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Budget Web Hosting - Are They All Created
Equal?
Choosing a budget web hosting company can be
overwhelming. In fact, choosing any web
hosting company can be a challenge due, in
large part, to the fact that there are so
many of them. Do a search for "web hosting"
with the quotes around the keywords on
Google, and it'll return over 5 million
documents! That doesn't mean there are 5
million web hosting providers but there very
well could be at least 1 million! That's a
lot of web hosts. How can you choose one
that meets your need?
What is Budget web
hosting anyway?
Budget web hosting is generally defined as
any hosting service that is below $10 per
month. The budget comes from the low price.
Now, most companies in the budget web
hosting category only offer one year plans.
Most budget web hosting companies however,
will quote you the monthly fee you would pay
if you divided the annual fee by 12 months.
Keep that in mind when you are comparing one
company with another. The other thing to
look out for is the setup fee. Do they
charge you a setup fee to get started?
Evaluate your general
impression of the company.
The first place to start evaluating budget
web hosting companies is their front page.
Does their website give you a sense that
they are professional? Is it easy to find
all of the information you need? Take a look
at their contact information. Do they list a
physical address, an email address and a
phone number to contact them? If they don't
provide any contact details, that has to
throw up a red flag. If you run into
problems setting up your website, and you
have no proper contact information, how are
you going to get service from that company?
Do they have a toll
free support number?
Does the budget web hosting company provide
a toll free number for you to contact them?
If they are based in Atlanta, Georgia and
you are in Seattle, Washington, you don't
want to be paying long distance to them if
you need to get them on the phone about a
concern you have. A toll free number also
speaks to their willingness to deal openly
and honestly with their customers.
What kind of guarantee
do they offer?
Choose a budget web hosting company that
offers a good guarantee. Most budget web
hosting companies don't openly publish their
satisfaction guarantees. If you have to look
in their terms and services agreement to
find out where they stand with regard to
giving you back your money if you are not
satisfied, you should look elsewhere.
What is the uptime
guarantee of the site in question?
Uptime guarantee refers to the amount of
time the server is live and serving your web
pages. An uptime guarantee of 99% means that
the host guarantees that their servers will
be up and operational 99% of the time. Over
the course of one year, 99% uptime would
represent a downtime (the one percent) of
around 87 hours in a year or an average of 7
hours per month. An uptime of 99.9% would
involve only 8 hours of downtime for the
entire year.
What kind of after
sale support can you expect?
While there are many other factors you could
consider, the final one I will deal with is
after sale support. What kind of resources
do they make available for you. Find out if
the budget web hosting company offers free
scripts. Do they have any marketing tools
they can make available to you? What kind of
support for setting up your account can you
expect from the budget web hosting company?
All of these factors must be taken into
consideration.
Just because a company offers a budget web
hosting service, doesn't mean you
necessarily have to compromise on features,
quality or service. All three will only be
found, however, if you make sure to do your
homework to find a budget web hosting
company that is a good fit for you.
This article was written by Joe Duchesne,
president of http://www.yowling.com/, a
business web hosting company that
specializes in helping online business
owners increase their website traffic.
Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely
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