There are many issues to consider when first delving into the creation of your website. It's look, feel and functionality are of greatest importance, but deciding on these and building the site are only part of the process. Choosing the correct web hosting company (or provider) for your needs can make a large difference to your organisation in terms of cost, reliability, and the long term rewards of having a presence online.

Simply speaking, a web hosting company provides the physical hardware for your web site to reside on, the internet connectivity that allows your site to be viewed, additional software (such as databases), and technical support in the case of any issues with the service. Many web hosting companies will also offer email hosting and Domain Name management services, although domain names can also be bought through any domain registrar.

Below are listed some of the common issues to keep in mind when making your choice; remember that your best bet is to pick a mix of features and functionality that is right for you requirements.

Hosting Space

The most basic factor to consider when assessing a hosting provider is the amount of hard drive space they provide for customers to place their content. Unless your requirements are very large (for example you plan to have several gigabytes of files available via your web site) most hosting company should be adequate. Nevertheless keep this factor in mind, as some cheaper providers are able to provide a low-cost service by cutting down on the space they have available.

Server Type

When buying web hosting, there are three different types of hosting that you may actually be buying. First is shared hosting. With shared hosting, your website shares the resources of the physical machine it is being hosted on with many other websites. This solution is fully acceptable for most.

Second is dedicated hosting, where the entire resources of a single physical machine are dedicated to just your website. This offers a great deal of flexibility in the configuration of your site, along with additional processing power.

Virtual Private Server, or VPS, hosting combines many elements of shared and dedicated hosting. In this case your website will still share a machine with other websites, but is “virtually” treated as being on a machine all of its own, allowing for more flexibility in configuration than on shared hosting.

For most sites shared hosting is fine; if your site requires some amount of custom configuration VPS is more likely to be the way to go, and if you expect a very (and we mean VERY) large amount of traffic, go with a dedicated server. Your web development company should be able to offer good advice to you on what your site will need, in terms of ability to handle traffic and custom configuration.

Email Services

Many hosting providers offer some sort of email service along with hosting, from simple web mail services (where you have to log in to a website to see your mail) to solutions that can integrate with Microsoft Exchange Server. Try to avoid getting services that you do not need.

Data Transfer Capacity

As all internet traffic costs money, hosting providers will limit the amount of data that can be transferred from your site to visitors each month. This amount can vary greatly from provider to provider, with packages being offered that provide anywhere from 1 to 100 gigabytes a month of data transfer. Consider how much traffic you expect to receive each month, and how much data there is to load on your site. Are you running a shop with lots of images for its products? Or are your pages mostly text and other information, which will not require as much data transfer? 

Web Application Technology

If you are having your site developed by a professional web development company, they will most likely specialise in one or two different programming languages, such as ASP.NET or PHP. It is important to ensure that the hosting provider you choose can offer support for the language your site is being developed in.

Databases

If your web site is very simple, you may not require any database functionality from your hosting provider, so skipping database functionality can save a lot of time, money, and complexity. Databases can allow you to store information about your visitors (such as shop order details) and, with the assistance of website Content Management Systems, edit the content of your site without the need for the input of web developers. If your site does need a database, there are two commonly used pieces of software that you will encounter being used, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server.

Again, it is important to ensure that your hosting supports the correct technology being used by your developers.

Reliability and Support Availability

It’s a fact of life that things can go wrong, and when something goes wrong with your website the technical support provided by your hosting company is the first place to turn to. One of the most crucial factors in choosing a hosting provider is the ease of availability of this support. Can you pick up the phone and speak to someone at your providers’ tech support section directly, without delay? Or do they have a ticketing system for support that can take days to get a response from? Are the staff answering the phone competent and able to assist you, or are they just reading from a script? If the provider is not in your time zone, a fast response to issues is unlikely.

Obviously it is much preferred that nothing goes wrong in the first place, but it can be very hard to judge providers’ reliability from just the information they provide. You can investigate a providers service record by searching for complaints about them on Google, by asking your web development company for advice, or if possible consulting with other businesses that make use of web hosting providers.

If your website is an online store or equivalent, or if you rely on your hosting provider for business related email services, the issue of reliability and support availability becomes one of your most important concerns. With a particularly busy store, an hours worth of website downtime could cost a lot of revenue, and turn repeat customers off of visiting again.

Buy Australian

If you are an Australian company there are three very good reasons to go with an Australian hosting company. Firstly, if you do need technical support for any reason, their business hours will coincide with your own waking hours, and if your site is aimed at Australian visitors you want any problems your site has to be resolved as soon as possible.

Secondly, although the internet gets faster every year, having your site hosted on a machine in the country will allow it to be served to your visitors faster. Lastly, if you have ever used Google you may have seen this before:

Google and other search engines determine if a page is from Australia, or any other given country, via two factors; firstly if the domain name ends in .au, and secondly by whether or not the provider hosting that page is in that country. So if your site promoting an Australian band is hosted in the United States, it may not show up in a “pages from Australia” search!

There is no perfect web hosting for everyone. However if you consider what exactly you need, you can ensure that the hosting you choose provides that while at the same time not providing services you do not need to be paying for. And when in doubt, why not ask your web developers for advice!

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Posted in: Tips and Tricks