If you are like most business owners you have either taken the plunge or are thinking about having a web site. Whether you design you own site or hire someone to write it there comes the time to choose a hosting service. And there are so many out there how do you choose? Since most businesses are budget conscious your first consideration might be price, however beware as cheap can be expensive as one of my clients found out the hard way. I would recommend that you consider two issues beyond cost. The first is does the hosting company own their own servers. Many hosting services are renting server space and reselling to their customers. Not always a problem, but when there is a problem your hosting company will not always have the control to fix the problem. This could mean a delay in getting your web site back up and running correctly. The second issue is one that even long time web developers might not be aware of the one my client got caught in shared IPs. Some hosting sites use shared IP addresses which put your web site into a group of sites. This becomes a problem when one or more of the sites sharing the IP address are banned by search engines such as Google. Remember the old adage one bad apple spoils the whole barrel. This is what happened to my client. After years of time and hard work building up his web exposure and rankings with search engines, he was dismayed to see his rankings starting to fall very quickly. It took quite a bit of research and help from an expert who had the programs to test his site to ferret out the problem. And sure enough the hosting company he was using had placed his sites into a shared IP address that Google was banning from their search engine, not because of anything my client was doing, but because of the misdeeds of others. And then a battle to not only solve the problem but to stop and repair the damage began. The first step was to research and shop for a new hosting service. And the criteria were to find a service that owned their servers and did not share IP addresses and also wouldnt break the bank. (By the way I was hosting this site at the same company so once I heard about his problems, I was looking for a new company as well). After looking at several companies and talking to them over the phone (I strongly suggest a phone call before you sign up so you can get a feel of what it will be like to deal with their personnel) both him and I settled on a hosting company for the following reasons: 1. The phone call assured us that their personnel were helpful, knowledgeable, courteous and reachable. 2. They owned their own servers there is a picture of them on their web site. 3. They made a big point of not using shared IPs. 4. They offered a no questions asked, money back guarantee. So dont get caught in a sticky web, do your research first and dont get fooled by cheap prices look for service first, price second. Copyright 2006 Bookkeeping R Us All Rights Reserved |
