A web hosting provider provides space on its server and allows organizations, individuals or clients to access its websites via the World Wide Web.
Choosing a perfect web hosting provider is not a difficult task, but involves consideration of certain important parameters. Although affordability on price consideration is concern of every user, selection of web hosting provider doesn’t end with money.
Important parameters one must consider while choosing web hosting provider include bandwidth, disk space, full accessibility, security, logs, server speed, uptime, reliability and customer service.
Bandwidth: Bandwidth means data transmission rate. It is an important parameter which indicates maximum amount of data (bits/seconds) a web hosting provider transmits along the channel. Web hosting providers offer bandwidth of varying degree depending on your requirement. If it offers lower bandwidth, you might get in trouble when traffic on your site starts increasing. If traffic increases more than available bandwidth, your website will go offline and you will never be informed by the provider. You will be asked to pay more for additional bandwidth. Remember that a web hosting provider that appears cheap could prove costly in the end.
Disk Space: It is another important parameter to consider in choosing a web hosting provider. Disk space also called ‘storage size’, ‘data space’ is measured in units of bites. It indicates total volume of contents that you can upload to a server. Disk space is among the most crucial web resources for your business online presence. Choose a web hosting provider that gives loads of disk space rather than limited space.
Full Access: Web is very important source of information on education, healthcare, commerce, employment, recreation and more. It should be made accessible to all users, whether disabled or able, by the web hosting provider. Most providers create accessibility barriers that make it impossible to access Web fully. You should choose provider who guarantees full accessibility.
Security: Providing protection to a site and its data from various hacks and cracks and preventing the responsibility of web hosting provider, and therefore you must outline a host’s security protocol.
The provider should provide raw access logs to know who visits your site along with regular site backup for restoring site in emergency.
Access logs record data of visitors and information such as IP address and referrer. You can specify duration after which logs can be deleted. All providers are supposed to provide logs in their packages.
