Business Web Hosting: Which is Right for You?

 Business web hosting is what you need. You have a website you need to put online. When you look around on the internet, there are thousands of choices. How do you choose the right web hosting package for your business?

Reliable web hosting

Business web hosting must be reliable. The last thing you need to worry about is that the provider's service becomes unavailable for long stretches of time. What kind of uptime guarantee do they provide you with? How long have they been in business?

Hosting support when you need it

What level of support does the company offer you? You may not need 24x7 service but is their support desk open reasonable hours? Beware of companies that only offer email web hosting support. Some of these companies will tell you that they only offer email hosting support in order to keep costs down. What they often don't say is that they are doing the business part time and can't possibly be available to answer the phone. When you need help, you may have to wait days to get service.

Ecommerce web hosting

Do you plan to sell online? If so, does the web host have shopping carts available? Are they included for free or are they extra? Get the names of the ecommerce shopping carts they provide, and research their capabilities to be able to determine which one is best for you.

Website response times

Be sure to ask the hosting provider for a list of websites that are hosted on their servers. Enter a few of them into your browser and pay attention to how fast they come up. If all of them take a long time to load, this may indicate that the hosting provider's servers are overloaded. Doing a ping on the website addresses is another way to measure the time it takes for the server to respond. Keep in mind though, that a ping test will be more of a measure of a bandwidth bottleneck than a server problem.

Web Hosting bandwidth: How much do you get?

How much bandwidth does the web hosting service provide you with every month? If it is only 500mb per month and your website is 50 kilobytes in size, this will only allow 10,000 visitors per month to hit your website. If you expect to need more, make sure you can live with the extra charges the hosting provider will levy. If you website traffic explodes, you may be on the hook for large bandwidth overage charges.

Small business web hosting that is reliable is a vital part of any success your company will experience online. Doing your homework ahead of time will save you lots of grief later on.

About the Author

Joe Duchesne is the president of Yowling.com. Business web hosting is their specialty. Reprint freely as long as you provide a keyword rich clickable link back to yowling.com from this resource box.

 Joe Duchesne

More Articles 

Changing Web Hosts - Richard Lowe
One of the biggest pains about having a web site is changing web hosts. I ought to know, I've changed over half a dozen times in the last three years. Each time has been a step up and with each move it becomes easier and easier to change. Why...

Get Paid to "Surf the Web" Programs - Are They Legit? - Kay LaRocca
Get Paid to "Surf the Web" Programs - Are They Legit? by Kay LaRocca There are many programs on the world wide web where companies will pay you to surf the web, or, basically view their advertisements. I've done my research and the best...

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) Web Hosting by www.vipwh.com - Paras Shah
A Virtual Private Server (VPS), also referred to as Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS), provides the features of a dedicated server for multiple web hosting customers to share. At first instance it sounds contradictory, how can you have a dedicated...

What Type of Web Hosting is Best for You? - Dave Summits
Copyright Dave Summits. You can distribute this article, but you must keep the author box which is included at the bottom. How to Choose the Right Type of Web Hosting by Dave Summits Are you confused with all of the different types of web...

Web Hosting: 4 Factors in Choosing a Hosting Company - Richard Martin
When choosing a web hosting company there are a whole lot of different factors that should go into your decision making process. One of the biggest factors should be: 1) Phone support. Email support is nice, but email occasionally falls in between...

Hosting Options for an Ecommerce Web Site - Bobette Kyle
Deciding how to host your ecommerce Web site and what approach to take can be daunting. There are several approaches available, each with different advantages and disadvantages. Storefronts If you have a small business, you may want to...

Should you renew with your current host? - Your website in the year 2005 - Philip Wylie
Sometime during this year the chances are you're going to have to renew your hosting package. Can you be sure you’re still getting the best deal for your site? Hosting companies, as businesses, spring up all the time. This is because they are so...

Dedicated Server vs. Co-location Web Hosting by www.vipwh.com - Paras Shah
So - you know shared hosting no longer cuts it, and your single office connection is not enough to host a web server - so which is best, leasing a dedicated server or buying your own server and co-locating it someone's data center? Difference ...

Web Hosting Center CEO - Tony Tebano
5 Web Hosting Tips for '05 By Tony Tebano Are you planning your web hosting needs for 2005? Then it's a great time for your company to consider the following tips for a successful year of hosting! By following these simple steps, you can not only...

Web Hosting - How to choose the right provider for you - Calin Indre
Thousands of companies, tens of thousands of different plans and only a few of them are really suitable for your web site and for your online needs. This is what you are confronted with when choosing a web-hosting provider. Nowadays being part of...

4 tips in choosing the right web hosting company. - Padawan
4 tips for choosing a web hosting company. When choosing a web hosting company there are many factors to consider. 1. Does the company offer telephone support? Email support is always nice to have available, but you may already know how long...

It is time to become a web hosting reseller - Abdillahi Abdillahi
As we know the web hosting industry is a multi billion dollar market that has became easy and automated which enables anyone to offer high quality web hosting services without spending a lot money so if you buy a reseller hosting package today then...