New Web Business Guide Chapter 4 – Choosing Web Hosting

The New Web Business Guide Introduction can be found here. Chapter 3 – Keyword Research can be found here

Now that you know your business plan, you’ve done your keyword research, and you have your domain name, it’s time to choose where you will host your domain name.

Hosting means choosing a company that maintains servers that are directly connected to the web so that when users type in your domain name or click a link, the server “serves” the pages you built to the user.

Choosing the right hosting company is extremely important to your business on the web. Many people simply look for the cheapest hosting they can find. Do not just choose the cheapest hosting service you can find.

On the same note, do not believe that because they are a big company like Yahoo or GoDaddy that they have good hosting. Big names like Yahoo and GoDaddy sell hosting to thousands of people yet they are not the best choices for your online business.

Cheap hosting or hosting by these companies can cause you many problems. It’s like picking a location for your offline business. You wouldn’t likely build your clothing store in a bad neighborhood, say next to a strip joint, a massage parlor, and a bookie.

With the bigger companies and with cheap hosting, you have no idea what type of neighborhood your online business is located in. If that company also sold hosting to a spammer, a porn site, a site that has malware, etc., your online business might end up in the same neighborhood as the spammers, pornographers, and other have chosen due to the cheap cost of the hosting.

You won’t know. Google and other search engines or even ISPs might ban a particular IP block because of what the others on that IP Block are doing, but if your website is on that same IP Block, ban affects you as well, even if you did nothing wrong. An IP Block is a group of IP addresses in sequence. An IP address is the number equivalent of your domain name.

Being cheap when it comes to hosting is not a good idea then. So what do you do about hosting? Be willing to pay for what you get. Getting a dedicated hosting plan is the best way to go but it can be costly in comparison to cheap hosts like GoDaddy. It may run you $200 to $500 per month for dedicated hosting.

However, if you started an offline business, how much would you be paying for rent? It’s no different. Hosting is your rent. $200 to say $300 per month is pretty cheap for renting a space for your business.

On dedicated hosting, your website is the only one on the server. It’s a computer/server dedicated to just your website. Your webpages will load faster because there is less load on the server and you usually get better equipment with dedic ated hosting.

If you cannot afford a dedicated hosting plan of your own in the beginning, shared dedicated hosting is the way to go. Then you and one or two other businesses share a server. Smaller companies that offer dedicated and shared plans can make sure you are on a server with other legitimate businesses. You have to ask them about it.

Either way, you want a dedicated IP address for your website. On shared hosting plans and cheap hosting you are usually sharing an IP address with others or you have roaming or what they call rolling servers where your website really doesn’t have a dedicated IP address.

What To Look For In A Hosting Plan

Here is a list of questions to ask about or to look for when choosing a hosting plan for your new online business.

1. Choose a dedicated hosting plan or shared/dedicated hosting if you are serious about your online business.

2. Make sure you get a dedicated IP address. Ask about other sites they allow on the same IP block if you speak with them directly, which I recommend you do. Call them. Don’t just sign up online.

3. Make sure they have cpanel or a Plesk control panel. This will help you manage your website. Also ask if they have the latest version of either of these control panels and if they have fantastico built in so it’s easy to install message boards, blogs, shopping carts, etc.

4. Make sure they do not charge you extra for email addresses. This should be unlimited and should be able to be done through a control panel like cpanel or plesk.

5. Ask if they offer awstats or what type of statistical data they offer for your website as well. You will want a lot of information about your visitors to your site. Where they come from, the pages they visit, what browser they used, etc.

6. Do not choose a windows server unless you want to pay every coder who ever works on your site more money. Windows servers also have other limitations such as not working well with IonCube Encoding, ModRewrite, etc. Linux and Apache servers are the most versatile and will work well with all types of code except of course ASP which is the windows proprietary code. Even if ytou don’t know what these things are, you may need them at some point. Having a windows server will limit your choices or cost you more to implement those choices later.

7. Make sure you will have direct FTP access to your server and not just a file manager through your control panel.

8. Make sure they have 24 hour support and that they respond to you quickly. Make sure they have a phone number so you can talk to a live tech support person just in case you have a problem. This is another advantage that dedicated hosting usually has over cheaper hosting plans. They usually have much better customer support.

Ok, there are more things to look for and we can help you choose the right hosting plan for your company. Email us at info@seoserviceprovider.com for more information about hosting or any other questions you have about starting your new online business.

The next chapter is where we finally get to start planning your website!