Web Hosting Services

Don't be penny wise and pound foolish when selecting a hosting service!

Consider the following topics before selecting a hosting service or hosting your own Web server.

1. How will the Web Hosting service help promote (market) your site?

2. What type of technical support does the Hosting service offer (Chat, Email, Phone) and is the support 24 / 7?

3. Does the Web Hosting service host sites that may be objectionable to your customers?

Will associating with these pages cause your company any harm?

Will the traffic to the site tie up your site?

4. What is the hosting service disaster recovery provisions?

5. How fast do the Host's own pages download? (This gives you insight into the Hosting services bandwidth capability or you can use Cnet's Bandwidth meter)

What is the bandwidth capability of your prospective Web host?

You need to know how much data they currently transfer and their peak transfer times.

Consider the web host's plans for expanding its bandwidth capabilities.

The type of data line connections the service uses can determine the bandwidth capabilities of a web hosting service. Obviously, the faster the data line, the more the web host pays for the connection.

6. What server resources are available and do they cost extra?

Does the server offer data encryption for credit card transactions?

Does the server support the creation of server-generated files created by CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts or database created ASP (Automatic Server Pages) or PHP?

Domain Name costs or Unlimited Domain Hosting?

Does the site have monthly Bandwidth or Space Limits?

• Unlimited GB Hosting Space?

• Unlimited GB File Transfer?
  
  
• Extra cost for faster service?

Does the server support Blogs or CMS systems and if so which?

7. What type of servers do they offer (Apache or IIS or ?)

You should review at least 3 host services and recommend one (tell me why)!
A good format for the review is to put the info in a table!

Web Host	Price (setup / month)	Storage	Marketing Services	Technical Support	Objectionable Content Allowed?	Disaster Recovery	Host’s pages loading speed	Bandwidth	Server Resources
Host 1 Name	Price	info	info	info	Yes / No	info	info	info	info
Host 2 Name	Price	info	info	info	Yes / No	info	info	info	info
Host 3 Name	Price	info	info	info	Yes / No	info	info	info	info