Web Hosting Reviews and Tips

When you start your own website, you want to make sure that you have reliable, decent hosting – if your host is down all of the time, your site might as well not even exist in the first place. So, to keep things smooth and simple for a webmaster-to-be, I have composed a list of tips for choosing the best hosting for your site.

Running a website does not have to be expensive. There are reliable hosts that can handle your site for 5 to 7 dollars per month. So long as you don’t have a huge website, one of these hosts is really all a person needs to manage their site.

It used to be that you had to pay tons of money on a domain name in addition to hosting, but more and more web hosting companies are offering a free domain name when you sign up, so keep an eye out for these – could save you a handful of money right there!

To get an idea of what companies are offering the best bang-for-the-buck at the moment, consider checking out an independent web hosting review site for recommendations. Do be careful though, as there are some review sites out there that are just scams set up by the owners of a hosting company to try to get them more business!

Look out for activation fees. Some hosts seem to be cheap at first – until you read the fine print to find out that they have a 50 dollar activation fee!

Check out the types of customer support a company offers. Web based instant message type support can be very quick and efficient when you have problems.

Think ahead when you buy hosting. Are you going to build a plain HTML based site? Or is there a chance you could want to add a forum or another dynamic feature to your site in the future? If so, you’ll want to make sure the site has PHP and MySQL. CGI might also be a requirement for you.

With these easy tips, you can be on your way to mastering your own website in no time.

The success of your website is directly proportional to the type and quality of the host you choose. So, it is important that you choose the best of the lot to make your website the leader in the market. With time, a number of website hosting companies have emerged in the scene. Many web hosting providers claim to provide affordable webmaster services to the clients.

However, there are certain subtle differences between choosing a free website host and a commercial website host. If you are thinking of business or e-commerce web hosting, then you should think in a little different way.

As a customer, you must be wise in making the choice. In this regard, some tips can be followed so that you get a reliable and affordable web host for your website.

·    Website Type: This is important to decide what type of website hosting solutions will suit your requirement.

·    Reliability: The first thing before deciding on a website host is to ask questions regarding the services provided by the web hosting provider. This is applicable in case you already have a website host in mind. If the service provider answers your queries satisfactorily, then they can be a reliable one.

·    Access Speed: A good web host will provide a good speed to the websites. This means that customers can access the site quickly. Generally, a web hosting provider offering an uptime of 99% and more is considered good.

·    Consider the Bandwidth: Check the bandwidth that your web host is providing. For business website hosting, this is crucial. Web hosts promising unlimited bandwidth are better avoided as they are making unrealistic promises.

·    Technical Support: Make sure that your chosen website provides round-the-clock technical support. This should be confirmed to ensure perfect accessibility and functioning of your website.

·    Amount of Disk Space: A disk space of 10 MB is sufficient for a website. Hence, be on your guard if any web host service provider tries to lure you with a 200 or 500 MB space.

·    Availability of SSL Certificates and Shopping Carts: This is crucial if you have designed your website to serve as an e-commerce site. Check whether your web host has provisions to install shopping carts in your website or not. Furthermore, find out whether you will get an SSL certificate or not. This is necessary for the security of the online transactions taking place through your website.

·    Check Out the Payment Plans: Study the various web hosting packages available at hand. Comparing the prices can help you to fix your budget so that you don’t end up paying more.

·    Other Services: Check whether your web host service provider will provide you with some additional service or not like updating the website with photos, content whenever required. Also whether they can handle changes required to be made in graphics, editing, compressing, etc.

These are some of the tips that you can follow to avail a good web hosting service provider for your website.

Reseller hosting is the business of providing web hosting services owned by another web hosting company to end customers. Reseller hosts provide website design and management services as well as hosting services to users. Generally, a reseller will buy a product or service from another company, repackage it by adding something extra and resell it to other companies under its brand name. This means that the reseller acts as a middle-man, creates brand-image, finds customers and hosts their sites on the servers owned by the original hosting company. Naturally, this also means larger sales and profits for the original web host.

Entrepreneurs can make a decent living through reseller hosting, as it is a great business opportunity for people who want to create a stand-alone business venture. It also opens up allied opportunities for those with parallel businesses who can combine web hosting with their other services. Let’s take a closer look at the advantages.

Branding Opportunity: The best part of the reseller hosting business is that one is able to create one’s own brand even though it is another company that provides the web hosting service. For example, as per the reseller hosting program the reseller company need not get involved in the technical aspects, but can certainly market the service under its name at prices of its choosing.

Competitive Edge: The reseller has the opportunity to offer other services which can be used in conjunction with web hosting accounts. These include merchant accounts, SSL Certificates, search engine optimization and domain name registration. That’s almost money for nothing.

Cost Optimization: Reseller hosting does away with the need to maintain expensive in-house hardware such as different types of servers, backup generators and other network equipment and connections required to host Internet web sites.

Market Expansion: A reseller can cash in on the ever increasing numbers of businesses and individuals who are migrating to the web. That’s almost unlimited scope.

Now that you know the benefits, we’re sure you wanna pick up this lucrative business option! But the business of reseller hosting is not without its red flags.

? You need a large site and the ability to market through

various channels to justify the initial costs associated with reseller

packages.

? You need to be cost competitive as compared to other resellers

with similar services.

? Ensure that you have adequate bandwidth for the number and type of sites you need to support to understand the different levels of storage and bandwidth offered.

? Make sure you secure Service Level Agreements for technical

support and hardware repair from the web hosting provider.

Although you don’t need to maintain very sophisticated hardware, you will still need some. Take care when you make that purchase.

? Check for the brand name of the hardware. Does it enjoy a reputation for reliability and after sales technical support?

? Check for the speed of the CPUs in the servers as this will directly correlate with the load speeds of customer websites.

? Ensure the hardware can offer backup options, such as drive mirroring. This will help keep a synchronized copy of all data for easy backups.

Bearing these points in mind will certainly improve your chances of success at reseller hosting.