What do you look for in a hosting company?

[dhananizain]

Hey every one,

I am just curious to see what you all look for and consider, when choosing a hosting company.

What features, extras do you find most useful in a hosting company?


Looking forward to hearing you responses?

 

[akai10]

has to be reliable..and provide quality support

 

[SiberForum]

has to be reliable..and provide quality support

And you can get this information from the site of the web hosting provider or how are you going to determine that?

 

[WebIntellects - Rob]

I deem the price is the most important thing here people look at. Indeed. People want as cheap as possible. Economy is bad now.

 

[alemcherry]

For me Uptime and Speed, Support and Price. Would also prefer a cpanel host.

 

[christo]

there are 2 most vital factors that you should never overlook while choosing a company...
1)Great technical support 2) Promised uptime and 3) offcourse the price

 

[SiberForum]

there are 2 most vital factors that you should never overlook while choosing a company...
1)Great technical support 2) Promised uptime and 3) offcourse the price

there are 2: 1) 2) 3) LOL


Price is not the most important while you are looking for quality web hosting service

 

[DomainAvalanche]

I think the number one important factor to look for in a hosting company is great support. Nothing else really matters if you have problems with your site and the service is slow to respond and fixing your problem. Make sure the support is readily available and has a fast response before you purchase a hosting plan.

 

[ymih]

it should be cheap,should have gr8 service,good support

 

[Greg-Netost]

The most important things to look for is quality of service and availability of the hosting provider. The other equally important features of a good hosting provider that can be consider are security, backup services, server monitoring, spam filtering and 99.9% server uptime guarantee. Good host will provide 24/7 customer support. Will have hosting plans that are flexible that customer can upgrade/downgrade according to his requirements and with add on option available. Hosting plans should include most of the hosting features.

 

[dadiehost]

I look for good support 24/7.

 

[HostNurse]

The most important factors are reliability, uptime, customer support, features and reasonable prices.

 

[dompro]

if we talking about shared hosting here, the most important things are:
1) how fast is it or will be in couple of months/years when they add more accounts to the same server
2) how much of Unlimited use of resources do they actually allow (mostly CPU and RAM to run your mysql queries and such) before telling you "your sites/visitors are to demanding to run on our shared server" (even although their offer says unlimited sites/traffic)

you don't really need 24/7 support replies unless there is an issue with a server affecting 1000's of other customers like you and tehy are not bothering fixing it in a timely manner - i rather prefer them to run it in such a way that there are no issues at all or to they would be on top of every problem as it arrises

 

[Greg-Netost]

When you hunt for a hosting provider I believe you need to keep these key things in mind:
1. Good customer support
2. Uptime
3.Bandwidth
4.Programming services
5.Disk space
6.price

 

[Domainor]

The are some good factors listed above. However, I look for an important factor that may not have been mentioned as yet - tenure.

Hosting is a very competitive business and unless a hosting service is really good, there are less chances of it being still in business. Another reason is that the longer that a company has been around and has consistently good feedback, the better it is. Shoddy service does tend to show up somewhere during the tenure of a company and if you see too many pieces of negative feedback you should not opt for it.

I generally tend to prefer hosting services that have been around for at least 4-5 years if not more. The ones(and there are a few) who have been around since the early years of the last decade are well established and are consistent with good service.

 

[AThompson]

Yeah, a good host could help your site a lot. Before you decide on a package from a hosting provider, you need to know which type of hosting best suits your needs.

Shared servers are very affordable, but they can prove problematic when other sites on the server eat up system resources and impact your domain's performance.

Dedicated servers eliminate shared server issues by allocating all of the system resources to your domain, but you'll pay a pretty penny for the exclusivity.

Virtual servers fall somewhere between shared and dedicated; multiple domains can exist on a virtual server, but they operate in a dedicated server-like fashion. You can try a cloud hosting service too, but keep your eyes open as security issues arise from time to time http://www.mobileprivacysource.com/cloud-storage-security-issues-can-affect-mobile-users/

 

[Jiligite]

Read through the plan you have selected and write down on a piece of paper what they are offering you. Do you understand everything? If not find out what it means because you don’t want to sign up for 1 year and then figure out that there is a difference between addon domains and parked domains.

 

[buyselldoms]

I look for sincerity, positive reviews, due diligence, features and flexibility.

I don't care if the host is one guy and a server... I want the hosting business to be upfront... you know, do they own the datacentre, do they have a cage, do they co-locate their own servers or are they resellers. Always good to know whether the host buys new equipment, leases or using old cycled equipment (i.e. retired after 3 years of 247 enterprise usage). I don't want a host using the "cloud" term when all it is redundant power supplies (try buying a rack unit server with a standard ATX PSU! OR 2u/4u servers with just one PSU) or RAID configuration.

I have to admit I normally search for reviews in regards to whether a host is recommendable. I don't want the fantasists that create problems just so they can write on a blog how they fixed the issues within an hour. I don't care for good support either... nothing should go wrong; maybe the support is polite, helpful and fast but being able to have control directly via a control panel is much better than just having to open a support ticket for every little thing.

I always do due diligence... who host their server (their website in particular)? where is it located? Its not unusual for their main website to be hosted elsewhere to their clients, with small hosting companies. If its a UK limited company, I check to see their financial situation, CCJs etc

Features are important, what type of control panel (if any), try of VPS, port speed, installation etc. I recently cancelled some hosting... clearly said one-click install wordpress from the control panel, pretty proudly! Don't get me wrong, its not too difficult downloading wordpress, setting up the database, uploading the files to the server and doing a manual install... but if your host is selling you a package for wordpress but the scriptlicious (?) software has every blog software imaginable other than wordpress... there is surely more issues down the road with the hosting.

I like flexible payments... preferably paypal, monthly payment option (why get locked in for a year or two, rather not get the 2 months free) and money back guarantee where possible. Sometimes you can only find out how good a host is by actually using them. Bigger hosts suffer usually by having a couple of servers with constant issues whereas the rest typically work fine... just depends which server you end up on.

Also... Not cheeky beggars like Heart Internet that take payment before your order has gone to checkout if you add your card details to your account whilst a hosting package is in your basket! I changed my mind due to escalating costs... so didn't go through checkout (despite creating an account in advance), was surprised when I checked bank statement! They did email me begging to continue the transaction, just in case I forgot, or something. Not good.

 

[Scopehost]

Quick support with better discount

 

[Hostingsource]

Customers' safety should be the main goal for any web hosting provider. Choose a host that is easy to speak with.

 

[GiGaPros.]

How long has the host been around, it’s beneficial if they have been established for some time, but this doesn’t mean rule out the really new ones but if you are going to choose a newish hoster, ask your self how are you going to feel if your site just disappears and you have no chance of getting it back?