Office location: local or abroad?

Some people still put a lot of weight on the office address of web hosting company. Somehow they get peace of mind knowing that the office is just a short distance away. If something goes wrong, they can easily knock on the door or pickup the phone and complain to their hearts’ desire.

The truth is it doesn’t really matter where the web hosting company is located. What matters is the reliability of their infrastructure. Try to find out where their data center/s is/are. Also keep in mind that a lot of local web hosting companies are just resellers of the service. Research!

Friendly technical support

While it’s nice to have friendly people all around you, when it comes to hosting your website, what you really need is a competent technical support. Make sure you can reach their technical support team 24/7 and with the right answers.

Features and applications: The required and nice-to-haves

Website hosting packages comes with tons of useful features like website analysis report, database, mail management, etc. And more features like message boards, chats, online polls etc. But pause for a moment and consider what you really need. Just because they offer a chat room doesn’t mean you need to have a chat room on your website. Remember that some of these applications will use up server space. And some requires constant maintenance. You might end up getting additional manpower and might hurt your operating cost in the process.

Discounts for longer payment terms

Not really as important as the others but something to consider. Web hosting companies will offer you a discount depending on the payment cycle you wish; monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual mode of payment. The longer your lock-in period, the bigger the discount you get. But consider this, say you decided to get the annual mode of payment, and it turns out that you’re not happy with the service; it can be a very frustrating experience. Unless you’re really sure with the service, you might want to try them out first for a couple of months or so.

Search Engine ranking

Just because they have a high ranking in Google(or any search engine for that matter), doesn’t mean they’re good. To rank high in search engines such as Google, a typical website requires Search Engine Optimization services. This goes for web hosting companies too. And there are SEO professionals and companies that get away with search engine trickery or “black hat” SEO methods. And this will enable one’s website to achieve good ranking in search engines. So watch out.

“We’re the Best”…as stated in their website.

Believe it or not, some still fall for this ancient advertisement tag-line. Well the BEST way to verify this is to ask around. Visit forums that discusses web hosting services or if you can, get in touch with their existing customers. A simple email inquiry will do. Introduce yourself and your intentions and ask if you can get their opinion about their existing web host.

They’ve been around for a long time, they must be good.

This is really not a good benchmark. Technology is continuously evolving at a very fast pace. Web hosting companies should be flexible to adopt new technologies without drastically affecting their service. And so the question is, how fast can a web host company upgrade their infrastructures with minimal, if not zero, service disruption?

They’re hosting more than a hundred customers.

Yes this can be a good criterion in choosing for a web host service. But take an effort to verify. Just because it’s posted on their website, doesn’t mean it’s really true. Randomly choose a client or so and politely inquire about their web host provider.

They’re cheap

The more sellers in the market, price gets lower, better for the consumer.

But this doesn’t mean that you go sign up immediately with the cheapest of them all. Make sure that it will fit your business needs. One of the most important factors that affects price is server space. Cheap web hosting packages offer small server space. And usually, it gets shared with your website pages and emails. A little planning should be done prior to getting a hosting package. Here’s a scenario, you have 10 website pages that’s about 3MB in size total. Obviously, a 10MB hosting package will suffice. But if you have 10 staff, sending emails with more than 2MB of file attachments a week, you will need more space.

It’s free

This is probably the granddaddy of all mistakes one can possible make when choosing a website host. Free hosts are NEVER the right choice if you are selling yourself, business, products or services.

Remember the phrase, “first impression lasts”? With free web hosting, you will not be able to use your own website address, yourcompany.com. Don’t give your customers the impression that you cannot provide yourself a domain name. I don’t think they’ll be convinced that you can provide anything for them, if you can’t even provide yourself one of the basics in doing online business.

And let’s just say you can use your own domain name, chances are, in exchange for the free service, your website will get tons of advertisements. This will tragically affect the look of your website. If you are entertained by online advertisements, doesn’t mean your customers feel the same way.

So do yourself a favor, if you want an effective business online, do not go for free website hosting service.

Keep these advices in mind when choosing a web host company and save yourself and your online business from some of the hassles and frustrations that comes from wrong decisions.