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October 17th, 2011 - by Mohamed Adel
A lot people who buy a hosting provider regardless its reputation, gurantees, and features, and finally they found themselves in a deep black hole, alone in the dark. There are many questions you should ask yourself about before using the hosting provider:
Will it support my code files (ASP.NET or PHP)?
Will I be able to take my money back if I found it worthless?
Will they provide me a good and reliable after sale services?
Many questions you should be asking even other than the three listed above. In this article we will know exactly how you can select the best hosting provider according to your budget.
I’ve tried many hosting providers since 2006 some of them was a big cheat, and some of them was good, but now I know how to select the best cheap, and powerful hosting provider.
Now we will go through the most important questions one by one:
Question 1: Will the hosting supports my code files?
If your files are based on Asp.net they the Linux platform will not be suitable for you, and you’ll not be able to use it, and you must use Microsoft Servers platform. And if your files are based on PHP technology, you still can use Microsoft Server platforms, but it would be much better, and reliable to use Linux platforms according to its stability, and maintainability.
Question 2: Will the hosting supports money back guarantees?
It is a very important thing to know that if you found the hosting is worthless, you still can take back what you’ve paid. Also this shows that the hosting provider is really trust their service, otherwise you’ll take your money back.
Question 3: Do the hosting provider have a good, and quick after sale services?
In many cases, let’s say 80% or 90% you might need ask the support for some items, it might be very simple things, and some other times its really huge and vital things. If the hosting provider responses are slow, or not reliable, then you’ll find yourself going in an endless loop looking for the solution yourself, and usually you’ll not be able to apply it yourself.
Question 4: A nightmare called Upload / Download, Will the hosting provider allow extract, compress feature?
Consider your code files are a lot (Something link WordPress, or DotNetNuke) and you want to upload them. By Internet nature your ftp program will fail at some files, and even if you’ve recalculated the files and re-uploaded the failed files, you’ll have your installation fails. To avoid something like this you’ll need to upload everything in one single compressed file, and ask the support to extract it. In this point you must make sure your hosting provider allows you extracting compressed files over the server.
Question 5: Will the hosting do Files and Database backup regularly?
Another important question to ask is: will the hosting do a regular backup for the files and databases? The importance of this comes from the point of the nature of the websites and hosting, this is a virtual machine and your website is being controlled remotely, and you can’t protect it yourself from remote threats (Include hacking attempts and misbehaviors of the users), in this case re-uploading the files and database might not be the proper solution, because your files, or database will be older than the one on the server. In this case the most proper solution to have a regular backup (daily for example) for your website and databases, and you can restore it easily. Just make sure the hosting provides regular backup, and the amount of the restore is a kind of cheap.
Question 6: Do my website has a fixed IP?
If you’re using a hosting provider with fixed IP, you’ll be able to access your website using this IP, regardless the domain is currently pointing to the hosting or not. The importance of this item shows before launching the website, or on the phase of creating and tweaking the website. By the fixed IP you’ll not have to point the domain to the hosting and finally have many visitors comes to the website and find nothing there. The importance of this item also appears very clear when you’re doing a migration or update to the website, you can work on an environment with just an IP, and in the same time have your visitors comes to another version.
Question 7: What is the hosting Bandwidth and Disk Storage?
Another thing you should be asking about, what is my limitation in bandwidth, and what is the storage allocated to my website. It is not necessary to have a huge hosting where you’ll use a small part of it, but you must estimate how much will you use, and know the answer of this question, Will the hosting be enough for me or not?
Hosting disk storage or disk space is the amount of megabytes (or gigabytes) allocated to your hosting plan.
Hosting band width is the amount of megabytes (or gigabytes) allocated to your hosting to transfer from the server and client per month.
Question 8: How many domains I can use in the same hosting plan?
When you first go into the websites game, you’ll find the need of a hosting that allows you to have many domains to be hosted. At this point appears the importance of making sure your hosting allows this, just ask about this, if you’re planning not to have many domains then just skip this part.
Question 9: Do the hosting provider has any HIDDEN-FEES?
Many hosting providers claims that you can have unlimited everything, but in fact you’ll be paying additional extra fees to have it. For example a hosting provider might say that you can host unlimited domains, and when you buy the package you find yourself have to pay some extra fees for each additional domain you want to host. This is an important question to ask, Will the hosting be asking me for any additional fees? Or is there any very small stars describes that it is not really unlimited?
Hosting Providers I’ve used and do really recommend
If you’re looking for a good and reputable hosting provider then first you should go through its features otherwise you’ll stuck with for an entire year, then you’ll be worrying about how you’re going to migrate your files to another one. Below you’ll find some hosting providers I do really proud of, and in my slight opinion they are the best you can get:
- DreamHost – PHP Hosting
- DNNMart/Database Mart – Windows Hosting
Later on I’ll be writing more about these hosting providers, one by one.
All Comments, Suggestion, or even corrections are welcomed through comments in order for everybody to gain the knowledge.
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on Monday, October 17th, 2011 at 11:50 am and is filed under Website Hosting.
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