Web hosting — it’s the phrase of the hour nowadays, and it’s what you really need to create a website. The process of choosing a web host company is not that easy. The market of these services has grown a lot in the last few years. You will have a ton of options to choose from.
The severe competition on this market makes different companies provide free bonuses to attract more customers. Now, not all companies can afford to offer such conditions and use some tricks that show themselves in better light—and some web hosts just play dirty.
Tips for Choosing Proper Web Host
Protect yourself from the most common tricks by following our tips. You will know what features to pay attention to and what requires more research when looking for a truly reliable web host. With that said, keep in mind that we are presenting the most widely used tricks and scams, but there are plenty more out there. Thus, checking the web for web host reliability info is a must.
Traffic Speed and Capacity
Many web host companies will tell you they have unlimited bandwidth/traffic/whatever. Some truly have that great feature, but other will provide you “limited unlimited” bandwidth. How does it work? There are several options.
In most cases, you will be offered unlimited volume of traffic, but the transfer speed will be restricted to something like 1Mb/s. If your project is brand new, that restriction will not affect you, but you will definitely see the effects of this restriction as your project grows.
Some other web hosts will give you great traffic speed, but with some capacity limits, while. a small group of web hosts will really provide you with no limits for traffic speed and capacity, but will set a definite number of users who can access your website monthly. Make sure you examine your user agreement closely–especially the paragraphs regarding traffic speed.
Extra Fees
Extra fees or hidden fees can cost you a pretty penny. At the sign-up stage, some companies offer additional services for extra fees, which is quite normal — you may really need some of those features. The problem is that some web hosts have those extras pre-ticked for you– the only thing you can do in this case is to be careful when going through the sign-up process.
Uptime Percentage
Uptime is the time your website stay online and functions well. Most web hosts will provide you with a certain uptime guarantee. While some do fulfill their promises, most don’t.
You will also find some websites on the web that offer independent uptime measurements. Their data, however, is not to be taken seriously: to acquire those measurements, they count the uptime of web hosts’ home pages. The providers understand that and use their best servers for hosting their company websites, though some other servers they have may give worse performance. Tricky, ain’t it?
Yearly Renewal Prices
The system is as simple as ABC — you are offered some services at no fee when you sign up, but after a year or so you have to pay a lot for renewing the services that were free.
This generally applies to domain names. Many web host companies offer a free domain for the first year only. Rarely will service providers use this system with hosting plans themselves: you will be offered a nice discount for the first year and double fees the second year. That’s why , it’s critically important that you read the user agreement very well—we can’t stress this enough.
Clients per Server
Shared plan users, watch for this scheme: when you purchase a shared package, that means you get only a part of a server. Thus, you may get bad neighborhood and your website will get blocked.
To prevent such a scenario, some service providers state that they have only a limited number of clients on one server (e.g. 100 or 150). Here comes the trick: insiders say that most web host companies do not really meet that standard.
You may be asking yourself, how can this info help you when choosing this or that shared plan? The answer is clear: first, you shouldn’t count that “advantage” in; secondly, you will know that the providers offering this feature are probably unfair. Additionally, they may be unfair regarding other issues, too. Consider your host well.
Now that you know what tricks web host companies have in store for you, you can filter through it all and get better services. Remember that these are only a few tricks out there . And always remember that many companies you may suspect are truly reliable, but thorough research and close examination of user agreements always pay off.
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