Top 10 Web Hosting Services
Choosing a web hosting service provider is one of the most toilsome tasks one has to deal with when setting up a website or a blog. It is so, because the host of a website can make or break its future and thereby yours as well.
What kind of service would be available on your website/ blog, to how it would be designed depends on the services provided by the web hosting company you sign up with.
Unlike most other expenses involved in making a website (for example, theme designing), investing in the web hosting service accounts to the working capital of your online business.
What kind of service would be available on your website/ blog, to how it would be designed depends on the services provided by the web hosting company you sign up with.
Unlike most other expenses involved in making a website (for example, theme designing), investing in the web hosting service accounts to the working capital of your online business.
Hence pricing of the service is a vital thing for you.
Fortunately, with the increase in the number of players in the hosting market, hosting service has become much more economical today. But is the service worth a try? Is low price is all that matters?
In order to address to this question, let’s have a quick peek into what must be considered before going for a certain web-hosting service provider.
Fortunately, with the increase in the number of players in the hosting market, hosting service has become much more economical today. But is the service worth a try? Is low price is all that matters?
In order to address to this question, let’s have a quick peek into what must be considered before going for a certain web-hosting service provider.
- Purpose of your website: Once you are fully clear about the purpose of your website, half your work is done. The purpose of the site/blog determines the services you must seek from the web hosting firm. Hence the first thing you need to do is determine the purpose of your online take up. It is a personal blog done just for fun? A small business website? A niche based blog? A community/networking site? Or an e-commerce outlet?
- Tech Support: It’s a must that your hosting firm provides round the clock, multi-channel customer support. You never know when and why your site may go down. Your online prospects would not like to wait too long for your broken site to be fixed right?
- User-Friendliness: Setting up a website involves getting your hands of numerous tools like FTP clients, CMS, databases, log files, scripts, e-mail and auto-responders. One little confusion is adequate enough for you to lose your valuable time. Hence make sure that the hosting firm not only concentrates on 100% uptime, but also ensures that their end user’s experiences is a piece of cake.
- Value for money: Bear in mind that it is always not necessary that only costly services are of good quality. Check if the host provides value to relationships and discounts for a longer contract. But before signing up for long terms, be sure that the service provider is reasonable. Else, you may have to take the pain of transferring your domain from one to another web hosting company.
- Hostgator: With over a decade’s experience, Hostgator stands number one on my list. Hostgator is the primary choice one bumps into when searching for a webhost. It works great with all the widely used CMS, is equipped with every program (like database, PHP, FTP, etc) one may need for maintaining his/her website. The firm provides 99.9% uptime guarantee. I hardly came across anyone cribbing for having signed up with HostGator. The brand is also known for its ace support team. All this come for surprisingly economical rates. HostGator launches seasonal discount coupons which attracts more and more webmasters.
- Bluehost: Bluehost almost matched what Hostgator has to offer. The only thing I find missing here is that Bluehost fails to provide targeted plans like Hostgator making it relatively difficult for newbie webmasters to decide what exactly suits their needs.
- Justhost : Justhost is standing third on my list for all the free goodies it offers. The most notable of all are the Yahoo Ad and Google Adwords credits.
- Inmotion: Inmotion is yet another company the offers irresistible freebies. However, it slips to the 4th position as its price tag is higher than those of the above three.
- DreamHost: This Debien Linux hosted server is another immensely experienced firm. They have been hosting since late 1900s. DreamHost is the only web hosting brand that daringly commits a 100% uptime guarantee.
- GreenGeeks: GreenGeeks is another reasonably priced service that is banking on its environment friendly technology. They claim that they run on alternative energy resources that contribute 3 times more power.
- iPage: iPage is another vintage web hosting company that offers services for competitive prices. They also offer anytime money back guarantee just in case you need to move.
- BigRock: This new player seems to have shown a quick growth. They offer greatly cheap yet reliable services. Though the firm is local to India, it is well equipped and is at par with some of the other firms in terms of functionality. One innovation they managed to trigger is the ‘Cash On Delivery’ service, which lets localities pay to an agent at their home.
- GoDaddy: While GoDaddy is a major choice for buying domain names, it takes a back step when it comes to website hosting service. However, it is still good enough to get listed among the top 10 website hosting firms.
- FatCow: Fatcow is yet another hosting firm which boosts that it totally relies on 100% wind energy. They also offer Bing, Yahoo, Google and Facebook credits. All this for an amazingly economical price.