# Picking the perfect Hosting company



## desert_gold_hound (Mar 14, 2009)

I see all over the internet and this forum “What’s the best hosting…?” and I would like to give some feedback here about this.

There are ton’s (well if they actually weighed anything) of hosting option’s out there. The problem is they all offer something different. The prices very on many different things not just the basic cost you see. While one may have a cheap monthly fee for a basic site they may have a high cost for a SSL. This is important when selling items, taking personal information, and much more. Other features that they all charge different for include how much bandwidth is allowed, how much space you have, how much SQL databases they give you (there is tricks to keeping these down), and the list just goes on and on. 

Another thing that differs from site to site is what OS they are running. This will give you different features also. I suggest if you are using free scripts then look at there requirements as they may very. Then list the requirements for each this way when searching for the company to host your site you have some knowledge of your needs. 

Ask yourself some of these questions before you start shopping. I would do two lists one with Right Now info and one with What you think you will need in 1 Year.

1. How much bandwidth each month do I need?
2. How much space do I need for my site?
3. What scripts am I using and what are there requirements?
4. Do I need a dedicated SSL or I handle a shared SSL? (usually you will need dedicated)
5. Other items that may cost you such as registering the URL and prosily a bunch of things that are slipping my mind right now.

One thing to consider to help lower both 1 and 2 is to use a free picture hosting. This will lower your space requirements and the pictures will download from an external site so as too actually lower your monthly bandwidth. I have found that this can also speed up the downloading of a site sometimes.

Now take the top 5 cheapest sites and compare them for the following.

1. How user friendly is there back end?
2. Do they offer free scripting that works for my needs or do they offer the scripts I wont?
3. How do they handle excess usage? Will they just shut my site down or will they bill me at a cost to upgrade my account?
4. Do they place adds on my site? (I hate hosts that do this)
5. What is there up time? (although you can never truly believe there statements)
6. Do they keep everything backed up? (this is a good thing, but always back up your sites on your end also)
7. Are there any required contracts? (I have seen them slip this in on fine print)
8. Do they give a phone number? (Call it and make sure a person answers. I always make sure I can get live support. If no phone number then hit back button you do not wont them)
9. How do they handle emergencies? (you may have to call them for this. Thinking what if there servers crash)


Now you will organize your list from Liked best on down.

Your last step is search the company out.

1. Call the BB and find out if they have had many complaints.
2. Search the internet for there name. This would be sites like forums and others that are not owned by them.
3. See if they have a forum and what others are saying on there. (this is an awesome opportunity to see if there is a lot of problems)
4. Scratch your head, Take in a warm bath (through in a bath balm or two), use aroma therapy, or what ever you can do to clear your mind.

Don’t buy for a day or two you wont to think about it. But remember you are not stuck if they don’t have contracts that require you to stay. You can go somewhere else and have a URL transfer done.

Good luck and have fun.


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## heartsong (Mar 14, 2009)

*x*

thank you so much for giving us so much "food for thought"!  not having much computer savvy to start with, and absoloutely NONE on the selling on line end of it, this at least gives me a point at which to start.

many thanks!

monet


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## desert_gold_hound (Mar 14, 2009)

*Your welcome*

Like I said this was off the top of my head so there are other things to consider such as e-mail (don't know how I missed this) and what not. My hopes was not to cover it all but just enough to where you could start to price. Feel free to ask me any questions as I don't know much about soap (yet) but I can give some advice about webpages although I have outdated myself.


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## IanT (Mar 14, 2009)

that was very very helpful  thank you!


ok...some questions...

how do i _know_ how much bandwith ill need?? i have noooooooooooooooooo idea how to gauge this??


and can you reccommend any free photo hosting sites like you mentioned?? would that be like an image shack or flickr or those types of site?


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## desert_gold_hound (Mar 15, 2009)

Figuring needed band width can be a very complicated aspect of this choice. You can never figure this out 100%, however; there are some things you can use to help. 

Ask your self these questions.

1. Are you going to use a pay per click search? (this will increase usage)
2. Are you going to have large files? (this is why I say host pictures elsewhere)
3. What is your target market? (teens will use the net more then adults)
4. Do you already have a bunch of customers that would use your site? If so how many?
5. What is your advertising scheme? (are you trying to send people to the site?, Are you trading links?...)

What I try to do is figure out how much traffic will go to my site and how many of my pages they will visit. Then I take this and figure out how large the average page is (rounded up) and use this as my base traffic. The questions above will help with this.


Now I will let you know that most of us will never use a whole lot of bandwidth for such small business. Normally this would be for larger business that need to worry about this. 

The best thing I can suggest is ask others on this forum what bandwidth they are using. They can find this out through there back end or to call their hosting company. This would probably be the easiest and best way to research this. 

For free pictures there are quite a few options.

www.imageshack.us
www.photobucket.com

I will not recommend one over the other or even that these are better then the rest. I personally use photobucket but that is only due to them being the one that I am used to using. Another option here (probably the best) is use a free webpage to host your pictures. The pictures are not where the pop-ups come from and then if any one checks out that page you can send them to your main page. I like doing this as it can increase your traffic (usually very very slightly). There are lots of these most search engines have there own so just do a search.


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## kaseencook (Mar 15, 2009)

My sites are hosted by FutureQuest, and they have been a great deal! Their base package (which is what I host three websites on) is about $15 US a month with 5G bandwidth and 500MB disk space, which I haven't even come close to using. You can also customize aspects of your account to suit. Their user interface (Command and Control) is also very easy and efficient to work with, and they have great e-mail. 

Just though I would give them a plug, they have been great!

Also check out "The Site Wizard" which has lots of helpful info if you need help with the coding/web design aspects of your site.


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## desert_gold_hound (Mar 16, 2009)

Well I wasn't going to make suggestions here but if you need unlimited go daddy has unlimited size and bandwidth. I am sure they have a catch but I haven't had any problems on any of my sites hosted on the same host. I like it because I can have more then one site on the same server. The only thing that drives me nuts is they use sex as a selling tool and this I don't care for (but everyone seems to do it). 

There are better values depending on your needs I have 28 sites so they work very well for me. I will not post my sites here because I decided long ago I would not advertise on unrelated forums. Plus some of them are my customers sites from when I was doing site design and didn't wont to leave them stranded. Its nice having us all on one site.


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## Shawn (Apr 20, 2009)

One of my favorite hosts is IXwebhosting.com, they are fairly inexpensive and have pretty decent uptime.  The only thing I do not like about them is that at somepoint they started making you have to pay for server side email filters and they do not warn you when the server's php software is out of date... which virused my site... BUT regardless, I do like them. Just keep an eye on the server's software version and you'll be fine.


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## Guest (Apr 21, 2009)

Thank you all for posting this info , very informative for someone who does not know much about it, but needs to a some point soon. 

kitn


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