CHOOSING THE RIGHT WEB HOST
by Ajoku Kelechi J.

This is a very sensitive topic considering the role a plays in your joy or regret of investing money in owning a website.

There are a lot of web hosting companies out there of which 80% can really mess you up.

You must take heart that not all web host out there are actually web hosting companies.

Web Host and Web Host resellers:

There is a difference between a web hosting company and a reseller

Web Hosting companies: These are companies that own the hosting server that are used to allocate web space in fractions on request to prospective buyers or site owners for hosting their websites. These companies are under obligation to render support directly to you in the time of need.

Web Host Resellers: these are companies who do not directly own the servers but are given a privileged right to sale web space allocated to them at any price of their choice. You do not have any contact with the actual hosting companies as their identities are only known by the reseller.

The reseller offers all the support you might require while the main host renders support to the retailer

 

Note that some Resellers are actually more effective in support than the so called main hosting companies. This may be attributed to the fact that they are still small and need the customers to increase for them to grow. Whatever the case, as long as it keeps our sites up and running, we are okay.

 

This does not exonerate the very BAD ones. Many of the resellers don’t even know what the business of web hosting is all about before proceeding to be a reseller.

So what do we do as there BAD main Hosting Companies and BAD Web Host Resellers?

 

Look out for the following when choosing a Web Host:

UpTime: Uptime is the amount of time website stays active or reachable online. You won’t want people calling to say your site is unavailable especially when you make sales online.

So take time to check out the company website and any other web site you know that is hosted by them frequently in other to determine their uptime availability and speed.

Although other things affect speed like the internet connection you are using and the animations or dynamism of the site you are visiting.

 

Customer Support: This is a crucial aspect you mustn’t joke with in the business of web hosting. Find out the mains of communication a web hosting company uses for its support. A lot of them use email while some use both phone and email.

Send a couple of mails to them and check the time interval of their response as this will determine how long it will take for them to respond to your distress call.

For those with Phone support; place a call to them and find out how functional the phone lines are and the tone of voice of the support personal, if he is impatient with you them run a far as you can from them because the will not have the calmness to put you thru in your distress.

 

This is why I give credit to Lunarpages and Nairahost as they have not let me down yet on email response.