There are several critical steps for you to make the correct choice for cheap web hosting. Leaving out a step will cause untold difficulties eventually, so follow the plan closely.
Choose Carefully
The expense is, by far, not the most important consideration. Reliability is. The dirty little secret among hosting companies is that once they own you. It is a huge hassle for you to move to another provider. So you will want to get it right from the start. Avoid free sites. Do you really want competing advertisements on your small business pages? Do you want your business limited by small allocated disk space and data transfer? If you can not afford the unbelievably low website hosting costs these days, then you have a hobby, not a business.
So how do you verify reliability? The same way you would for any other product. You research and test. Do a Google search for website forums. You will find a lot of people with clear strong opinions. Spend these posts and you will Uncover a solid base of recommended host companies.When you have 5 or so potential candidates, you are ready to test. Contact their customer support. Verify their live support. Time it. Send them a message. If they do not respond promptly now, you can be sure that when you have a problem, they will be impossible to get a hold of. You will want to inquire about both web server dependability and mail server reliability.
Anticipate Your Requirements
Do you have dreams of grandeur for your online enterprise? It is better to pick a web host plan accordingly. Two important considerations are disk space and bandwidth. If you will have a lot of video or expect monster traffic, then bandwidth is key. If you will have reams of jpg files, disk space is key. Other considerations are what highly advanced applications are included. Ask your friendly web expert buddy if you are likely to ever want such applications as Ruby on Rails or Fantastico.
Must Haves
You will want to have these additional features from your small business web host. You will want a useful interface. Cpanel is common. Beware of highly specialized interfaces. It will mean a learning curve for someone. You will want guaranteed up-time in excess of 99%. A lot of companies, nowadays, are promising 100% up-time, but the risk on their side is meager. A 1 day refund for a $7.95 monthly charge is not much compared to you losing 50 orders because your site was down. Read those forums for real-world experience! Absolutely insist on daily backups and 24/7 free customer service. Examine the small print for sneaky support fees.
Choosing the right small business web hosting is not too hard, but you do want to spend half a day to make the right choice. Do the investigation, anticipate what you will want in the years to come as well as right now, and insist on key features. You might even want to become a reseller. Do the math. If you could sell $7.95 a month small business web hosting for 100 people, that is almost $10 grand a year. That tells you why there are so many cheap hosting companies around and why it is so difficult trying to pick the right one.
