5 pointers for choosing the right UK web hosting service provider for small businesses

5 pointers for choosing the right UK web hosting service provider for small businesses

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Tuesday 20th April 2010, 6:03pm

When choosing a web hosting provider for your online business, it's imperative that you make an informed decision. Here's a guide made by professionals in the Web Hosting industry.

If you’re deciding to launch an online business, one important consideration that comes to mind is who to choose for hosting your website and delivering your emails.

So how do you choose a reliable and affordable web hosting service provider that can cater for you online business requirements?

Finding a quality web hosting service is not as simple as typing ‘web hosting’ in Google. There are far too many web hosting companies in the UK who claim to be reliable and are very competitively priced. However, a nice website and cheap hosting packages are not the best indicators of the quality of service the hosting company offers. After all, your website is a reflection of your business so it’s imperative that you do your homework before choosing a host for your website and email services.

So what should you seek in a prospective web hosting company before getting their services?

Here are five pointers which you should consider when choosing the best Web hosting company for your business.

1. Dedicated Customer Support

Can you get hold of your web hosting service provider when you need help? And what options do you have - telephone, web chat, ticket or all three?

Let’s face it, most small businesses don’t have an ‘IT department’. So any issue with your website or email service is likely to prompt a call to your web hosting service provider. And unless you can get hold of them immediately, your business is likely to suffer.

Therefore, before signing up to any contract, look for prominent contact numbers for customer services and technical support on their website. If a contact number is not prominent, look for another web hosting service provider.

The other question you might also consider is the location of the web hosting company. If you are in the UK then clearly a UK web hosting company is more likely to be contactable during normal business hours.

In short, satisfy yourself that you can get hold of the company when you need to, day or night.

2. Reliability

Just how reliable is the web hosting company’s service? What’s their uptime? (99.9% uptime is pretty common.) Quiz them about whether they own their hardware or are they providing service through a third party. Enquire about their contingency plans in case of any fatal hardware or data centre failures.

Of course, if you are specifically looking for a UK cheap web hosting service provider, then ask about their data centre location. Is it in the UK?

3. How Much?

While you should never consider web hosting as a commodity and focus on price alone, nevertheless, the cost of hosting a typical small business website should not be much. You can get a perfectly decent package from a web hosting UK service provider for as little as £20 per year including a free domain name. It’s also a benefit if the Hosting Company sells cheap domain names, which you can forward to your main website.

4. Features and benefits

Don’t get distracted by features you might never need. Focus on the core items: storage space, bandwidth, mailboxes, databases, easy-to-use control panel (such as Plesk) and free tools (such as Sitebuilder) to create a professional looking website. Most other things are likely to be nice to have but not really necessary.

Blogs and forum facilities are becoming increasingly important. So look for these and also look for available guidance to help you integrate these into your website.

5. Windows or Linux?

The choice here is pretty simple and it depends on how you created your website.

Hosting Platforms are normally either Linux or Windows servers.

Linux is the most popular Web Hosting platform. The Linux platform for web development allows users to utilise popular open-source technologies such as MySQL, PHP and CGI-scripts.

Windows Hosting is on a server that is using the Microsoft Windows® operating system. The primary reason for using Windows® web hosting is that it offers ASP, ASP.NET and MS SQL.

It’s important to note, that the server you choose here has nothing
to do with the operating system you use on your own computer.

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