Best Web Hosting: 10 Key Questions

Page 2: What you need to ask before choosing your website hosting services

by Judi Maddigan

4. What are the uptime statistics of the hosting companies?

You'll want the best and most reliable web hosting uptime you can find. Obviously, your site needs to be always available for your visitors. But server downtime can seriously impact your site's ranking in the search engines as well. To maintain a good position in Google, for instance, your site needs to be live every time its robot, Googlebot, checks your pages. When a site goes down for the robots, it will negatively impact its search engine placement.

5. How secure are the hosting companies' data centers?

The physical facilities of the best hosting companies will be state-of-the-art. They'll have implemented measures such as advanced security for the building itself, climate control to prevent overheating, fire suppression systems, and unlimited power supplies and battery backup systems in the event of power outages. In addition, some hosting companies maintain a second data center located in a different part of the country to provide emergency coverage if the primary center experiences some sort of severe problem, such as a hurricane or flood.

6. Do you need SQL server hosting?

What technologies do your hosting services need to provide? Do you have 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year plans for your site? What new technologies will you be introducing? If your current website does not use databases, for example, you might think that you do not need SQL server hosting. However, you should consider whether you'll need those capabilities in the future. PHP, SSI, ASP, ColdFusion, Ruby On Rails, and private CGI-BIN are typical of the types of technologies supported. In general, you'll want to arrange for website hosting with as many technical features as possible, so that your future website development will not be limited.

7. What type of statistics package is included?

You'll want to monitor your web traffic statistics, especially important when determining the success of your promotional efforts, such as an email marketing campaign. There are different types of tracking and statistics packages, some easier to use for web stats analysis than others. Some hosting companies have demos available so that you can preview exactly what is tracked and how their reports work. The more feature rich and customizable the tracking options are, the more likely they will meet your needs. Also check whether the same web traffic statistics packages are available for all sub-domains and add-on domains that you might add to your master hosting account.

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