Web hosting is essential for everyone who wants to build a website. There are a lot of hosting providers providing hosting service. Some provide quality service, some not. Some cheat customers. There are some factors you should keep in mind while buying a hosting. The factors are described below.
Space
A website includes different files like php, html, css, javascript, image, video, animation files etc. When we upload these files on the server, these acquire some space on the hard disc of the server PC. The space available on the disc to upload files is called hosting space. The space required for a site can be measured easily. On windows OS, right click on the folder containing website files & select properties. It’ll show you how much space these require on disc.
Let, the required space for the files be 25MB. The site has a database whose size is 1MB. So, the required hosting space is (25+1)MB = 26MB.
Most hosting providers claim to provide unlimited space. For most providers, it’s not true. They close accounts for excess space use.
Actually, if you want to run an ordinary site, you don’t have to worry about space.
Bandwidth
The measurement of data transfer between server & client PC or another server is called bandwidth. When we visit a website using any browser, the browser downloads the whole webpage with all files contained in that page to our PC & show it. It causes data transfer from server to our PC. Again, when we upload image, video or any file to a site, it causes data transfer from PC to server. These data transfers are called bandwidth.
Bandwidth is measured in megabyte (MB) or gigabyte (GB) per month.
The required bandwidth for a site can be measured easily.
Consider, the size of pages of your site is 100KB in average. You expect 2,000 visits per day.
You have an ebook on your site for download whose size is 2MB. You expect that it’ll be downloaded 100 times per month.
Your site has a member section where members can upload profile pictures not bigger than 500KB. You expect that 30 people will upload profile pictures every month.
So, the required bandwidth for the site is-
For page visits: (100*2000*30) KB/Month = 6000000 KB/Month = 5859.3 MB/Month
For ebook download: (2*100) MB/Month = 200 MB/Month
For image upload: (500*30) KB/Month = 15,000 KB/Month = 14.64 MB/Month
Total: (5859.3 + 200 + 14.64) MB/Month = 5.93 GB/Month
So, the required bandwidth for the site is 5.93 GB/Month
Don’t fool yourself believing hosting providers claim on unlimited bandwidth. For a simple site, bandwidth is generally not a big issue to worry about.
Server Uptime
Server uptime is one of the most important factors in web hosting. When the server PC is connected to the internet & functions properly & the sites hosted in it remains accessible on the internet, then the server is called ‘up’ & the time is called ‘server uptime’.
The time when the server remains inaccessible is called server downtime. During downtime, no one can visit sites hosted on that server.
Because of necessity of server & network maintenance & various software updates, it’s impossible to keep the server up all the time, But the downtime can be minimized by proper maintenance.
Most providers guarantee 99.99% uptime which means the server can be down for max. 43.2 Minutes per month. But don’t believe them before testing it.
There are a lot of sites providing server monitoring service. They monitor the server & alert website owners when the site goes down. You can try pingdom.com for monitoring your server.
Server Speed
Server speed is another important factor. When someone opens a site on a browser, the browser sends a request to the server to send the webpage with all necessary files included in the webpage. After receiving the request, the server executes necessary processes & sends the requested files. If the server PC has low resources (processor, RAM etc) or a lot of sites hosted in the same server, then processing browser’s requests takes time & the site loads slowly. Visitors as well as search engines don’t like slow sites. So the site loses both traffic & search engine position.
There are a lot of tools to measure server speed. Google it & you’ll find them.
Customer service
Don’t forget the importance of a good customer service. It’s really intolerable when you buy a service but don’t get any help from the service provider when needed. So check the quality of their customer service before choosing a web hosting.
Finally, there are a lot of low quality hosting providers with attractive slogans & ads, You must educate yourself to find a quality hosting. You can try top 10 hosting list to find a quality hosting for your site.
Article by Zahid Habib
Zahid Habib is a professional web developer working in this field for 4 years. He provides free web design service. He also maintain a free joomla template gallery where people can share & download free joomla templates.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I would put customer service at the top because I have come across with a hosting company which got very poor customer service and my site was down for days rather than hours. As a result, Google deindexed my site. I would suggest people to read reviews on hosting companies and to take time before signing up with a hosting company.
Mike recently posted..Website development
Your post covers everything you need to look at when choosing a host. It’s easy enough to check if a hosting company provides what you need by looking on their site. However, the difficulty is always judging their reliability and the quality of their customer support. If you are not lucky enough to get a personal recommendation, you have to rely on reviews on sites like TopHosts.com.
