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Top Tips To Avoid The Common Mistakes In Choosing A Web Hosting Service |
Article Submitted by: Douglas De\' Neill
Thursday, 03 July 2008
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Choosing the right web hosting company is key to a successful online business. Many businesses go into this process without a clear understanding of what levels of service they should expect and get stuck in a web hosting agreement that doesn't meet their business needs. Knowing the right questions to ask and the areas you should be aware of before you make contact with web hosting companies, can help you get the most from your website. When approaching a web hosting supplier make sure you are dealing with a reputable company who can guarantee the level and quality of service you and your customers require. Check following top tips for the web hosting company selection process: 1. 24x7 Technical Support: Remember, your website is available to your customers 24/7 so it's important to ensure the level of customer support offered by a web hosting company matches this availability. The last thing you need is to discover your website has gone down at 6pm on a Friday before a bank holiday and there is no one available to help you until the next Tuesday. So ensure that skilled tech support representative will be there to handle phone calls and emails 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Make sure certified technicians are part of this support team. Just any customer care representative won't be of any help when it comes to solve server problems. A good web hosting service provider is always particular about the qualities of their tech support representative and often employs technicians to be dedicated to particular clients. 2. Shared Or Dedicated Hosting: You need to understand the difference between shared and dedicated web hosting. In dedicated hosting, also known as managed hosting only one website is hosted on a web server. Unlike shared hosting, you do not need to share the web server with someone else. Hence you can have your preferred operating system, hardware configuration and other server technologies installed on the server giving you full control over the server. In shared hosting, the server your site is place on contains many different websites limiting you to the present server configuration. Your choice of web hosting depends on the size of your site, the amount of traffic you get and the types of technical services your site offers. Make sure that if you do get a dedicated server you truly need one. A reputable web hosting company can advise you on this. 3. Access to Upgrades: Web technologies are changing very fast. To stay afloat you need to keep pace with this development. Your service provider should allow you to upgrade your server whenever required. Some managed hosting services offer annual hardware upgrade to their clients at free of charge. When employing a new web hosting company make sure you find out what their upgrade policy is. 4. Backup Systems: Your service provider must be able to provide full and regular backups of the data your site in case there are any issues with power outages or server crashes. These backups should be securely stored so that backup tapes are not damaged during any disaster. In addition there should be power supply backups on the server your website is hosted on. High specification backup systems can keep web servers running during any power issues. Talk to your web hosting company about their backup procedures. 5. Secured Data Center: Make sure the data centre where your web server resides is well maintained. Server centres must use environmental controls and practice safety measures like proper cooling, fire protection, isolation from dust, flood protection etc. Talk to your web hosting company about their disaster recovery plan to ensure your site will be adequately protected. 6. Server Location: It is very important to ensure your web server is hosted in the same country as your target audiences. Web hosting companies often set up their data centre in another country to reduce costs. Therefore, ask where your web server is going to be located. If you are targeting UK market, your website must be hosted in UK and when you intend to do business in USA, you should host it in USA! So when you are choosing a web hosting company make sure you follow these tips and avoid making common mistakes and get the service that is right for your business. Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com |
About The Author:
Douglas De' Neill is a contributing author at CWCS - UK based managed hosting company. To know more about dedicated servers, linux hosting and various web hosting plans, visit CWCS website.
Douglas De' Neill is a contributing author at CWCS - UK based managed hosting company. To know more about dedicated servers, linux hosting and various web hosting plans, visit CWCS website.
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