What To Consider Before Choosing A Host

Before chosing a Web hosting Service, there are a few important factors for you to consider. You don’t want to get locked into a contract with a company that won’t suit your needs, so first consider the type of content you’ll be providing. If you’re just planning on blogging about your life, your job, or your daily activities, a small shared hosting account is a good place to start, and if you are looking to manage multiple websites easily then reseller hosting should be your choice. For more resource intensive services like video blogs or podcasts, a VPS might serve you better. Here is a quick shortlist of things to look for in a new host.

– Unlimited bandwidth
– Unlimited storage space
– Access to MySQL databases
– Email accounts you can set up
– Email forwarding
– Flexible Terms of Service

One of the first things you’ll want to do before signing up with a host is check the terms of service. What is their policy on sites that start off on shared hosting and exceed what they consider fair usage? Do they shut you off immediately, or do you have a grace period to upgrade? One of the worst things you can do is sign up for a site that will shut you off and not even give you a notification.

Secondly, you should always make sure the host you’re signing up for allows unlimited space and bandwidth to a reasonable degree. Of course you can’t use these hosts as file sharing repositories, but you want your visitors to be able to access all of your content without worrying about running out of space. Many hosts are comfortable with shared hosting sites doling out 500GBs to 1TB of bandwidth each month, so long as it doesn’t happen in huge spikes.

Overall, the host you choose should fit your price budget and you should always ensure that they’re flexible when it comes time to upgrade. Support should be able to answer any questions you have before you sign up and if you have any questions after you’ve signed up, then they should be able to assist you there as well. These are all signs of a great host.

Chosing a new web host is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. You have several factors to consider, including the type of content you’ll be hosting, the amount of bandwidth you expect to consume, and whether or not you would be better served by shared, dedicated, or even private cloud hosting. With so many options available, understanding the difference in services and what you need to manage your own growth can be a daunting task.

What is Cloud Hosting?

One of the main questions you may be asking yourself when considering the type of hosting to purchase is what cloud hosting is and how you can benefit from it. The technology behind cloud hosting is not new, as it is how many servers are maintained in private intranets. However, the ability to offer this technology to public use has expanded over the past few years, with the term being seen more and more often on hosts advertising their plans.

Basically, a cloud-hosted solution is multiple connected servers that can all serve up the same piece of data for a website. This means that should one server in the mesh go down, other servers will be able to pick up the load and serve the content. For users who serve up lots of downloadable content, such as podcasts, games, music, or other media, then cloud hosting can help under the strain of multiple downloads within a short period.