Web Hosting - Can You Pick The Right Host?
Posted in Hosting by DB
Choosing a web hosting provider is like playing the lottery especially if you don’t have enough hands on experience in understanding hosts and the hosting industry. Infact I would go so far to say that even for someone who has relative experience the task of choosing a web hosting provider often proves to be a hit or miss affair. I can’t explain why many experienced webmasters get it wrong but I suspect that they are driven to picking a host based on one thing and one thing only. Money!!!
I can’t really blame them. When you have customers actively searching on the internet and keeping tabs on the rock bottom prices that are prevalent in the hosting industry, your job of suggesting a quality host get a tad difficult. After all how much can you argue the quality and support factor when your client has one thing in his mind and that is to get his running costs down. Push this long enough and you soon will have your client turn around and question your rationale in pointing them to whom you consider to be a quality host.
Does this sound familiar? When you have a client that does not understand hosting or should I say has not had a bad hosting experience, you are essentially in a lose lose situation. Even if you manage to convince your client to go with a quality host you client will always have that feeling of being suckered into it. This will indirectly affect any related or unrelated work you are doing right now or will do so in the future with the same client because I can guarantee you that you will be up for some price concessions from your side.
On the other hand if you do cave in and go in for that cheaper hosting option, what do you think will happen when the hosting company drops the ball? You will be left scrambling all over the place to get the situation under control and by the way you will be at fault. After all you recommended the host. All the customer suggested was the price point. Like I said it’s a lose lose situation.
Imagine then the plight of a complete newbie looking for hosting. How do you pick a host? Can you trust that material you read on the many hosting review sites that pop up every day. I truly believe that there is a need in the market to objectively rate a host and so far I have not seen one example of a truly unbiased source of information.
Picking a hosting company is at best an exercise in immense faith. My suggestion is find someone with sufficient hosting experience to be able to objectively understand your website and customer needs before suggesting the right hosting plan for you. I would love to hear if you believe you are experienced enough to pick the right hosting plan and ofcourse the right hosting company. What are your main filtering points? Do you only go by the host reputation? Are you application specific? Do you consider freebies in your decision? Are you clear about your host’s infrastructure? Oh!! I could go on and on …..
This article is written by the author of the popular fan blog of the up and coming singer Asia’h Epperson
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May 16th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
[...] Go here to see the original: Web Hosting - Can You Pick The Right Host? [...]
July 14th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Picking the right host is like eating a recipe for the first time. When it tastes good, you will continue to buy the food.If not, you’ll move to another food recipe. So it is a matter of trial and error…
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