
home contact us back issues about us

February 5, 2001

The Fundamentals of Professional Web Sites for Business Professionals

This Week’s:

Features

Step-by-Step: Choosing a Hosting Service

Joy to the URL! Promoting Your Web Address

Reviews

"Smart Choices" is a Smart Idea

The Quest for the Best in Web Hosting - FutureQuest

Techniques

Font-asttic Instant Graphics!

Features

Step-by-Step: Choosing a Hosting Service

by Carolyn Cooper

Cheaper is better, right? Not necessarily. Using the wrong service can sometimes be too expensive — even if it's free.

Your hosting service is whoever will actually maintain the computers and software where your true domain name address is listed. (That incredible collection of numbers that looks like a long distance phone number to a foreign country is the real Internet domain address. All that www.yourname.com-stuff is so humans can actually use the web.) In other words, your hosting service is whoever has the computer from which your web files, and therefore your site, is accessed by your visitors. If your business is running it's own web servers and firewalls, then your computer department is acting as your "hosting service". If you are not running your own servers in-house, then you're using a third-party hosting service, possibly more than one. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) may also act as your web site hosting service, but not necessarily. You may have one hosting service for your web pages and another for your e-commerce section. There are many options and combinations. While choosing the wrong hosting service usually isn't fatal to a business, as with any other professional service, it can be costly.

Don't shop when you're hungry.

Compile a list of what your really need and want before picking a service. And start shopping long before you need a server. The first critical steps to choosing a web site hosting service is to determine the purpose your site, the target audience of your site, the type of site, and what kind of features you are considering offering on your site. If your site is simply a way to distribute more information about your product, services or organization online, then you may actually be able to get "free" hosting by your ISP or one of the free hosting sites like geocities. Most ISP's offer a small amount of web space (usually 3- 10 MB) on their server with every account. Some companies, like Geocities, will offer free space, but you won't get your own domain name in these cases. On the other hand, if you want to use your own domain name, are considering a larger site with cgi programs, or need secure server certification for taking information, or require guaranteed up-time, then you should look at additional hosting service providers.
Don't impulse shop.

Don't simply look a the price or the number of MBs of space offered — a common mistake of first-time service buyers. Price and MBs are only part of the calculation. It's essential that you look at your real needs and in-house abilities. I am simultaneously running 4 web sites, including one with multiple bulletin boards, and well over 100 web pages, multimedia and loads of optimized graphics on less than 40 MBs of disk space. You may be better off with a package offering less storage and more features or support services.
Consider all of the options first.

Your site may be hosted through an ISP, remote hosting service or your web developer. Most ISPs also offer web site hosting services for an additional fee. In addition, there are a large number of web hosting service companies, companies that do not act as an ISP, but strictly as a remote web hosting service. And finally, if you are outsourcing web development, your web developer may offer hosting services as well.

Some include "design and minimal maintenance services" in the monthly costs. Some include "web site promotion" in their fee. Some include "unlimited email". There are a plethora of features, options and prices. Compare apples to apples, however, when considering services.

At some point you should have your list culled to a few choices. If having someone handle your web site promotion is important to you, make certain that you are comparing the same level of service. And the same for any features that are critical. Once, based on the assurance that I could load and run an essential cgi-based bulletin board program, I chose a lower cost service saving US$40/year — only to have my board brought down 3 times in two weeks before finding out that the system administrator had a policy of automatically killing any program that spawned more than 3 child processes. For those who don't speak geek, that meant no more than 2 people at a time could look at the bulletin board before it was cancelled! Needless to say, they didn't want to refund my pre-payment and it cost me over US$50 and several days to move the site to another hosting service. Some savings!
You get what you pay for — usually.

Check out and compare the actual quality of the services offered. Sometimes you can find a good deal, but often the quality determines the true price. If design services are included, look carefully at the design services provided. Are they of the caliber and quality you want and need? Do they include the fundamentals of professional design and navigation? Look at whether they could benefit from 10 Quick Upgrades That Say 'Professional'? Ask about their art and graphic training. What exactly is included in "basic maintenance"? Does it cover adding a page? What about if you want to run a "special of the month" that's changed monthly? What does "web site promotion" actually cover? Many times it's nothing more than typing your site's URL into a standard multi-search engine submission page; something you or your staff can do in less than 3 minutes. Poor service or shoddy work is no bargain.

Talk with the technical support and give them a general estimate of your needs and traffic expectations. If you need a specific system, such as an MS IIS or Apache server, to meet your site design needs, be certain not only that they have what you need but hat there's room for your site on that system. And that they really understand the system. A lot of sercurity and downtime problems come from staff working on unfamiliar equipment. Just ask Microsoft! The hosting service's system administrator and other tech support personal should be able to answer any questions you have. If you can't actually talk, or at least correspond through email, with a technical support person directly, move on. If technical support doesn't have time for you before you sign the contract, you can forget getting help after you give them your money — at least not without paying more money. By the way, up-time is the percentage of time the site is accessible. If anyone says they can give you a guaranteed 100% up-time, they are lying.

Also, be careful about hosting services who push their "Online Account Management" feature. Find out what happens if you need to actually contact a technical support staff member. Some hosting services will charge extras fees. Also, if they offer an online support forum or bulletin board, check out the questions and answers to see if the staff is helping, if the current customers sound frustrated or disappointed with their accounts. You're looking for fast answers and a lot of helpful interaction.
Just the facts, m'aam.

Check agreements carefully before making a commitment and make certain you understand the details of what you will be getting. Also, contact some of the service's other clients and ask them how satisfied they are. Look for comments and reviews on some of the review sites, like epinions.com or the web hosting comparison sites listed below. Prices and services vary greatly from "free" to US$9.95 to US$34.95 to US$200 and up per month. Quality varies even more. On average, most small non-e-businesses or organizations should expect to pay between US$19.95 per month for a basic site with some amenities like autoresponders and email aliases to US$125 for a dedicated server. The exceptions are those using specialized services such as e-commerce intensive sites or receiving extensive site maintenance and promotion that allows you to take a hands-off approach to your site and still see results.

Web Hosting Services Directories and Guides

Read the reviews carefully and consider the source. How many results are in the ratings? Do they sound suspiciously similar? And take into account the type of complaints. Is the issue important to your site?

HostCompare.com: Provides a guide to selecting a service as well as a database of services.
HostCrawler.com: Contains a searchable directory of hosting services, plus reviews, articles, polls, user feedback results, free web hosting comparison guide and more.
HostIndex: Hosting directory with a beginner's guide, hosting news and a directory of 800+ hosting companies.
Host Investigator: Offers a database of services by price range, OS & space.
HostSearch: Provides a database of services searchable on disk space, price, OS, data transfer allowances and other features.
Open Directory - Computers: Internet: Commercial Services : Web Hosting Directories: This is a listing of directories that provide consumer guides or listings of hosting services.

Find out how to arrange an independent consultation or a workshop for your conference or organization on this or any other Internet-related topic.

Start hunting early and take you time choosing a hosting service.

Get all of the facts and make sure your comparisons are equal.

Doublecheck your service agreements before your hand over your money.

Double check your contracts and service agreements before signing. Contact some of the current clients, check the reviews, look for signs of potential problems — like extremely rapid expansion and heavy marketing. How experienced is the staff handling your account?

Develop a relationship with your hosting service staff.