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Things to Look for in a Web Hosting Provider
A good web hosting provider is one of the most essential factors that can spell the difference between success and failure in any internet-based business. A free web hosting, with its very limited features, just wouldn't do for this purpose. It would probably be fine if you're only making a personal website but not if you're planning to put up a business site. For this, what you really need is a fast and reliable commercial web hosting solution with the right combination of add-on features that you can use.
But be forewarned. Choosing the right one that will fit your needs can be a very great challenge. There are a lot of web hosting providers competing to close a sale so you need to make sure that you know what you are looking for.
So what are the things or features that you need to consider when choosing the best web hosting provider? Aside from being fast and reliable, it should also offer good value for your money and have reliable customer and technical support, among others.
How do you know if you are getting your money's worth? Well, not all websites are created equal. There's the good, the bad, and of course, the ugly. To separate the good from the rest, you need to spend a little more time for research. Here are some of the things that you might want to see included in the package:
* An uptime of 99.5% or better. Some web hosting providers even boasts of a 99.9% uptime.
* Shopping cart or a secure server (SSL) so that you can accept payments on your business website.
* Free website builder. Not all people who want to put up a website have programming skills so this will come especially handy.
* Autoresponder and email functionalities. After all, the money is in the list, right? So, make sure that the hosting provider offers these features, too.
Now, in case you're wondering why "unlimited" bandwidth and disk space are not included in the list, it's because most websites would only need a disk space of about 10MB, and a monthly bandwidth of 3GB. And by the way, there's no such thing as "unlimited", even on the internet!
Having a reliable customer and technical support function is also important. Try to find out if there's a FAQ page and a toll-free number that you can call 24/7 for support. Try sending an email to the technical department and see what their response time is. You can try calling them up, too. These will give you an indication of how good their customer and technical support really is.
And always ask around. Visit review sites and related forums to see what other website owners are saying about their hosting providers. You can find a real gem this way!
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