5 Features To Look For In A Hosting Company

The web hosting needs of one customer varies considerably from the hosting needs of another. As a potential customer, you must look for certain features in the web hosting package of your probable host. With that in mind, let us look at the top five features you want to make sure a company has before you hand over your hard earned cash.

1. Timely support – Remember, your web hosting company should provide you with timely support, as you’ll never want to wait for more than a few hours to receive e-mails from the customer support or tech support team of your hosting agency. So, before you really make a choice, ensure that you get timely response for first 3-4 mails that you send for correspondence, even before purchasing a hosting plan.

2. 99.9% Uptime: You don’t your visitors to see ugly messages like “Sorry, the website you’re viewing is currently down for maintenance, please visit after sometime”, do you? So, you must make sure that your web hosting company guarantees 99.9% uptime. Even in case of any downtime, your web host must be proficient enough to bring back the server in action within 15-20minutes at the most (that’s precisely how long re-starting and setting up the server really takes).

3. Website-Builder and Free Templates: If you’re new to the world of website creation and online businesses, the chances are high that you’ll need one of these templates to launch your website during the initial stages. Basically, it is not a smart idea to spend heavily on getting a website designed, unless you really establish your business identity over the internet. Once you become popular, you can hire the services of a professional web programmer, and improve the website. But, until then free templates and a website-builder must be available for you to use.

4. Live Chat – It is always good to have the option of speaking to your hosting company via live chat, rather than depending upon the email support team and wait for hours together to get a response. However, not many hosts will give you this option, so don’t keep this on top of your priority list.

5. Affiliate programs – Merely by promoting the services of your web hosting company, you can make some extra bucks through the affiliate marketing or the referral programs. So, you must make sure that your web host offers you a nice chunk of the profit gained with every new customer. There are several hosts, which offer as high as $60-$100 for every new customer who signs-up for a premium plan.

By: John Stanton

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John is a professional webmaster and hosts hundreds of web sites. Because of this he uses multiple hosting companies, one of his favourites being hostgator who meet all the criteria above.