Some people may not realize the importance of teaming up with the right web hosting company. It is just like a partnership. When businesses decide on the wrong web host, they could have difficulty in getting support, suffer from downtime or even worse. The loss on the initial capital investment is nothing compared to the damage resulting from bad web hosing. However, choosing a hosting package does not have to be a daunting task since businesses just have to consider the following points when searching for one and they will discover that the plan to be chosen becomes a lot clearer.

Type of Hosting

• Does the company need its own infrastructure?
• Does it need more access or control over its website and server/s?
• Are they not too technical?
• Would it be advisable for the web host to maintain the website?

They should ask these kinds of questions. No matter what type of hosting: shared hosting, dedicated hosting, managed hosting or VPS hosting, the pros and cons should be considered. They should know the purpose of their site and not be afraid to seek advice.

They can ask themselves if they will build their own website. This requires more skills than basic HTML. Those who are new to designing websites can use website builders such as Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly or Wix, among others. There are web hosts that offer them as a bundle in their standard package.

Support

What are the support channels available: email, live chat, forums, telephone and are these 24/7 or just during office hours?

Where are they based?

In case something happens to their website/services like technical errors and DNS attacks, they need to address the issue right away. The gravity of the situation depends on the type of website. For instance, if this concerns an ecommerce site, the business could lose money during the time that it is offline. Therefore, they have to be sure of the support that will address their needs.

Communication is critical when it comes to problems that need to be quickly solved. A web host that is based in the US knows how it is to work with their business, customers and time zone. This hosting provider can give a personal touch in terms of customer service and success of addressing their problem.

Features

What are the features that the web host offers?

Does this provider make use of cPanel for single click installations of chosen software?

What is the available storage and bandwidth? How many domains can one account host?

Functionality is crucial to all websites and future-proof. When a website further develops it requires more space so, do the web hosts’ capacity and features allow growth?

The web host that businesses decide on should be able to move them smoothly to the following plan and storage space capacity to answer their needs and that of their website. Scalability, upgrade and downgrade, is another essential feature often overlooked. They should be capable of downscaling when they use the wrong hosting produce that is very big for their website. They should see to it that they would choose a hosting provider that lets them be free in moving to the right plan.

If you are planning to host your own website, there will be many decisions that you will have to take. One of the most crucial decisions will be to select a web hosting solution for your website. This is a very important decision as it can influence the way your website performs. All the hard work that you put on the design of the site can go to waste if you do not choose the right web hosting solution to host your website.

With so many web hosts available in the market, it is not an easy job to select the web hosting that will best work for you. A few pointers that will help you make the right decision are listed below. Look into them and use them to find a web hosting solution that will be the best for your website.

Identify your requirements

It is important to know what the requirements of your website are. Only if you have an idea of what you need, you can look for them in the web hosting solutions. The requirements of the website will depend on the type of website and the features that the website will have. Find below a list of features that you need to look for while selecting a web hosting solution.

• Site builder option

If you have availed the services of a web designing company for creating your website, you can get the list of requirements from them. If you plan to create the website after you have decided on the web hosting, it will be a good idea to opt for hosting solutions that have a site builder system in them. Site builder tools will simplify the process of creating a website and will help you in hosting the site through a few simple steps.

• Control panel

Check if the web host provides you access to a control panel that will help you in managing the web space you have bought. If the web hosting solution has a control panel, you can create blogs and websites a lot easier than having to upload files using FTP.

• Upload options

Identify the various upload options that are available with the web host. If the hosting solution provides you a variety of upload options it will be a good option, as it will give you flexibility while maintaining and uploading your site.

• Security features

Identify the various security features the web-hosting package has to offer. If you are planning for a e-commerce website, a lot of importance has to be given to security features.

• Customer service

It is always ideal to select a web-hosting company that has good customer support. The support extended by the web host is not limited only to email or phone support. FAQs and that help members in managing their web space has to be present.

• Scripts and databases

Websites require various types of web components, scripts and databases to work. Select a web hosting company that will give you all scripts, web components and database support that is required by your website.

• Windows or Linux server

Websites are designed to be hosted in either windows server or a Linux server. Always opt for the server type that is required by the website to make sure that all functions and features of the website perform as designed.

Types of web hosting options available

Shared Hosting Services

Shared Hosting Services or Virtual Web Hosting Services is a type of hosting service, where many people share the space on a server. The number of websites that are hosted in a physical server depends on the configuration of the server. Some physical servers cater to more than thousand websites. This however raises the question on performance. Such shared hosting services are highly equipped to handle reasonable loads, but when overloaded, the performance of the server is an issue. Reputed Web Hosting companies will constantly review the load and performance of the server and act accordingly by adding more servers if necessary. Shared hosting services are cheaper, but the server response time will be on the slower side.

