This one’s kinda like what Yogi Berra said:
Unless you know where you are going, you won’t get there.
Or something like that. I am really bad at paraphrasing stuff, you know, being just a crazy old Hostorian.
So where were we? Oh yeah.
Unless you know what you want, you ain’t gonna get it.
Got it?
So let’s get down to determining what you want, and how to do so.
First things first.
When you go to a web host’s site, you will invariably find them all boasting of feature X, feature Y, providing X amount of thing Y, and so on.
Don’t let any of that confuse you or distract you from your main goal.
For example, 20,000 email accounts mean squat to you unless you are going to have 20,000 employees or other people with email accounts under your domain name.
Ditto for 1,000 FTP accounts.
Think you are going to need 50 databases? Think again. OK, wait, you may end up needing several more databases than you think, so the more databases they offer you, the better.
And do you want a host that gives you 15,000 MB of disk space or one that gives you just 10,000 MB?
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Those who didn’t, are way too dumb anyway and they deserve what they get. But you and I are not like that, so it’s OK. Let the other fools rot in webhost hell.
Anyway.
You see, web hosting has become a commodity service these days. Everyone and his dog seem to be offering web hosting. Competition is fierce, and to stay alive, a web host today must offer all the features offered by their competitors.
And so everyone seems to be offering the same features, the same amounts of X, Y, and Z, the same of same, and some more same of same. And for dirt cheap prices too. In fact, dirt is cheaper than hosting, but only just.
Phthoo!
(That was the sound of me spitting in disgust! Sorry about the visual image I just created for you.)
What differentiates one web host from all the other billion web hosts is their level of service to you as a customer, their level of commitment to customer satisfaction. As unlikely as it sounds, there are a few web hosts that fit the bill, and I will mention them in passing a little later. There is another special web host (if you could call it that) that I can talk about without spitting in disgust, that I will talk about later. Don’t you make me get ahead of myself though!
One thing at a time.
Now that you know not to allow the web hosts to confuse you, what should you be looking for?
- These days, every web host offers plenty of disk space and bandwidth/data transfer, so that’s not an issue any more. Whatever you are going to do with your website, it’s very likely that you will have enough web space and data transfer limits in your hosting account.
- As far as the number of FTP accounts, email accounts, number of email auto responders, number of XYZ, forget them. No matter what you want to do with your site, and no matter which web host you choose, it’s very likely that you are going to get plenty of them for your needs.
- As of this writing, not every web host offers unlimited add-on domains and unlimited sub domains, so do make sure the host you are going to choose does so, if you plan to expand later and start more sites.
- If it’s going to be a techie site, you will want to know whether the scripts you need for your site will run or not. By a techie site, I mean a site that will require scripts. A site that serves dynamic content, or an e-commerce site, or a blog, or forum, or a content management system, or whatever else that needs scripts. So the first thing you need to know is what kind of scripts you require. Is it PHP, ASP (classic), ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, CGI, or something else?
- Once you know what scripts you require, you will want to know the operating system the web server needs to run on, for the scripts to function properly. Most scripts (except ASP and ASP.NET) run better on a Linux based server, so make sure you choose that, if you are running one of those scripts. Most web hosts offer both Windows based and Linux based hosting, and Linux hosting typically costs less, so make sure you know what you are getting, and the operating system you choose supports the scripts you need to run.
- Depending on how big you think your site is going to be, and how involved you want to be with the system administration side of things, you will need to choose between shared hosting, dedicated hosting, managed hosting, and a few other types of hosting. For most people, shared hosting is the answer, but if you need help deciding, I will tell you the difference between these different types of hosting a little later.
- Unless you have a very special reason for choosing a web host in your area, state, or country, forget it. It doesn’t matter. Choose someone that is good, not someone that is in the same geographical area as you. And why would you want your web host to be in your area anyway? Do you want to invite them to a party where you are the host (ha-ha!) and hope they get the joke? Ain’t gonna happen. Forget it!
There are several other things we could go on talking about, but take it from me that almost every web host offers the feature you want in one form or the other. They have to. Otherwise they just won’t survive in this competitive market.
So, to summarize, these are the things that you should actually be looking for:
- Do they offer unlimited domains and sub domains. This one is just a just-in-case thing, but it’s always good to have it. Just in case. And I’m sure pretty soon almost all web hosts will start offering it, just like all the other features.
- Ditto for the number of databases they allow you to run.
- What scripts you need to run your website, and does your webhost support them.
- What operating system you need to run your scripts smoothly, and does your webhost offer it.
- Do you need shared hosting, dedicated hosting, managed hosting, or other type of hosting and does your webhost offer it.
The rest either don’t matter, or are offered by almost every webhost anyway.
The first and second ones in the list is something you can see on the spot in the features list, but you may need some help with the other three items. I will deal with them in later posts.
For now, I’d be interested in your thoughts. What do you look for when trying to choose a web host?
