Bryan Williams

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Posted: January 20th, 2010 in Web Development. 2 Comments

Two things you need to have to start your own website is a domain name and hosting. A name and a place to put it. Buying a domain name is pretty straightforward. Some companies offer different services, but pretty much all of the ones I’ve had experience with do and cost more or less the same thing. I personally like having my domain and hosting accounts through the same people, as it is easier to keep track of and handle, but that’s not even a necessity.

Hosting however is a different story. Not all hosting providers offer the same service for the same price. Not even close. And it’s not even a case of what you get, you pay for. I’ve met a lot of people that spend $15 to $20 a month for less service that you could find for $4 or $5 a month. I’m not going to tell you who to go through, but I can share a little bit of my experience and what I’ve chosen. I don’t want to give the impression that I know everything about every hosting provider, quite the opposite, but hopefully I can help spare you some heartache. Bottom line is, do your homework before you get in bed with a hosting provider. You can switch providers and move all your content and get used to a whole new system, but it’s a lot easier not to.

Things to consider when looking at a web hosting service:

• Speed and capacity: First thing I would look at and ask yourself is what kind of traffic do I plan on getting? I know we all have dreams of our websites getting hit hundreds of thousands of times a day, but realistically what do you expect it to handle? Chances are if you’re reading this post and just getting into it, a shared hosting account is fine. You more or less rent space on a hosting server. Now if you’re expecting to create the next Facebook or if you have a celebrity or prestigious client, then you’ll have different needs and may need to explore different options like dedicated servers. But look at the storage space and bandwidth capabilities. A lot of affordable shared hosting accounts allow unlimited space without any set limit on bandwidth. Look for those. My first first hosting account was the most basic of Godaddy’s accounts. It had a limit on both space and bandwidth. For the most part it was fine, until one day almost overnight, my podcast started getting very popular on iTunes. With that many video downloads, my bandwidth cap was reached and I got a fat penalty charge and my material was no longer available for the rest of that month. That was a costly life lesson. I paid more on that fee than I did for the hosting account the entire year. Think about what kind of site you’ll have and what kind of needs you’ll have in the future and plan for that.
• Multiple vs single site: Some hosting services require you to have only one site, others offer multiple sites. It’s always nice to have the option to run multiple sites. Even if you don’t plan on it, the opportunity does arise. A client I worked on for example last year wanted to start a new domain/site to handle all of their non-profit work, having at least the option to host multiple sites is something you want to weigh into your decision.
• Database and software options: If you are having someone else do the development on your site you’ll want to consult them about software and database capabilities before pulling the trigger on a host. If you’re going to do everything by hand with html (which hardly anyone should be doing these days) anything will work, otherwise you’ll want to know what kind of software and services the host supports. For example this site runs on wordpress, which requires php and database services. Read or ask if they have installation tools as well, those kinds of things will make the site much easier to develop for.

This isn’t something you normally think about it until you really need it.

• User tools and features: A lot of hosting places offer a demo, go in and try them out. Are services clear and easy to use? I can tell you, I hated logging into my Godaddy account. I felt like everything I clicked I had to triple check to make sure it wasn’t adding/charging me for a new service and I could never find the tools I needed. Another preference tip is I look for something called cpanel. It’s pretty consistent between different hosting services but the tools are always in the same place and all-in-all pretty good. Whatever you get into you’ll just have to familiarize yourself with it. Especially when switching, that can be particularly frustrating. Give it some time and things will come more smoothly the more you use it.
• Customer Support: This isn’t something you normally think about it until you really need it. Watch out, a lot of hosting companies don’t even provide tech support over the phone. That can be extremely frustrating when a site is down or if you are in the middle of something and you need support. It would be ideal if you never needed them, but you don’t want to get stuck in a sticky situation without the assistance.

There are probably a lot of other factors that play into finding the right hosting provider for you. I’ve based this solely off my experience and some of the snags I’ve come across along the way. If you have something to add or know something someone else went through, please share them in the comments. I’d love to hear and learn from your experiences as well. Anything to reduce the overall frustration when it comes to finding the right hosting provider will be appreciated I’m sure.

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