Friday, 19 August 2011

The Features You Can Expect On A Webhosting Provider

By Lorie Christy Kent


Website hosting is one the most important financial investments today's businesses make. There are some important considerations when choosing website hosting services. The features available vary from company to company. All companies should offer a few that are key. It is important to the expansion of a business that these are offered. Companies, especially new ones, can get into an economic struggle otherwise.

Security could be the single most important feature to consider. Companies keep all types of sensitive account information. Consumers are dependent on businesses to protect this information. If it falls into the wrong hands, the business may be sued. One of the fastest growing crimes today is identity theft. As the popularity of the internet increases, it does too. Today there are numerous hackers on the web. New viruses and Trojans are created every day. Anti-virus software, a firewall, and encryption services must all be offered by the provider.

The next factor to think of is reliability. It is a must that businesses provide reliability and convenience to their clients. This should also be expected of the businesses' hosting provider. If the website has poor performance and is constantly crashing, clients and profit will be lost. Downtime is one of the most common causes of money loss. Unlimited bandwidth and unlimited server space should be offered by the hosting provider. This enables a business to scale up as necessary. If the volume of traffic suddenly increases and the business does not have these features, it will suffer greatly.

An addition vital feature is support. Tech support should be free and available 24/7 by phone. Some webhosting companies charge for this service. Others do not, but it is only available through web forums and email. This is generally offered by a partially managed hosting service for free. Free on-site technical support should be offered by a fully managed service. None of the hosting providers can guarantee problems will not occur. If something does happen, it is important to get reliable, effective, and quick support. To research providers and these three features, customer reviews prove to be one of the best ways.

There are some considerations when choosing between a full managed service or a partially managed service. All of the administrative tasks are attended to by a fully managed service. This enables the business to spend additional time on business oriented tasks. This is not true of a partially managed service. The business must manage its own tasks such as updates and maintaining the web server.

Other important features to look for included no hidden fees, a money back guarantee, unlimited domains, and email services. Make sure these email service include unlimited email addresses, spam protection, auto responders, and email forwarding. E-commerce integration is another feature retail sites should consider. It is vital that this type of website have an online transaction system and shopping cart integration.

Thorough research should be done on all hosting providers. It is very important to know the options and the prices. Also important is to determine exactly what the business needs. Hosting companies can be researched through many sources. One of these is customer reviews and blogs, as mentioned previously. Those who have done business with that company will provide great feedback.




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