15 Important Issues That Must Be Considered Before Choosing a Webhost

15 Important Issues That Must Be Considered Before Choosing a Webhost which will help you in making good choices for a better result. A blog is made of three components, a domain name, a hosting space and a designed template. A webhosting space is the actual space acquired for you to install your blog or upload your website. A success in choosing a good webhost is very crucial to the success of every blogger. Because when you send traffic, they will go to the place you hosted it. How then do we decide if a particular web host is good or not? What key features should we look at in terms of bandwidth and disk storage spaces? Which type of hosting service is best suited for a beginner?

These and many more questions will be answered as we try to explain the 15 Important Issues That Must Be Considered Before Choosing a Webhost.

1. Determine Your Hosting Need?

The first thing you need to do before you decide on buying a hosting account is to brainstorm and come up with your exact need. This is so important because without knowing your need, you can never get the right web host for you blog. So before you continue, stop everything you are doing right now (including this guide you are reading) and think thoroughly on your own needs. The following key points can assist you in decision making:

• What kind of website are you building?

• Do you want your website to be simple?

• Do you need a special version of a particular software (i.e. PHP)?

• What is the estimated size of the expected traffic?

These are some of the basic questions you need to answer for yourself.

2. How Reliable Is The Server Of Your Proposed Host?

To be successful online, one of the most important thing we desire so much is to have a webhost that allowed will your blog to be live online 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. To achieve this, you need a web host who has a powerful server and stable network connections. It is recommended that they have at least 99.5% uptime and at most 0.5% downtime to be acceptable.

There are so many ways you can get a web host uptime information. One of the ways is to read hosting reviews which has so many sites do. Just google webhosting reviews and you will see several websites that will give you quality review.

You can also track your intending web host server uptime with online server monitoring tools. Many of these tools are free online and merely googling then will bring out loads of them. Some are free while some offer trial version you can use them upgrade later.

3. Server Upgrade/ Downgrade Options

If you are looking into blogging, you have the option of using shared hosting, Virtual private server, dedicated servers, and cloud hosting. You can start and even remain with Shared hosting if you so choose.

You need to learn when is the right time to upgrade your shared hosting service to a much higher package and you also need to know if your host do give room for upgrading. On rough a tentative note, a shared hosting account should be sufficient enough to support a well-optimized WordPress blog which has around 30,000 – 40,000 monthly unique visitors. With that figures, a good shared host account will be ok. Also, you can archive such stability if you manage to limit you’re the connections of your database to be below 20 (this is why I said it’s always best to start with a shared hosting if you are new).

However…

If you are expecting your website to grow really big in the nearest future, then you should consider picking up a web host with a room for growth. By this I mean it should be possible to upgrade your web hosting account – from shared hosting to virtual private or dedicated server – for more processing power, memory capacity, disk storage, and better security features.

Tip: It is highly recommended that you pick web hosts with upgrade options from lower to higher shared hosting, or VPS /dedicated servers or even cloud server option.

4. Multiple Addon Domains

As a blogger, we often come across the sudden availability of a certain domain name within or outside our niche and we feel the urge to register it immediately. Because of this, a blogger needs a web host that can provide extra space to accommodate these extra domains. In other words, we need a web hosting account that allows adding multiple domains.

Although most budget shared hosting companies allow at least 25 addon domains, yet it is very important that you check the domain capacity before making a purchase.

Tip: Addon Domain = this is a separated website with a different domain but sharing the same hosting account.

Parked Domain = additional domain you “park” for domain forwarding or email hosting.

5. Hosting Costs at Signup and Renewal

Another item to be considered is the cost of Hosting at Signup and renewal. Hosting prizes, especially shared hosting, are normally very cheap at signup but get much higher on renewals.

It is an industry norm.

If you don’t intent to hoop between two or three web hosts every two years, then you have to embrace the price increase upon renewal.

Generally, it is good to start with any shared hosting priced that is below $10/month. If you are however sceptical, make sure you check their TOS and be sure you are okay with the renewal prices before you buy from them.

Tip: One of the quickest way to know is to click on the webhosting company’s Terms of Service link which is usually at the bottom of the homepage. When you get there, search for keyword “renewal” or “renew”.

6. Refund Policy

If you are unsatisfied with the services of the web host before the expiration of the trial period and you choose to cancel your host within the trial period, do the company provide full return of your money or not? Does their return policy include complete refund of his money or a cancellation charges?

There are a number of hosting companies out there that charges high cancellation fees when users decides to cancel their hosting account during the trial period. It is highly advised that you avoid such hosting providers. Meanwhile, some webhosting companies provide anytime money back guaranty while you get a pro-rated refund after your trial period (good that is a better idea for me).

7. Cron Jobs, Auto Script Installer, .Htaccess, And SSI

Simplicity is the order of the day. Everybody wants to get things done fast by just simply clicking. Auto Script Installer enable the easy installation of scripts and as such any web host that do not offer these basic hosting features should be avoided. You need Cron for day-in-day-out operations, Auto Script Installer such as Softaculous, Quick Installer, Simple Scripts, Fantastico, Installatron, and so on which are required for easy web apps installations as well as updates, .htaccess access, Server Side Include (SSI) and FTP access.

