Web and email hosting is an essential service for individuals, businesses, NGO”s and other commercial services. It is a crucial service that enables e-commerce and many online business and information sites to operate comfortably. Many such businesses do not have sufficient capacity to host their own websites. This is due to the cost and staff required to professionally operate hosting services.
There are literally hundreds of companies offering web hosting services. All these companies are in competition for the millions of websites that make up the World Wide Web. They make many promises to potential customers in order to draw clients. Hence, it is necessary to know the essentials of hosting as a business person. This will enable you to choose the best and quality provider for such services.
Below are points to put in mind with regard to domain hosting:
Cost- Optimum price is the best recommended charge for hosting services. There is no need to get excited with by low rates. There are key features to look for that cost more over a period of time. Price alone is not an indicator of quality hosting.
Bandwidth- Choose a hosting company with high, consistent and reliable bandwidth. This is especially vital for domains dealing with e-commerce. You do not wish for your site to crash when shoppers are in the middle of transacting business.
Consistency- Consistency and reliability are viewed in terms of uptime. This is critical for successful operation of a website. Imagine if your domain dealing with regular shoppers is down even 5% of the time. Sooner or later you will be completely out of business.
Privacy- This is among the fundamental concerns about domain hosting services. There is a lot of private data which streams through websites. The host company needs to be completely full proof when it comes to confidentiality. They must be Hosting Assured to guarantee compliance with ethics and legal conduct.
Security- The domain hosting provider must have the capacity to guarantee security of data streaming through your site. They must provide guaranteed protection of user”s confidential data. They must also ensure high uptime and have the capacity to deal with virus attacks, malware, worms, bugs and threat of hackers.
Innovation- Your web hosting company needs to be in sync with the latest technology for data storage and connections. This will ensure compatibility and offer full time hosting and technical support at the click of a mouse.
The major complications involve SEO, ownership and control of the site. Free hosting has benefits and drawbacks that you need to consider before settling on it.
Advantages of Free Hosting
The main advantage of free hosting is that it comes at no cost. It is equally easy to open an account which gives you a free website that requires only publishing and emails.
Free hosting does not require expertise or any technical background. Anyone can create a website simply by providing personal details and creating a user profile.
Disadvantages of Free Hosting
It is difficult to brand a sub domain account that comes with free hosting. It may grow big with many users and visitors but you cannot get away with it. Your credibility is therefore put to test when you attempt to switch to a personal site. When you finally manage to switch to a personal domain, you have to start from scratch in order to build links, content and other SEO techniques.
Also with free domains, it is not possible to control advertisement content in the site. It is the email hosting company that determines the type of ads which are to be displayed.
Lastly, with a free domain, you are at the mercy of the host company. Any technical problems or outages which might occur cannot be blamed on any one. You have to work with the companies rules and policies, not your own.
This is different from paid hosting that come with multitude benefits. For instance, you are free to brand the domain name with a personal name and put up legitimate unique content. With paid for domains, you are also in full control of each and every aspect of the site. Design and content is exactly as you need it and can be changed or upgraded at will and whim.
