Your choice of hosting providers is one of the most critical and dangerous choices you can make when you are jumping on the Internet Marketing bandwagon. If your website goes down or the support system is less than positive, your business will suffer and so will you.
Think about it:
You spend months developing your product, including bonuses to entice customers to buy from you.
You test, test, test and research, research, research until your eyes cross.
You seek out affiliates to help you sell to a wider market and set up payment processors.
You pay for and get a good autoresponder to facilitate the delivery of your product and future customer contact email.
You design your website sales page to attract customers and get email sign-ups to your list ("...the money really is in the list!").
Finally, everything is perfect and you go looking for a good hosting service - here's where it can come crashing down on your head.
Before you ever contact any hosting service, there's questions you need to answer so you can select the right service for your purposes.
#1...You need to know specifically what your website will be used for:
Personal enjoyment...family photos, contact with relatives, etc
Hobbies...collecting, pets, gardening, cooking, genealogy, etc
Discussion...speak your mind on any topic, interact with members of a forum or blog
Informational...business, medical, travel, how to..., etc
Ecommerce...business, sell your products online, EBay, etc
Audio/Video...can be on any topics you want
#2...What software are you using to develop your website? Some hosting companies are selective about the software end products they will accept.
#3...How much support do you want...or are willing to pay for?
24/7 telephone or email...which?
Statistics on who visits your site and where they go when they visit
What site control panel to you need?
#4...How large will your website be? How many pages? (Note: video and audio take larger amounts of space than normal text sales pages)
#5...If you need database support, which one?
MySQL... the world's most popular open source database because of its consistent fast performance, high reliability and ease of use
Microsoft SQL Server... a relational database management system (RDBMS) ideal for small, medium and large-size business systems, according to Microsoft
Microsoft Access...a member of the 2007 Microsoft Office system and can be found on your hard drive
#6...Will you require a scripting language? (Simple web pages might not need scripts to create dynamic content) Which one?
ASP (Active Server Pages)
ASP.Net
CGI-Bin
ColdFusion
JSP (Java Server Pages)
Perl
When you have your answers to each question, based on your needs for your web site, you will be fully armed to select the best hosting service you can afford.
Dan Thompson is a veteran website designer and has used numerous web hosts in his time. Dan specializes in writing web host reviews, his latest article is a 1and1 Review. You can view Dan's latest web hosting review at http://www.1and1review.info
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