8. Availability of E-Commerce Features

At the onset, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• Are you planning to run an e-commerce website?

• Do you intend using any specific shopping cart software?

• Do you need to process and complete business transactions right on your website?

• Do you need special technical support (ie. PrestaShop guide, or so on)?

If yes is your answer to the questions above, then it is very important that you choose a webhosting company that has sufficient e-commerce features and support services. SSL certification, dedicated IP, and one-click shopping cart software installation are some of the must-have features/supports you will need.

9. A User Friendly Hosting Control Panel

A very easy to use webhosting control panel is very, very important.

It really doesn’t matter if what they have is a cPanel or a Plesk or a third party control panels (like what GoDaddy offers) – either of each is okay as long as it is user-friendly and come with all the necessary functionalities. If they don’t have an adequate control panel, you will be exposed to abuse by the hosting tech support staff – even if all you need is some basic server changes.

10. Account Suspension: What Are The Limitations?

Before signing up with any hosting company, you should take your time to study their TOS as it relates to account suspension or termination. Most hosting companies will not hesitate to suspend your account if you are using too much CPU power, and yes, don’t be deceived by the term UNLIMITED, in fact, UNLIMITED is LIMITED!

Your account gets suspended or possibly terminated if you violate the rules of your shortlisted web host. To prevent this from happening, it is advisable that you read the TOS of the web host first before you sign up.

It is also helpful to know your account limit, this will help you understand two things –

1. How Generous (Or Stingy) Is the Web Host you intend to use is. Should you go ahead and register with that web host, or go for other host that has looser restrictions?

2. How Transparent Is The Web Host – Are they very honest or not and, can you trust their words? Most honest web hosting companies usually have very clear guidelines on account limitation.

11. Environmental Friendliness

Some Webmasters prefer to have an eco-friendly website host.

Based on research findings, an average web server produces more than 630kg of CO2 (which is a lot!) and consumes 1,000 KWh of energy annually. On the other hand, a green theoretically produces zero CO2. The difference between a green web host and a non-eco-friendly web host is very clear.

If you really care about the environment and wish to cut down on your carbon footprint, chose a webhosting company that uses renewable energy to run its machines or at least, a webhost that offsets its energy consumption through green certificates).

12. Ability to Create a Personalised Email

One of the best way to brand yourself online is to make sure that all your emails are hosted on your domain. Therefore, if you wish to host email accounts together with your website, then you most look at the email feature of your Web Host before signup. Most hosting companies will come with the email support that enable you to host your own email (something like [email protected]) while some others do not have such facility and you have to rely on a third-party email services provided by yahoomail.com, gmail.com or similar free services providers.

In case email feature is not provided by your host, I seriously advice you move on to another host. Although, not having an email attached to your domain is not a big deal. There are a number ways you can own an email account at your own domain. However, these are third party services that will cost extra money and as a newbie, it might be difficult for you to handle does things.

13. Subscription Period

Now, you must open your eyes and avoid been lured into taken unnecessarily long offers that runs into several years in order to enjoy low price. Some web host do that unethical thing, for example, in June 2009, Lunarpages changed their pricing and lured customers to take up a 5-year plans all in order to enjoy a low hosting price of $4.95/month. Currently, Lunarpages no longer offers such a deal but still this is a good example in our case.

As a newbie, the maximum period you should sign up with any Web Host is 2 years but if those people with longer period provides anytime money back guarantees, you may decide to pick.

14. Site Backup

Another critical point to be considered is your web host site backup plans. As you blog on, there are times that your blog/site will/may crash. There are several reasons that leads to a website crashing, some of them are when a hacker got into your WordPress blog and replaced your index.php file, or your entire database got hacked, or a general serve hard disk failure.

If your web host does site backups regularly then there is no reason why you should be worried when any of these incidents happen. Your hosting provider should be able to restore back your full or at least, a reasonable amount of data of your site in no time to allow you carry on.

On backups, here are a few key questions to ask your web host:

• Does your web host provide full backups on regular basis?

• Can your site backup be done easily through the control panel?

• Can you backup your site automatically through cron job or other related program?

• Is it possible for you to restore your backup files yourself easily without having to wait for the support staffs to do it for you especially during disaster emergency?

15. 24/7 Live Chat Support?

You need to find out if your new to be host do live chat support and when? Some do 24/7 a week while some promise the same service but are either always offline or actually stay on live chat for lesser period per day. This makes it necessary for you to first find out if they offer such support services. On my own, I really prefer live chat than phone call because it gives an opportunity for detailed discussion without thinking of the cost of discursion. This also make it easy for me to read and solve the problem at hand on the go.

Why live support? As a blog owner, sometimes you might for encounter a problem that requires urgent detailed explanation, a kind of S.O.S. situation, live chats comes in handy to the rescue.

Conclusion

Although the content here is focused on 15 Important Issues That Must Be Considered Before Choosing a Webhost, other equally useful tips that are available should be considered so that you get the best from your host.

Generally, these methods have proven to be very helpful if carefully followed and implemented, you follow them, you will not miss your way.