Profit pulling websites for the small business
How to find a good web host
Once you have chosen a web hosting company you will find that they have lots of different kinds of plans or packages. It is smart to find a plan that suits you best. Knowing what you need is tough for someone who is starting out. Some of the things you can look out for are:
- Disk space - The amount of space that the hosting company gives to store your files on the server. If your website is heavy on the graphics side or if you have video or audio files you will need more disk space. Static websites take very little space. Most of the hosting companies give up to 1GB space.
- Bandwidth - Bytes transferred from your site to the user. Again unless you have a site heavy with videos and audio files this will not be a big problem as the traffic will take time to build up. A five or ten gigabyte bandwidth allowance is usually plenty enough for a small to medium sized business or personal site.
- Domains - Most of the hosting companies will allow one domain and many sub domains. e.g. cats.com is the domain. Persian.cats.com is the sub domain. Some hosting companies will let you have many domains in the same account as well
- Control Panel - Also known as C panel should have a user friendly interface. Some are quite hard to use. With the C panel you will have access to all the parts of your website. (Like visitor logs, which search engine is sending you traffic Email redirection, File manager, Domain Management, Sub domain management.)
- Technical Support - Look for a company that offers 24/7 support either by phone or chat. This is very important when choosing a webhost.
So depending on what niche your website is in your priority could be disk space, bandwidth, number of emails etc.
The two things that are very important
- Uptime - the time the servers are up at the host company. Look for at least 99% up time
- 24/7 email phone or live chat support