Evaluating Web Hosts and Web Hosting Companies

Choosing a web host is like choosing a long distance carrier: at best it involves some guesswork, at worst you switch carriers like opponents at a round robin tennis tournament. Hopefully this analysis will help to narrow and clarify your selection criteria.

Hosting Reliability

Most web hosts advertise an uptime guarantee. If you take the time to look, you'll find that almost all web hosts' computers use the same software, connect to the Internet through the same telecommunications carriers and are stored in a secure data center. These can vary in quality, but generally do not differentiate providers.

Reliability is predominantly a matter of discipline and proper controls. The senior management team is responsible for both factors in an organization, if not directly then indirectly by hiring the people who are. A guarantee is only as good as the company providing it. What feeling do you get from the company?

Hosting Price

Does the price reflect the company's costs? For a web host, costs include computers, Internet connections, support staff and facilities. Computer prices have been driven straight down over the years, thanks to the relentlessly competitive spirit of Michael Dell and company. The price of Internet connections is also at a historical low, and will only keep going down. By the time the Telecommunications bubble burst around 2001, there had been so much bandwidth installed, that today, only about 40% of it is in use. Excess capacity drives prices down. Are these savings being passed on to you, the customer?

Where is the hosts support staff located? The generally accepted number is that providing support offshore saves 60%. This results in a significant savings that can be passed on to customers. For all the negative press on outsourcing, India for example, has only had 1 million jobs from foreign companies outsourced to it, where as America has had 6 million jobs outsourced to it from foreign companies. Outsourcing works both ways.

Hosting Features

If you are currently using, or have your heart set on, a particular set of technologies, it is as simple as whether or not a Web host supports them. If you do not, we suggest you choose the simplest technologies that will get the job done. Many features can end up as toys rather tools. The use of one technology may offer additional features over another, but is additional functionality the most efficient deployment your resources? Complexity costs money.

Hosting Service

Wal-Mart resells products. Products are tangible, and can be physically inspected. Web hosts sell services. The quality of a service is only as good as the people providing it. It is certainly more difficult to evaluate a purchase that cannot be thoroughly inspected before hand. You can however look at whose selling - that can be thoroughly inspected - the management team, values statement, privacy policy, conduct statement and contracts. What do they convey?

Author: Jonathan Maher
If you don't know web hosting, know the web host.(sm)
Host1 has provided website hosting, design & marketing services for small business since 1993.