Guide to Website Hosting

Like with any product you buy, web hosting is no different. Choosing a good, reliable host with great features and support, is essential to your online business. Unfortunately, you can’t always tell a good thing just from the packaging. Choosing your web host is like choosing a business partner, the right relationship will grow your business, and the wrong one will crash it.

What is hosting?

After you have registered your domain name you will need a Web Hosting Service Provider (WHSP) to host your website on the internet. Once you have joined, your website pages are then uploaded and stored to their server (computer,) that allows internet users to surf the internet and find yours and others websites. Another alternative is to own and operate your own server, however this option is a costly and technical process that usually only very large corporations choose.

Importance of Hosting

You need to do your research and find out exactly what your needs are going to be before you sign up. Don’t always go for the real cheap ones either, as you’ll find with a lot of them, you don’t get much of what you really need, like support and extra features. Often paying a little bit more will get you more of what you need in the long run.

Finding the right host partner and doing all the necessary research can be a daunting task, particularly to someone without any technical knowledge. Inology provides a hosting service to our clients as we have our own servers which are housed in a secure high speed internet data centre in Brisbane. We prefer our clients to use our servers so we can upgrade them when required. If you already have a service provider then that is fine, however if you are wanting one of our websites with the CMS, then your site will have to be hosted on a Microsoft Windows Internet Information Server with Microsoft SQL Server.

5 Quick Hosting Tips

Know what your websites need will be – Using your business plan, decide what your online business will be needing, your budget, storage space required, traffic expectations, email needs etc before you sign up to a host and ask advice if your not sure.
Research – Narrow down to a few website and domain hosts that seem to have all that you need, then research to see if they are what they say they are. Ask around to other online businesses or friends. Does anyone you know recommend a web hosting service provider?
Support – Make sure the WHSP you chose offers good support. There’s nothing worse than when something goes wrong not being able to talk to your host and fix the problem.
Beware of free hosting services – It’s great if you want just a personal site, but if you’re seriously developing an online business, then free websites should be avoided because in general, in return for the free hosting you will have to accept advertising on your site, and even put up with pop up advertising, which may aggravate your customers.
Ask questions – Before signing up to a host, ask them questions and test their response rates and helpfulness.

Inology has many packages and options available that tailor to your needs. So, if it all seems too hard, please contact our trained staff to assist you in your decision making, we would love to help you on your way with your online venture. Click here for our contact details.