Web Business Freedom

Note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles that chronicles the steps taken to create WebBusinessFreedom.com.

For anyone launching a website, a critical action item on your to-do list will be finding a good web host. With all the thousands of options available, how do you make the best decision?

To me, the primary criteria are reliability, customer support and a focus on web hosting.

First, you want a company that truly lives up to their claims for 99.9% uptime or whatever their number is. Of course, you can’t really verify this for yourself until you’re a customer. But you can certainly do research ahead of time to see which companies rate well. Start by asking friends or business associates with websites who they use and what their experience has been. I chose my current host, Fused Network, on the basis of a web designer I trust.

Another very good information resource is Host Jury. If you’re considering a hosting provider that isn’t listed there, then get half a dozen customer references and call them up to find out how satisfied they are.

Keep in mind that no one can (or should) guarantee you 100% uptime. Even with the best host, your site will go down occasionally—especially if you are on a shared server. So the questions you need to get answered are:

1. How fast will you be notified about any hiccups or outages?
2. How fast will you get a response to a call or email?
3. How fast will the provider actually resolve the problem, on average?

These questions point to the second major deciding factor—customer service. In my experience, the best hosts will:

• Let you know your site is down before you discover it (or one of your customers or prospects does)
• Answer your phone call in less than five minutes, with a live human being who will address your issue
• Personally reply back to an email or posting to their tech support form, within 5-10 minutes (note: automated email responses don’t count!)
• Send you a detailed explanation for any planned or unplanned outages, telling you the reason in easy-to-understand terms

I can’t stress the customer service aspect enough. I’ve been with web hosts who took forever to respond (if they ever did), which is unbelievably frustrating if your website is down.

The third consideration is the provider’s vested interest in hosting. Really outstanding web hosting companies specialize in web hosting…and that’s it.

So those are my main criteria. Notice I didn’t emphasize price, because most hosts are by necessity price competitive. Just watch out for super-cheap pricing, which is a red flag in terms of the support you can expect to get. On the other hand, if you have massive file storage needs or anticipate heavy traffic, you might need to consider a dedicated server, which will cost significantly more.

After narrowing down a list of potential hosting providers, it’s a good idea to contact their sales team to make sure you select the right package. That is also the ideal time to ensure they have the features you will need to easily access your files and maintain your account. When in doubt, invite your favorite web developer to ask the questions for you.

By taking the time to chose a web host carefully, you will be able to launch and run your website with confidence. Doing so will hopefully spare you the time, expense and irritation of having to switch providers later.

Photo credit: Tim Dorr