Look in any internet magazine and you’ll be confronted with a bewildering array of offers for hosting your website, some that look too good to be true, and they often are. But the real price of web space (which is little more than just storage on a computer without a terminal) need not be high. To compare what’s on offer you need to look at all the variables.
Price
This can vary from free to thousands of pounds per year. Consider carefully what your needs really are and don’t let a consultant talk you into a Rolls Royce when you could happily get away on a little scooter. Don’t forget that ordinary customers can’t see where your server is housed, so unless you are very obviously using a free service, complete with their logo and adverts, only pay for what you need.
Email accounts
If the number you can set up is limited, consider just what your needs are likely to be. In an expanding business you might want a separate email address for each member of staff plus general ones such as info@yourcompany or sales@yourcompany.
Webspace
The deals vary from 5MB to unlimited webspace. The former is adequate for about 8-10 fairly simple pages, so if you’ve got a very complex site, with lots of graphics or a large database, make sure the hosting plan you’re using will leave you room to expand and leave enough webspace for backups and email if you’re running it from the same server.
Bandwidth
It is difficult to calculate the amount of bandwidth you will need as it is a factor of the size of the pages or documents downloaded from your site, and the amount of traffic visiting the site. Realistically most small businesses and freelancers will be lucky to have the problem of too much traffic, but the extra charges imposed for exceeding your allocated monthly bandwidth can be quite stringent. So if you’re planning a red-hot viral marketing campaign that will have tens of thousands of people flocking to your site, it might be worth checking your bandwidth allowance in advance.
Connectivity
The bigger and more expensive the web-hosting service, the more likely it is to have higher level access to the main backbones of the internet (think of it as their own sliproad to a motorway as opposed to a dirt track leading to a B road leading to an A road that connects to the internet). This can affect the speed at which pages from your site download to the viewer’s browser and also may effect the availability of your site to viewers. You need to make a judgement about how many of your potential clients will be using broadband connections. If the majority are using 56k modems, they won’t really notice the difference.
Server Speed
Just as upgrading your desktop computer to a faster processor can speed up your work, a faster server can theoretically improve your download time. Whether this is perceptible to the majority of users is debatable.
Flexibility
Can you upgrade to a more powerful server easily if you need to, or will you be locked into a fixed-term contract?
Preloaded Software
Does the server support options such as PHP, ASP and MySQL? Check with the person who is building your site what you need, to be pre-installed on your server.
Reliability
Does the company give any guarantees about ‘down time’, when your site wouldn’t be available? Would it matter if your site were down for eight hours?
Security
If your site is mission critical to your business, you may feel reassured if your server is housed in a climate-controlled bunker built to withstand a nuclear blast, with its own firewall, rather than in the back bedroom of a one-man band. But as with most things, you get what you pay for.
Technical Support
The quality varies considerably. Will there be someone at the end of a phone line or email to sort things out promptly, and will you be charged for it? Again rates vary from free to £1 per minute, so if you think you’re going to need a lot of help, factor this against any low monthly hosting charges. Check whether the price includes automatic backups of the site. Also find out if support is offered 24-7. Does it matter if your site goes down on a Sunday morning?
Shared/Dedicated Servers
Sharing a server is a cheaper option, and unless you’ve got a huge site or need to be able to customise your server, sharing will not affect the performance of your site. No one will be able to detect whether your server is shared.
Because it isn’t a case of one-size-fits-all, it’s hard to recommend individual hosting services, but these sites compare some of the best deals:
www.webhostmagazine.com/index.asp
www.hostcompare.com
www.comparewebhosts.com
www.hostindex.com
www.FindYourHosting.com
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