Thursday, December 17, 2009

Choosing a Good Web Host For Your New Site

Building a website for a Christian home business is one of the most important things you will ever do. That website will be the focal point of everything you do on the Internet - allowing you to put your energies into drawing visitors, attracting new leads, and developing long term relationships with potential clients or customers. So, as you can imagine, I tend to think the choice of a good web host sits atop the list of decisions you will make as something extremely important.

What You Should Look For

I don't like to get in the habit of offering specific suggestions, especially for something like a webhost. But, I do have a few criteria that every good Christian business owner should keep in mind as they set up their new site. Here are a few of my personal most important ones:

• Reliability - A good web host should promise at least 99% up time and if you can find one that actually honors their promises, go for 100%. Look for companies with financial incentive to maintain their uptimes and a good, long history of it.

• Services Offered - If you don't know what services you'll need, ask someone. Too often, it's easy to see the fancy numbers and technical details and assume that's everything you need. Check to make sure you are getting things like CPanel, MySQL, PHP, Pearl, and even Fantastico if you'd like to save some time in the set up of your sites.

• Cost - Cost is huge. I have seen people spending as much as $100 more than me for the exact same service. Why? Do your research and find out what is a fair price for your site. If you're operating on a VPS, you should be able to get everything you need for less than $70 a month. If you only need a single, hosted site, we're talking $10 a month. It doesn't need to cost an arm and a leg.

• References - Do your research, see what the reviews say and try to get references from people you know. There are a lot of Christian home business owners out there who can help you figure out which services actually provide everything you need.

• Support and Service - Look for a company with not only 24/7 support, but quick turnaround times. Some companies promise replies within 12 hours and take 11 hours and 55 minutes to reply. Others promise responses within 12 hours and get back to you within 2 hours. Find the people who are quick on the draw.

As you can see, I ask a lot of my web host. You should too. There are too many companies out there happy to take your money and offer subpar service. You can't afford subpar service though. You need that 100% uptime, lots of good resources, and a whole lot of customer service for whenever issues might arise. If you don't get those things, you're going to have a very hard time keeping up with the constant flow of small tasks that are required of a Christian home business site owner.

The most important decision you'll make when you start a new website for your Christian Home Business is which webhost you'll put in place. Visit Christian-Home-Business.com today and learn how Annie Betteridge can help improve that decision.

Cheap Yet Good Small Business Web Hosting

Even today it is a common scenario: When searching for a service or product online or offline, individuals give more priority to the price. No matter - saving money on your monthly business hosting package can prove worthwhile. However, one should bear in mind that the market value is not everything.

Some hosting companies offer very cheap hosting packages but if you watch closely these packages encompass low bandwidth, disk space and other resources. The control panel price is not included in the hosting package either. Also it should not be a surprise if you encounter lot of downtime. Therefore in order to have a good hosting experience, one should be extra careful when selecting a hosting provider. Even if you select a small service such as a email hosting, make sure you choose a reputed reliable web host.

It is further important to know the precise requirements of your website/s, this helps in choosing an appropriate small business web hosting provider. A good research can help you find the best web hosting provider for your business or private website. If you have a small website such as a blog or a site which has less webpages and the traffic too is not much then a simple shared hosting package should be enough, whereas if you have a business website and receive a lot of traffic then a small business hosting package offered by few reputed hosting providers can do wonders in the success of your web site and hence your business. But if you have many visitors at any given point of time and you also wish to have minimum downtime then you can either choose a VPS or dedicated servers that are setup using the mirroring technology can offer you 100% up time guarantee.

But there are very few hosting companies that actually offer 100% up time guarantee with their hosting packages. Most of the other companies use such attractive jargon in order to increase their customer base. Customers later realise that the hosting company gave false commitments about offering 100% up time. Therefore it is important that you do good research before signing up with such a host. Checking reviews on certain web hosting forums and web hosting review sites can prove to be beneficial. Also you must contact the shortlisted web hosting company and actually ask them about the technology that they have user in order to be able to offer 100% up time to their clients.

If you are a newbie in the world of web hosting, then seeking advice from an experienced friend or colleague can be useful. Also if you are well aware of your website requirements, you can get in touch with a reputed hosting provider, let them know your requirements. Most would help you in choosing the most appropriate hosting package for your website. It is advised not to hurry web selecting a host in order to host your website/s. Analyze various hosts and only then select one that offers reliable services, maximum up time guarantee, flexibility to upgrade packages, backups, 24x7 customer support, etc. If you are lucky in choosing an appropriate hosting provider, it can be a great move for the success of your website.

I am into the industry of Web hosting hence like to write articles on the various aspects of Web Hosting. The articles written are basically to help newbie webmasters to understand the various technologies of web hosting. One can have a practical overview of Best Web Hosting and Small Business Web Hosting