Once you have a target niche, domain name, and at least the beginnings of a site or blog, the next logical step is to find the right web hosting company (and plan within the company) to service viewers.
Most small business owners have found outsourcing web hosting is less of a hassle and more cost effective than hosting one’s own website on one’s own PC. Web hosting is popular and competitive enough to make fees for start-up sites reasonable. Why not let someone else handle power outages, server crashes, viruses, spam, and a host of technical details for your site?
Choice of a web hosting provider becomes less dependent on computer speed and memory space as these continue to improve over time … for decreasing costs. Even once high-end hosting software has come within reach for small business webmasters.
I think the CEO of Google once remarked that by circa 2024, you could turn on a garden-variety iPod and play video downloaded on it for 85 years … nonstop because the memory capacity will be that great.
All that does not mean that the small business owner should necessarily choose the cheapest web hosting available. If your site traffic grows, your hosting service may not be able to handle the load, which is bad for the growth. Plan for a bandwidth cushion and find a company that allows for upgrades.
(And by the way, if you choose free web hosting, remember that with it comes somebody else’s advertisements and site control.)
For small business owners, I suspect that in the future, what will separate the best web hosting providers from the pack will be customer service, reliability, and reputation. Plus possibly environmental friendliness.
In one sense, improvements in technology will make reliability of web hosting common to all. Better power back-up. Better automated house cleaning and troubleshooting. However, with increasing technological complexity comes increasing troubleshooting issues. Reliability will be an issue as long as humans are involved.
If your business depends heavily on Christmas sales, your server is more likely to crash or have down time in the Christmas rush than at other times no matter how sophisticated the hardware and software. (… This is a hint to make sure the web hosting service is 24/7.)
One way to determine reliability is by reputation. Check out the web host’s awards and certificates of recognition. If a provider has them, the provider will display them on site. Also check for customer reviews (unless the review suggests the customer has an axe to grind).
So I think the primary factor separating the best web hosting providers from the rest will be customer service. By customer service, I don’t just mean how accessible and friendly the voice at the other end of the phone line is, but how committed the company is to solving your problems, particularly your technical problems associated with providing your site viewers with fast, functioning, reliable service.
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P.S. Transfer of your site from one web host to another is possible, but software compatibility and other technical issues are part of the process. It is easier to make a good choice first thing.
Tags: Web Hosting
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