With the ever increasing use of the internet these days for commercial and personal use, hosting companies have been dropping prices and adding features to try to pursuade you to sign up. Having your website with a good hosting company is important so that all of your needs can be met when it comes to having a website that will be of value. I want to give you some information that could be helpful to you if you are looking for a company to host your new website or you are looking to transfer your site to a different company. Keep these factors in mind when you are in the decision making process so that you can make the best decision possible.

Web Hosting Factors

1) Price

With the amount of traffic that is on the internet these days and those people with websites, finding a website hosting company for a reasonable price is not hard. Most website hosting companies will offer hosting of your website for as low as $5/month. Our hosting prices are $6/month. This is very reasonable when you look and see what is offered with the packages. If you are using a company that has you paying more than $10/month you might want to start shopping around for a new company. Now keep one thing in mind, I do not want to tell you to leave a company that is meeting all of your needs. If you are paying a good chunk of change a month for hosting, and they are meeting your needs, don’t be so quick to want to get out. The old saying, if it is not broke do not fix it, should apply here.

2) Uptime

Making sure that your website is visible to visitors as much as possible is very important. Finding  hosting company that can guarantee your uptime being close to 100% of the time is critical.

3) Disk Space & Bandwidth

Depending on your needs will depend on how much disk space and bandwidth you will need. There are hosting companies out there that offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth for a higher price. Most of the website hosting companies have different plans that you can choose from that will let you decide how much disk space and bandwidth you think you will need, each at a different price. The lowest plan SEMS Design offers is 25MB disk space with 100MB bandwidth for $6/month. We have only had a couple website go over this amount and they had well over 100 pages.

4) E-mail Addresses

Having an e-mail address that reflects your website name is helpful when it comes to marketing. What better way to let people know the address of your website. Every time you send out an e-mail someone will have your website name. So if your website name is myhorsewebsite.com you could have info@myhorsewebsite.com. Most companies will offer multiple e-mail accounts that you can use.

5) Control Panel

Having access to the control over your website is important. Have a control panel that you can use to take care of the website is very helpful. We use cPanel which allows you complete control over your website. When you log into the control panel you can manage the following areas:

• Mail – Allows you to add/edit/delete e-mail accounts
• Webmail – Allows you to read mail from your e-mail accounts.
• Parked Domains – Allows you to put register domain names on top of the current domain name. Then you can redirect the domain name to a certain folder so that when someone visits that domain name, it will go straight to the content in that folder.
• FTP Manager – Allows you to manage the accounts that have access to upload files to your server.
• File Manager – Allows you to add/edit/delete/move files on the server.
• Backups – Allows you to backup your website in case of outages or lost information.
• Password Protect Directories – Allows you to password protect certain directories so that only people with the username and password can enter.
• Subdomains – Allows you to add a subdomain name to your website. For example, if you have a folder called sale-horses, it would usually be called in the browser as http://www.yourhorsewebsite.com/sale-horses/. With a subdomain you can give the subdomain the name salehorses and then someone can type in saleshorses.yourhorsewebsite.com. Useful in marketing as it makes your website name cleaner.
• MySQL Databases – Allows you to add/edit/delete a database for your website.
• Scripts Library – If you want to add interactive features to your website, we have a tool that will automatically install the desired script on your server for you. Then all you have to do is give it a look and feel that you want it to have. Here is a list of scripts in the library:
  1. Blogs
  2. Classifieds
  3. Content Management
  4. Customer Relationship
  5. Discussion Boards
  6. E-Commerce
  7. F.A.Q.
  8. Image Galleries
  9. Mailing List
  10. Polls & Surveys
  11. Project Management
  12. Site Builders
  13. And More

6) Customer Service

If you are having your website hosted by the company that also manages your site, it is important that they have a quick turn around time in getting updates done for you. If you are having problems with getting your information added to your site in a timely manner, contact me. My turn around time is 24 hours or less with minor updates, 1-2 days on minor additions, 2-3 days on major additons. Most content and image additions fall into the category of 24 hours or less.

Summary

Be sure you are smart when it comes to deciding on a website hosting company. Do not go with the first one you come across unless you are completely satisfied with what they propose to you. Be sure you can be guaranteed of all of the above when it comes to access of the backend of your website if you are going to do the work. If you are not going to do the work, make sure you can get an e-mail address, or multiple addresses, with your account. Most importantly, make sure the customer service is number 1. Knowing that your website is going to be cared for in the best way possible goes along way in the success you have on the internet.

Rob

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