Web Hosting: What to Look for in a Hosting Company and What to Avoid
If you are looking to go into business on the internet, one of the first things you should do is find a web host for your site. There are literally thousands of choices, but most of them use the same types of servers and provide identical services.
First, the one thing to avoid at all cost when it comes to your hosting decision is to sign up for hosting through an affiliate link. When you use an affiliate link you will pay twice as much, because they make as much every month from the referral as the web hosting company makes.
What that means is if you are currently signed up through an affiliate for hosting at $9.95 a month or more is that you can cut your hosting bill in half with no loss of service or reliability.
I have been in business on the internet since 2001 and have never paid more than $29.95 a year for a domain name and web hosting package. When I first started, I found a company that would allow me to pay monthly. That allowed me to get my first site started for less than $12.00. I am still with them today.
Another thing to avoid are reviews of web hosting companies, especially if they have an affiliate link attached to them. If someone is selling something they cannot be trusted to give an impartial review.
It is not uncommon for the reviewer to imply that the only place to get the offerings of the particular hosting company they are promoting is from their link. The truth is that 95% of all web hosting companies offer the exact same services and control panels.
To find a good web hosting company, look for three things:
1) Reliability. Most web hosting companies can rightfully boast a 99.9% uptime. They all basically “lease” server space from the same places anyway and operate their businesses from their PC like you are.
2) Price. How much does it cost and how do you have to pay it. A dollar a month difference in price is not going to break your web business, so if you need to pay monthly (like I did starting out), find a host that allows you to pay that way. If you have a credit card, just sign up for a standard web hosting and domain name package. You can find them for less than 30 bucks in a lot of places. When you figure the $10 a month packages being sold by affiliates cost $120 a year, that’s an extra $90 to promote your business.
3) Support. You should test the support staff before signing up by sending them an email to see how responsive they are. If you don’t get a response within a few hours, you may want to keep looking. My web hosting company provides very good service, and you will find that most of them do.
Finding a web hosting company is really one of the easier things you will do as you get your business up and running. There is no need to overcomplicate the process.
If you can’t build a website, some will offer tools that will make it easier for you to do it. That may cost you a little extra, but if you need it you need it and it is worth the expense.
Find the host that meets your needs, but learn about them from their main site and disregard the opinions of any third party that finds it neccessary to attach an affiliate link to that opinion.
Darell has been in business on the internet since 2001 and has recently introduced a web site dedicated to disclosing the truth about internet marketing scams and money making products.
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