Issues to be aware of:
TOO MANY SITES ON A SINGLE SERVER.
Three times the sites on one machine can mean a third of
the price to you & maybe one third of the performance
of your website.
CHEAP COMPONONENTS
This almost goes with out saying if cheap materials are used
in the data center or to build hosting servers, it many cost
you big time. If a hard drives fails and you lose all your
data it can be hard to measure your loss. Or is the router
fails and your site is offline for days it can cost you.
UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH/SPACE:
There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth or space. Someone
has to pay for it at some stage in the chain .
The reason many Hosts make such outrageous claims is that
98% of all websites on the Internet do not use much bandwidth
or space so they feel safe in making these offers. But beware
if you get on a server with the 2% of subscribers that do.
They will consume all your bandwidth so your customers cannot
access your site and your e-mails slow to a stand still. Usually
these types will eventually be asked to leave the server.
Your service will resume - until the next one comes along.
It pays to steer well clear of the Host that makes this type
of offer.
CONNECTIVITY:
Getting reliable connection time to all your customers is
extremely important.
If you have a Web Host that has poor connectivity to the
Internet you have a problem in getting reliable connection
times! Your customers may have to wait 30 seconds for a page
to load one time and then only a few seconds for that same
page to load another time. Of course the problem is that people
don't wait for long downloading times. Simply put: your website
has to download fast.
Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should
guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look
for a minimum uptime of 99.5% or higher. The host should provide
some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it
falls below that figure. Note: Guarantees
are often hard to enforce from your end -
SPAM BLACKLIST:
Be very careful if your host has strong anti spam policies.
It can seriously affect your business if the server your site
is hosted on gets blacklisted on many of the spam lists that
are around. This will affect your ability to send legitimate
mail to places that you need to, as they will have you listed
as a spammer and your mail will be dumped.
MULTIPLE "BACKBONE" CONNECTIONS:
Make sure your web host has a connection to both "East
Coast and West Coast Backbones". Most web hosts don't
have this. If your host has a connection to the West Coast
Backbone only and a fiber optics cable gets cut on the West
Coast, all web sites and web hosts on the West Coast of the
continent will "go down". The East Coast will still
be fully operational, however, people from the East Coast
can't reach your West Coast website - they can only reach
East Coast websites.
In order to ensure continuity of service, you must have connection
to both East and West Coast Backbones (via your Web Host).
Your Web Host should have a minimum of a T1 connection to
both Backbones. |
