Before you make any decisions regarding choosing a web host, you need to engage with a web designer to determine what are your website needs in terms of bandwidth, RAM, disk space. You will also need to determine the kind of server that would be most appropriate for your website such as a Linux or a Windows server. If you are looking to build an e-commerce site you will need a number of things which will be elaborated in more detail below.
The decision is simpler if you have significant capital and don’t need to worry about the time that will pass before your website can make any money. If you are an established website, you might be more concerned about reviews and big expensive hosting packages which can be provided by any of the big players of the industry mentioned below.
- GoDaddy
- Hostgator
- Network Solutions
- Rack Space
- 1and1.com
Factors which need to be considered are listed below in order of importance and they apply to e-commerce websites in particular that really need to pull their own weight in ways that a blog does not.
Up-time
If the host you are using does not have enough powerful servers, your website can just shut down in the middle of rush hours and you might not be able to get them on the phone since they probably didn’t develop customer service with such bad uptime in mind. Regardless of whether you are a business website or not you cannot afford your site shutting down when you have the most chance of attracting new readers, subscribers or customers. Up-time translates to online business hours and by the sound of that it can be deduced to be one of the only things that matter.
Storage
Most websites nowadays usually have a lot of images or downloadable videos regardless of what their subject matter is since just words don’t sell anything anymore. Even when people research online and visit blogs for information regarding a product before buying it online, they are more likely to respond to content which is visual and which shows them the quality. This means you will need to worry about storage space in the foreseeable future and also pay for it in your respective hosting package.
If you are hosting a website which sells products (you will need to upload product catalogs and thousands of images for this) storage space will make all the difference in the world. It also impacts the speed with which browsing can take place on your website.
Bandwidth is closely connected to storage space and it translates to how quickly your website can facilitate a download.
Blogs
These have become an incredibly popular form of website and they often provide downloadable media which can be about anything from beauty to fitness or politics. For blogs a basic WordPress installation can do the trick (which is provided by most web hosts) but if you intend to grow the blog into an online business of sorts, you will need to seek more Ram and disk space.