Dedicated Hosting Services

Dedicated Hosting Companies are the opposite of shared hosting companies. They assign a dedicated web server for just one customer. This ensures better performance when compared to shared hosting service. A customer will rent out the web server for a specific period and will have a variety of options of the web server. In a dedicated web server, the customer has the option of hosting more than one website. The customer will have greater control over the web server. Bandwidth and space provided will be much higher in dedicated hosting plans. This gives you the option of hosting a high traffic website. Websites that contain extremely confidential data will generally opt for a dedicated hosting service.

Co-location Hosting Service

Unlike dedicated hosting service, in co-hosting service the customer owns the web server. This gives the customer even more control over the web server. The web server will be housed in any of the secure data centers of Web Hosting Companies. This hosting service ensures that the customer will have full control over his web server. The web hosting company will provide 24×7 monitoring of the server to ensure 99.9% uptime. The secure data centre will provide the customer with prompt maintenance. This will ensure maximum uptime of websites hosted in the server. Co-location hosting services are the most expensive of the hosting solutions that are available, but are considered the best option for highly secure websites.

Reseller Hosting Services

Reseller Hosting services are considered to be the cheapest of the Hosting Services and is becoming a hot favorite for small and personal websites. The web hosting company will offer its web storage space to a reseller at a lower price, who in turn then resells the storage space to his customers. Website designers, website consultants and system integration companies are usually the resellers. Price of such hosting services is quite low and with that comes the issue of service. Since a lot more people are involved in the hosting, it takes time to resolve any issues and hence reseller-hosting services are best suited for personal websites or blogs. Reseller Hosting Services is not an option for business websites that need prompt backend service. Cheapest of all hosting services, it is a good option for someone trying to find a personal space online.

By considering your requirements and the best hosting service that you can afford, you will be able to find a web hosting solution that will be well suited for your website.

BlueHost has been offering web hosting service since 1996. It is considered to be one of the earliest hosting companies. Until today, this company has managed to survive in this fiercely contested web hosting industry while many other companies come and go. This tells us that they are a company that is able to provide quality hosting service to their customers. This is the main reason why they are still strong and running in the hosting industry.

Equipped with first class equipment, BlueHost is a company that uses modern quad servers, mirrored backups, backup generators and 24/7 monitoring by their trained staffs. All of this is to ensure that their service remains at an optimum level. Their internet connection is also superb providing a 2GB per second bandwidth.

As for their packages, they have adapted to the simplicity of packages nowadays by offering a one price package. They are well-known for their ‘Platinum Pak’ plan that offers 1500GB of disk storage, 1500GB of bandwidth plus industry standard features for only $6.95 per month. Users will also have the ability to host unlimited amount of domains and sub-domains under one account.

Like many other hosting companies, BlueHost also provides the cPanel control panel. It is considered as the most popular control panel system nowadays. With cPanel, web administrators can easily navigate and configure their hosting account with ease. BlueHost also provides Fantastico that can allow users to install a number of software packages based on their needs. There are packages for blogs, forum, content management system, picture galleries, online surveys and so on. Fantastic is a great tool that many webmasters like and by providing it in their plans, BlueHost has added even more value to their packages. For more advanced users, they will have access to many scripting languages like PHP5, PERL5, Python, Ruby On Rails and CGI. So, it is great users from all sorts of level.

As for the reliability of the service, BlueHost claims that they are able to provide users with a 99.9% uptime. No users will be happy with all the features and tools without a good uptime. According to tests being done, the overall uptime that was monitored for a period of 3 months have shown that the uptime provided by them have achieve the 99.9% target. However, there was a small amount of downtime throughout the testing period but that amount is considered to be very small if we compare it with other hosting providers.

From the aspect of support, users will be able to obtain support through their online help centre. In it, there is a huge list of articles covering a range of subjects. Many users find solutions fast and easy by using the help centre. Alternatively, users can contact the support staff through the normal way by using wither phone, email or live chat room. They provide 24/7 support and this is great for their users as the support staff could be contacted anytime when he or she is facing a problem with their account.

In conclusion, BlueHost is a company that has a lot off experience and is definitely a reputable company because it has been around for such a long time. So, if you are looking for a hosting provider, you could consider BlueHost to be your choice.