I made a brief post a few days ago about looking for a new web host, so far I am very happy with my new host. I thought I would add a few more tips I have found when looking for a new web hosting company. If you use your website for business or to make money in anyway, finding the right host for your website is vitally important. Here are my tips -
- Before you sign up make sure you ask them a few questions by email, if they can’t respond quickly to a possible sale they are likely not going to be great responding to support requests either. This doesn’t prove you will get good support, but in a lot of cases if you don’t get a decent, relatively quick response to your email you can expect a worse response if you ever need support.
- Ask a few technical questions, the pre-sales people might not know the answers but you should get a decent answer from the support department forwarded to you. If the answer doesn’t makes sense or leaves you unsure you might want to rule that host out
- Write a list of all your requirements and make sure they are fully met. If there are any points you can’t see on their website ask in an email to check. If there are any scripts your website uses make sure these will work with the new host, and make sure they are allowed.
- Ask for the address of the server you will be hosted on if using shared hosting. You can then test what the Pings are like and see how quickly you can download from them. Every host should have a test file you can download.
- Check for any uptime guarantees and make sure if they fail to meet them they actually do something, and not just apologise. Their terms of service should cover what they will do if they fail to meet the uptime guarantee.
- Obviously you should check other things such as the bandwidth and storage limitation, if these don’t meet your needs you can rule them out straight away.
These are just a few basic tips, there are lots more useful checks you make do to try find the right host. If you have any of your own tips, feel free to leave a comment below.