5 Things Your Website Hosting Company Must Have - Tech WebSite Ranking

Web hosting companies provide individual websites with the ability to interact on the World Wide Web. There are hundreds of web hosting companies available and they have many different types of servers and platforms. So where do you start if you need to launch a

website? It will depend on the type of website (ecommerce, blog, forum, etc.) you need hosted and its complexity. That being said, a web hosting company worth its salt should provide five essential features, regardless of what type of website you have.

1. Excellent Support

Choose a web hosting company with technical support and customer service staff available to talk with via phone 24 hours a day and on holidays. Remember, your website will be accessed at all hours and on holidays. You will need immediate access to support if your website crashes or has a technical problem at any time. Make a few random calls to technical support and customer service before you sign up for a web hosting company. The staff should be polite and helpful. The company should provide alternate channels of reaching support like chat and email. Test these methods of communication, as well. Steer clear of companies who can’t provide support in a timely manner.

2. Guaranteed Reliability and Speed

Choose a web hosting company that guarantees reliability and fast load speeds. Your web hosting company should also have a proven track record. The company track record should be less than one percent downtime. Look for a company whose servers host a million websites or more and that has been up and running for several years. Check online reviews and web hosting comparison sites for customer feedback on website downtime issues and load speeds.

3. User-Friendly Control Panel Interface

Choose a web hosting company that has a website builder control panel that you can understand and work with easily.  The web hosting company’s control panel is the critical “brain” that allows you to build and tweak your website when necessary. You will become frustrated fast if the control panel is overly complicated or you must contact technical support every time you want to make a change.

4. High Bandwidth and Storage Levels

Choose a web hosting program that offers high bandwidth levels, especially if your website will see large, ever growing amounts of traffic over time. High traffic (high data transfer) websites need bandwidth capability of over 8 GB per month. You must also plan for spikes in traffic. Spikes could raise your monthly bandwidth needs to 5 or more times the normal level. Likewise, choose a web hosting program with high storage (disk space) levels if you will be maintaining large databases like customer information, photo galleries or video files. 1GB should be ample storage space but make sure your web hosting company allows you to purchase more disk space if you need to.

5. Website Tools

Choose a web hosting company that allows you full access to standard web tools such as scripts, secure servers, shopping carts, email and associated tools, FTP, Google tools and website traffic statistics software. Many web hosting companies imbed these tools within their control panel platforms so that individuals with no programming experience can build websites easily. Choose a web hosting company that allows you to utilize the tools you need on your terms and at your comfort level. If you have no idea what tools you will need, review websites like the one you wish to create and make a list of all the features you want on your website. Choose a web hosting company that allows you to incorporate all of these features.

Your web hosting company should offer these five necessary features, at a minimum. Your web hosting company should offer excellent, around-the-clock technical and customer support. It should guarantee and have a proven track record of reliability and fast load speeds. It should have a user-friendly control panel from which to build and tweak your website. In addition, your web hosting company should offer high levels of bandwidth and storage space. Finally, it should offer access to important and popular website tools.

Guest Post by : okhosty writes primarily about website design and hosting issues relevant to small businesses. His work appears on numerous technical blogs around the web. For more info on website hosting, visit ► okhosty