Finding The Right Host For You
Make A List
Make a list of what you need. Figure out what things are going to be the "deal breakers" for you. Decide what you absolutely must have if your site is going to function properly and survive. This will keep you focused on what you really need and help keep you from being taken in by flashy bells and whistles. For example, 100 free site templates and super cool skins for the control panel aren't going to do you a heck of a lot of good when you go to install your scripts and find out you forgot to check and see if your new host had Zend installed, and their support desk is only open between 4:35am and 5:01am on the 1st saturday of every month after a new moon.
Browse For Options - Not Prices
Now start browsing, but look for the options you need, not the cheapest prices. For right now, just ignore the prices and concentrate on finding exactly what you need. Bookmark a few sites and you can come back later to compare prices. First and foremost, you want to make sure your prospects can give you everything you must have, and most of the extras you would like to have. If anything on your deal breaker list is missing from the list of options on a site, just move on and look for another, no matter how good everything else might look. Don't try to "make it work" because a price looks too good or there's some other unneeded option that draws your attention.
How To Compare Apples And Oranges
Once you've found a few sites that have what you need, it's time to start looking at the prices. The thing is though, you need to put all the prices into the same unit of measure. Don't just look at the total price on a plan A and compare it to the price of plan B. Take the price they are giving you per month, and divide it by the amount of transfer to get the amount it's going to cost you per gigabyte of transfer. This is going to be your baseline for comparison. The single thing that will most affect your cost to run your site is always going to be the amount of bandwidth you consume. Many companies have what appear to be great prices, but when you break down the price into cost per gigabyte of transfer and compare it with just a few other sites, it becomes obvious they are actually giving you less tranfer at a higher cost. If you did the browsing step above correctly, you've already eliminated the "rock bottom" prices on bandwidth that tend to come with more problems and less service. Try to look for something in the middle. You obviously don't want to pay more for something you can get anywhere else cheaper, but you also want to make sure that the company you're looking at can provide what they say at the prices they offer. If the price is too low, the host has to be cutting something out, or overselling his/her services to make a profit. Be wary of super low prices unless you know the company has a rock-solid reputation and good references from people you know and trust.
Ready, Set, DON'T SIGN UP!
So you think you've found a company that you can work with? Don't Sign up! Talk to them first. First, you want to see how quickly they'll respond to a user on ICQ, or through email. It'll give you a good idea of what you can expect if you have a problem and need help after you do sign up. Second, if you speak to someone first, and ask for a better deal than what you see on the web site, you'll most likely get it. You might get a better rate on bandwidth, more drive space, extra domain space, or more. Most hosts are willing to work with you on many different options if you just take the time to ask.
Things To Ask
Is there an uptime guarantee? - If the host doesn't provide any kind of uptime guarantee, you run the risk of spending your money to deal with other people's problems. If your sites are on a server with other clients, your server could be brought down by someone else's mistake. A guarantee of uptime means you will either get your money back, or get free hosting time if your site goes down and your host can't keep their word about having you up. It's also important to make sure any guarantee offered is on SITE uptime and not NETWORK uptime. Some hosts will boast about a guarantee, but if you read the fine print, they only provide assurance that their network will be functional 99% of the time, not your site or the server it's on. This simply means that as long as their network is functional they don't consider it downtime even if your server is red hot and blowing smoke while you're at home red-faced and blowing smoke because your site is down and you just lost a load of money.
Is bandwidth "multi-homed"? - Multi-homed bandwidth means that your host is connected to more than one network to reach the internet from their internal network. If a host has only one bandwidth provider, no matter how big their lines are, if there's a problem with that provider, you're dead in the water. There's no other route into the host, and your site becomes unreachable. It's kind of like a shared cablemodem at home. You can have 5 computers sharing the modem, but if that modem goes down, all 5 computers are no longer on the internet. By having several different connections, sometimes also referred to as network redundancy, if one route goes down for whatever reason, there are multiple alternate routes traffic can take and your site stays online and available to the world. Multiple routes can also provide for faster speeds in normal situations because users from different areas of the world will come into your web site on whichever route works best for them, rather than being limited to just one route that might not work very well from where they are.
How much can I control? - Find out what you can do on your own, and what you will need to have your host do for you. Many tasks can be performed through control panels, but if you need access to certain functions the control panel doesn't provide, it's important to know if your host can do these things for you, and how long it will take to have requests answered. Ask if you can add and remove domains, set up email, mailing lists, DNS changes, databases. Find out exactly what you can and can't do BEFORE you start setting things up and run into a brick wall.
Do I get charged for upgrades/setup? - These are quite honestly nonsense fees. If any host tells you there is a fee to upgrade your account to a new level of bandwidth or drive space, shut the window and move on. Accounts are set up and changed with a few mouse clicks. Anyone who wants to charge you money for 5 minutes of work after you've already been paying him to host your site for a few months is simply trying to take advantage of you for a few extra dollars.
What if I go over my bandwidth limits? - There are two things you want to find out with this question. First you want to know how much you will be charged if you go over your allotted badnwidth for the month. Second, you want to know if your site gets suspended when the limit is hit. If your site gets shut down when the bandwidth limit is reached, you stop making money, you lose surfers, and basically put yourself out of business. In the adult internet industry, this is just not an option. You should also find out if you can get around being charged for overage by upgrading your hosting plan before a month expires. If you see early on that your traffic is going higher than you thought, you should be able to upgrade your plan in the middle of the month and get more bandwidth at a good rate, rather than waiting til the end of the month and paying a higher rate for overage.
Will you help move my site? - If you have existing sites, ask if they will help you move the sites to their servers. If you have to move your site(s) on your own, it could take hours to upload things and cause downtime while everything is moved. If your host will assist you, they can do server to server transfers much faster and get you up and running with no downtime at all while DNS changes are made. If a host isn't willing to help you out, or wants a large fee to do so, then they aren't really showing much interest in your business are they?
There are, of course, other things you'll want to ask based on your specific needs and your site(s). Hopefully, though, this will be a good guide to help you locate a host that won't rip you off, and also demonstrates a willingness to work with you as your sites and your needs change and grow. At the very least, if you follow the suggestions here, it should minimalize the chance that you will sign up with a company only to find out later that you made a bad choice and need to relocate again.
And finally, if you decide to use any of these suggestions in your next search for a home for your web site, take a few moments and look over
http://www.webgemshosting.com as part of your research.