I was lucky, my host was recommended to me by a friend and I’ve been with them for over ten years. My host is Site5 and I’ve used them for a number of websites over the years, and more recently for WordPress sites. Needless to say, I’ve been more than happy with them.
Twitter: Jajodia_Saket
October 9, 2011 at 9:49 am
These are really very impotent while buying a hosting service.. And I really faced many downtime from my hosting service provider but at list I am very happy with thr Customer Support service/team.. They are really saved them from changing my hosting provider..
Saket Jajodia recently posted..Should We Use Dash (-) Or Underscore (_) As Words Separator In URL
Twitter: redfoxcandle
October 9, 2011 at 12:53 am
My #1 recommendation for buying shared hosting is that you need to make sure the host is jailing users to their own home directories. I’ve seen way too many times that a shared hosting account gets compromised by another user’s site and is a big pain to try to cleanup.
Tanya recently posted..Top 5 WordPress Anti-Spam Plugins for 2011
Twitter: BlogStashDotCom
October 8, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Very detailed guide Zahid. The good thing is that these days, its not that hard to replace your host if you are not happy with your current host.
In my experience, the smaller a hosting company is, the better they perform in general and specifically when it comes to customer service. They have less customers, so they have more time to spend with you.
Satrap recently posted..How Does Facebook Make Money?
Twitter: itscolumn
October 8, 2011 at 3:51 am
I personally think server up time is extremely crucial. I had been down for like over 8 hours before with my current hosting before. It promised a 99.9% up time, not 99.99% where it can afford to down at most 8 hours in a year. However, due to the good customer service, I contacted them and they replied me on the reason. I further complain after down for 5 hours and they promised a compensation of another year of free hosting. The thing here is, I feel good about the compensation, but don’t find the hosting reliable anymore. I really think server up time is important. Don’t you all think the same?
Alan Tay recently posted..Subscribe, Share and Win Registry Cleaner Worth More than $100
I was with a VDS for a while which seemed OK but a lot of people complained that my site was loading too slow – some said 20 seconds to load a page. Since moved to a new server and it really is so much better in all respects, and not much more.
Like with all trades and industries, there are good, bad and ugly providers!
Jon recently posted..A Guide to Losing Belly Fat with Diet and Exercise
Twitter: mingjong
October 6, 2011 at 9:34 pm
Hey Zahid,
I personally think that a live support is extremely crucial because I have bad experience with my old hosting service, which only allow email contact and they get back within 48 hours, that’s almost wasted 3 days.
So, a great live support (chat/phone) is crucial on top of storage, bandwidth, speed, etc…
Cheers,
Ming
Ming Jong Tey recently posted..Top 23 Places To Outsource SEO Link Building
Twitter: MurrayLunn
October 6, 2011 at 4:50 pm
I would definitely say reliability (up-time) and space matters a TON. There’s nothing worse than your hosting to crash out when you’re getting hammered by amazing amounts of traffic; you only get that first impression and people aren’t coming back later on to check out the content they missed.
Murray Lunn recently posted..DPD: The Best WordPress Shopping Cart for Bloggers
I find that reading reviews and asking what my friends use for web hosting has helped me to pick a few good companies that I am happy with. But the real kicker for me is the need for good customer support since I am no server expert – if the support sucks then the hosting company loses my business… simple as that.
Twitter: doug_eike
October 6, 2011 at 9:30 am
For me, the most important quality of the hosting company has been their support. I use HostGator, and the support has been excellent. Thanks for the insights!
doug_eike recently posted..Internet Writing – How Much White Space Should A Writer Leave?
Hi Zahid,
Nothing is worse than bad service. It’s the first thing I checker through Google search, forum, ect., so I know how good or bad is the web hosting.
Twitter: wasimalrayes
October 6, 2011 at 4:26 am
Id say the two important factors is Bandwidth and Support.
Many get confused between hosting space and bandwidth. As if your site starts to gain popularity and if you have a lot of rich media, you can easily start to eat into your bandwidth.
At the same time Support, is very important, I’ve know of hosting companies that just have online support though forums, and FAQ’s. Having someone on hand, that you can speak to or raise a ticket that gets responded ASAP is imperative.
Wasim Ismail recently posted..Interview with Baked Bites – From College to Exclusive Cakes Business
I think the last point on Customer Service is very important. There have been times when my blog was down and I contacted the customer service (over chat) to get my blog up and running almost immediately. That’s very important – A website being down doesn’t give a good impression to the SE & Readers.
Raj recently posted..Creative Ways You Can Rake In Lots Of Cash By Blogging
I agree, the last point should come on the first place!