Single Most Important Factor For Choosing a Website Hosting Company
Posted in Hosting by DB
The most important thing you really need from a hosting company has nothing to do with the amount of bells and whistles they offer, no matter how shiny and pretty they may be. At the end of the day, the amount of space, bandwidth and all the free stuff don’t really matter when you are caught in the middle of a perplexing issue and have no clue on how to get yourself out of it.
Support, by far, is the only thing that you should focus on when choosing a website hosting company especially if you are looking for shared hosting. It can be a little tough to figure out ahead of time whether or not a company’s claims about support are true, but there are a few ways that you can check this out.
First, you can test out their customer support team by sending in a message to their help desk. Try to be as obtuse as you possibly can. Ok, you may want to use an alternative name if you are really going to be annoying. See what kind of response you get. If the answer is helpful and informative, you’ve got a winner. If the answer is go pound sand, you may want to keep looking.
Second, it’s important to really get a feel for their tech support during the free trial period (assuming they offer one). You will be setting up your site and chances are you will run into a few issues along the way. Notice and record the kind of responses you get. How long did it take to hear back from your hosting provider and how friendly was the answer? Remember, a nasty or a short response is not the done thing or what you are looking for. No matter how annoying or thick headed you may be, the bottom line is, you are paying them for their support and they need to have the patience to walk you through everything. If they don’t, it’s definitely time to move on.
Support is crucial especially if you are in the early stages of your hosting career. Almost everyone starts off with shared hosting and in shared hosting your single point of contact for any kind of issue resolution will be the hosting company support staff. You do not have the luxury of outsourcing your server management to a third party.
Choosing a host because of the unlimited bandwidth and free space on offer will only have you smiling while signing up. It is the support that your chosen hosting provider provides that will keep that smile on for the rest of your hosting term because there will be a day in the not so distant future when your website comes back with a “Page Not found” response. Trust me !!
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