Your website is complete and you are now ready to find a hosting company but you are not sure what questions you should ask them to determine if they are worth going with. Though it may be human nature to ask, ‘How much is it,’ to a handful of companies and go with the cheapest one, doing so could have you stuck with a web hosting company that is sub-par at best.
Here are some different questions you should ask a hosting company before you commit to using them:
1. How good is their customer service: This goes beyond a customer service hotline that is open Monday through Friday 9am to 5 pm. Since websites go down at various times and not just during banker’s hours, you have to be sure you get a hosting company that offers 24/7 customer support via the phones. This is an easy place to be fooled. Many companies will tell you that their customer service is 24/7, but they will be referring to e-mail. That does you no good. They also may tell you they offer 24/7 customer support with the phones, but this may mean that you have to deal with an automated service. Make sure there is always a ‘person’ to talk to at all times so that if a problem does arise it can be remedied quickly.
2. How much disk space do you get: If a hosting company puts a limit on your disk space that is too low you will end up having to move to a different hosting company if your website begins to experience growth. In this case it really doesn’t matter how cheap a web hosting company is. If they can’t grow with your business, what’s the point? Besides, there are plenty of bargain hosting companies that offer unlimited disk space these days.
3. What is their up time: Uptime is how often you can expect your website to be operating smoothly. Down time costs you money so you don’t want to go with a hosting company that has a 95 percent uptime when there are others that have 99.9 percent.
4. How many e-mails do you get: This may sound silly but some hosting companies only give you a handful of e-mails and then charge you to set up more. Make sure that you are either getting more than you will ever need or that the hosting company you are looking at offers unlimited e-mails.
5. What extras do you get: Ask about the extra. Some hosting companies will give you free domain names for a year and some will do it for life. Some will let you host two domain names under the same account and some will let you host multiple. You won’t know unless you ask.
6. How much is it: This is last on the list for a reason. Price should be the last thing you consider, but if you find several companies that you like equally the same, then you can go with the least expensive one to save yourself some money.
The bottom line with choosing a cheap web hosting company is to ask as many questions as you can. Never take their word for anything and if you feel even the slightest doubt about something they have to offer, ask them questions about it. |
Article Details
