have used Shared Domain and Sub-directory Hosting. You are given a sub-directory of the parent domain and a sub-domain for your blog or website. A good example of website Shared Domain service is Webs.com
Free Hosting
I am always at odds when it comes to explaining what free hosting is free. How free is free? However, by free I assume we are talking about getting hosting without paying a single coin. You can get hosting this way but there is always a way you pay, whether advertising or else. If you are serious about internet business then I suggest you at least pay for hosting. You will one day thank me for it.
Shared
Shared hosting is where you a given hosting space in a machine that share hosting space and operating system with other websites and/or webmasters. It is very popular given that sharing comes cheap. You can get good shared hosting with all the bells and whistles (unlimited email, bandwidth, domains etc.) for as little as $10 per month. If you are running a popular web business then this is peanuts.
Reseller Package
Popular Webhosts allow you to sell hosting to your users, friends and other customers like described in the Shared Hosting scenario. It’s a good way to make money if you are a web developer or you are cut out for the web hosting business. There is an administrative area where you add and remove accounts. Basically, you pay the big guy a lump sum and make money out of customers and recurring customers. This is a great way to start your company while you get your feet wet.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Wikipedia defines VPS as “A VPS runs its own copy of an operating system, and customers have superuser-level access to that operating system instance, so can install almost any software that runs on that OS” You are basically getting the closest thing to a Physical Dedicated Server.
Dedicated and Managed Web Hosting
This is where you have a complete server to yourself. Managed is where your host will repair the server if things are not running as expected. They can be expensive to run and I would think for most advanced users, a VPS is good enough. Still some people would choose Dedicated. It’s your choice.
cPanel, ispCP or ISPConfig
You should also check out your hosting provider to know whether they provide an easy way to access your files using cPanel, ispCP or ISPConfig.

Email

Some hosting providers will even give you some goodies like free email, unlimited email etc. This can go a long way in branding and easing communication.
Ease of Uploading Files
The most common way of uploading files it by FTP. However sometimes when you require uploading large files then your host provides a web based system to ease things. These simple things can mean a lot to many a web developer.
You should also check the maximum file you host allows you to upload. Large media files are usually discouraged for Shared hosting and you can choose between embedding or getting a bigger, better package.

Speed

Compression, gZipping files and more can increase the speed of your web experience. If your host is able to do all this for you then you can impress your users.

Free Web Development tools

We all love free things and a tool like a web stats counter can come in handy when monitoring your web traffic. If you are handling databases then you probably know PHP MyAdmin. This are tools that matter to many programmers and database users.
You are probably informed enough by to make a good choice. All the best in making a choice that works for you.

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