By: Dave Cooper, RackNerd

This can be a challenging topic to talk about because there are so many personal preferences that everyone has of what makes up a good web host but there are some key fundamentals that you should always look for when deciding which hosting company to use.

Do Your Research

We’re in a day of age where anyone can easily become a reseller of someone else’s services, this is not necessarily a bad thing but it’s important to know what you are getting yourself into. Many resellers or owners have limited resources and it’s important to do some digging around. 

Here are 3 things that you should include when looking for hosting services.

1.  Do a simple WHOIS lookup, simple I know but! Usually, this will tell you when the domain was registered and how many years they have been trading under that hosting name.

2.  Do they have a support phone number if so call it, enquire about their services, you will know if they’re talking the talk or if they know their stuff? Some providers prefer to support clients using a ticket system this is also acceptable providing they live up to the support time frames they set, and if you are happy with them. This might sound pedantic but test them out. Ask a few questions via their ticket system and see if you’re happy with their answers. 

3.  Do a simple google search example: Racknerd Reviews. This method is not 100% full proof however – so make sure you cross-reference with a few different ones and decide for yourself.

Scalability

Depending on what you are planning on hosting will be a key factor in the type of web hosting you buy, but it’s also good to consider WHAT IF? That’s right! What if I need more resources, more space. Can you handle 500k visitors per day? These are the questions you should be asking ahead of time because the last thing you want to limit is your potential for success.

Price

Go for the cheapest!…. Just kidding 😉

I’m not going to delve into this too much as everyone has their budget and should know your limits and what you can afford.

Whether you are looking for shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS, or dedicated servers – you can consider RackNerd’s offerings by going to: https://www.racknerd.com/

Bandwidth

It’s so easy to get hung up on the word ‘unlimited’ the word makes you feel safe and secure knowing that when you pay you won’t have any bandwidth blowouts but hear me out. I used to be one of those people but after a few dozen unlimited hosting packages later you realize not all bandwidth is treated equally, I call it ‘Fair Use’ bandwidth and it’s usually rate-limited and congested. This is fine if you have a small site but if you run a business or just want your site to be more responsive premium bandwidth is what you want to look for.  

Premium bandwidth allocates you a chunk of data per month to use for your site. This means that in most cases the provider is thinking smart, managing their resources, and allocated enough bandwidth for everyone to use.

These are entirely my own opinions and there is so much more to consider when choosing a web host but hopefully this will give you a starting point.

Stay tuned in our next blog article on: How to know which hosting service is right for you?