Web Hosting Tips To Help You Get Started

A website needs to be backed by good hosting if it wants to further its brand and business. The visitors to the site would not be very happy with server downtime for instance; it can make the brand look bad and ruin all the hard work being put together by the business owners in establishing themselves. If you are serious about your website and want it to create the right impression, you cannot be lackadaisical about the hosting company you are working with. You need to be absolutely sure that your website is in good hands.

How do you choose between the web hosting companies available and ensure that you are doing what is best for your website? First off, do not be unduly influenced by attractive promotions and marketing gimmicks offered by hosting companies today. There are also a few web hosting tips that can hold you in good stead while you are trying to procure your own web hosting account.

Stay away from the “Free Domain” gimmick

A free domain name is sure to draw eyeballs; however, take a note of the ownership of a “free” domain before signing on the dotted line. In some instances, the ownership of a free domain is retained by the hosting company. This means that either you have to stick with the web host for a long time or pay a large amount of money to buy back the domain later on. Moreover, the domain can be free for the first year; however, you might end up paying more when you have to renew it.

Ask all relevant questions to be absolutely sure about the ownership of a domain and the renewal costs after a year, before you go ahead and finalize a deal.

Get your domain name and hosting from separate providers

It is not necessary to get a domain name and register it with the same company. Your focus needs to be on finding a reliable domain name registrar. It might be convenient to register your domain names with the web host. However, you need to be absolutely sure about the experience and the expertise of the domain name registrar and web host you are working with.

Be absolutely certain about the terms specifying bandwidth and disk space

If you are shopping for shared web hosting, you need to be absolutely certain of the bandwidth and disk space you would be provided as part of the deal. If your website becomes popular in the future, you should not be made to pay a large amount of money in lieu of data transfer.

Read the fine print

Study the “terms of service” of your web host in detail and be absolutely clear about the CPU/server usage. If a website is using more than a certain amount of storage, it would be violating the terms of service and can also be terminated. Most hosting providers come with such a clause to rule out improper usage of resources on their servers. Then, there are those that are using this clause to get around their unlimited storage promises.

Research to know more about the web hosting companies

Go online and find out more about a web hosting company you are considering. The best companies would have fewer disgruntled customers registering their complaints in several online forums. However, you would need to adjust what you find online for subjective verdicts and individual biases.

Make sure you have your own backup

While your web host would be taking periodic backups of your files, you need to augment it by having your own off-site backups to be doubly sure.

Make sure the online transactions are secure

A good practice is to use PayPal or a one-time credit card from a reputable company to pay for shared hosting or reseller hosting services.

Follow the web hosting tips mentioned above and find a reliable web hosting company offering specialized services to cater to your web hosting needs.