Choosing a web hosting provider

You have a product or service and now you want to cash in on internet profits. Who can blame you? In order to do this, you have to have a website. The natural first question is which web host provider do I use? (The second question is "Oh my gosh. How do I design a page?")

The information here is taken from my experiences online. I've been building and maintaining web sites since 1996. Currently, I run about a dozen sites. I have a couple of online ventures, including selling shirts on CafePress and Zazzle. These are Print-on-Demand (POD) companies. In the forums, I often see new business owners asking about how to choose the right provider. Most first time web owners also look at the free sites. This page is created with the millions like them in mind. If you're one of the many who wants to know the difference between hosts and how to choose the right one, stick around. I'll do my best to have you a well-educated consumer in just a few minutes.

What do you always hear about real estate? Location, location, location! Domain names are the same. Here are some important things to keep in mind when considering a domain name.

• Go dot com. We have been trained to think about dot coms. We had a dot com boom. We did not have a dot net or dot us boom. If you take ShirtsByMary.net and tell people, many will go home and put in your competition, shirtsByMary.com. It will really hurt you if her designs stink or are much better.
  
  
• Shorter is better. ShirtsByMary isn't bad. It's easy enough to remember. But some people have crazy domains like "johnandmarrylovetodrivetocaliforniafordinner.com" Who is going to remember that?
  
  
• Shortest isn't best. You may be able to get MaryABC1.com which is shorter than shirtsby..., but how many people will remember it? Think in terms that identify you or your product and what will stick in people's minds.
  

I get all my domains from GoDaddy. They are inexpensive and easy to use. You can check for domain names here if you don't have one yet.

For a more in-depth look at domain names, check out the lens I just completed Choosing a domain name.

When I was growing up, my dad always told me, "Use the right tool for the job." Web hosting providers are tools and your business is their job. So, you must ask yourself if they are the right tool.

Nothing is free in this life. "Free" web hosts often place ads on your website. They get the profits as payment for their services to you. Some of these sites place large, intrusives ads. Others have many small ads. And some are very tame.

You have to think about these ads. Let's say you are selling a niche product. You sell conservative t-shirts. You have some great designs. When people come to your site, they see your products. But they also see ads for your competition. Do you want to allow your web host provider to help your competition steal sales from you? Not every host will have these types of ads, but many do. So, you must ask yourself, "How much will my average sale be?" If it is more than a few dollars, and you lose one sale a month, you are losing money by having a "free" web hosting service.

The next thing to consider is the domain. Some free providers now allow you to use your own domain name (some charge you for this service). But a good number do not allow this convenience. So, instead of "ShirtsByMary.com," you have something like "FreeProvider.com/ShirtsByMary." There are a couple of problems with this:

• It is harder to market the latter. Imagine you are in a store talking to someone about your shirts. Which of the two domains will they remember more readily? Think about the second example, they must remember "Free Provider dot com slash shirts by mary." Most people will only remember free provider dot com. We have been trained over the past decade to think in terms of "dot com."
  
  
• The next issue is internet marketing. Search engines may rank "YourCompetition.com" higher than you because you are on a website (FreeProvider.com) with tons of other non-related stuff. The lower you are, the harder it will be for people to find you and for you to sell online.
  

One benefit that some free hosting services provide is their size. Some of them have a very good network in place and will provide constant (99.7-99.9% uptime). But, there are also some that will be down as much as they are up or extremely slow--which is just as bad. If they do not have the appropraite bandwidth to take care of all their sites, you will lose customers.

Remember the axiom, you get what you pay for. There are a lot of webhosts out there that offer ad-free pages for $1-$2.95 per month. (When I started in '96, I thought I was getting a steal at $25-$30 per month).

Because they are still in business, I will not mention the last provider I had. I paid about $60/year for unlimited sites. I had moved to them because the provider I had before them had gone down the tubes. The service was atrocious. Anyway, when I moved here, I had great uptime. Then after about a year (right after my contract renewed), I went to work on a site and couldn't reach it. I couldn't reach any of my sites. I e-mails them and got a quick, polite response. A couple of months later, it happened again. And then again. They were always nice and fast to respond, but I didn't know for how long my sites were down before I notified them. How much business did I lose? They moved me to a new server and everything went well for a few months. So, they moved me again...and lost all of my data. I had to rebuild everything! I stayed with them for a while because I wanted to help. I put my personal feelings above business. Then, for the last few months, my site was down every couple of days. I would log on around 530am to find it down, send an email, and get a respnse about 130 that they would look into it. Sometime between 2pm and 5pm it would come back up. I had to leave.

I had already created and hosted a new site somewhere else. I paid a bit more, but wanted to see how the service was. That was over a year ago. During the last year, even though I had already paid for the one service, I moved all of my sites to a new webhosting provider. In more than a year, I have never had any downtime on any of my sites (that I know of).

I tell you this story, because I learned the hard way, that I got exactly what I paid for. If you're in business, your goal is to make money. A webhost provider is not a fee. It is an investment! If you had $1 million would you invest it all in Sloppy Joe stock which has dropped to $.01 per share, or put it in something you know will make money?

For a few dollars a month more, you can get a whole lot more. besides getting better, faster, more reliable service, you get one thing that is hard to place a value on: peace of mind.

As I mentioned above, with my current host, I've never found my site down. I can rest easy knowing that when I go to sleep here on the right side of America, those on the left side can still shop.

I had one problem with my site and emailed tech support. I got a very fast response. Within a few minutes, we determined it was a stupid mistake I had made. I thanked them for going the extra mile to look into stuff outside their control andspotting my error so quickly. I know if I have any problems, I won't have to wait around for hours to get an e-mail that says, "I just got your email and will look into it."

I pay more, but I lose less. I lose less sales. I lose less visitors. And I lose less sleep worrying about whether my sites are down.

Most web hosting companies provide a host of things, including additional services and add-ons. This will explain a few--particularly, the ones you need to know about.

In it's barest form, hosting consists of two items: disk space and Bandwidth.

Disk Space is the amount of room you have to upload and store items and pages. Just as an 8GB iPod will hold more songs than it's 4GB cousin, so too goes disk space with hosting. Web pages themselves do not take much space at all. They would equate to a second or two of music on an iPod. Where you start increasing your storage is with your pictures, videos, flash headers, etc. If you are posting large pictures of your designs at high resolution, you will chew through space in a hurry. Agai, going back to the iPod, a large image and resolution would be like putting an entire opera on an iPod instead of one song.

Most people use smaller graphics (and you probably will). You can cut down on the size by using jpegs and gifs (the most common formats for web images) instead of bmp and png.

Bandwidth is how much stuff people can download each month. If your average page with pictures included is 50K and you have a limit of 5GB/month, 100,000 pages can be visited each month before you go over. Most places give you an option of either paying extra for overages or having the service temporarily stop to prevent you from going over.

The Other imprtant thing to look at is Platform: This is going to be Windows or Linux/Unix. I prefer Linux. Since all hosts now have graphical web interfaces, this won't make muchof a difference if you are just starting. However, here's why/where is can be important. Some scripts may require a windows based platform. If you plan on buying a particular shopping cart or script, check to see what platform it runs on.

These are some extras:

Templates: Many hosts now provide pre-made templates. All you have to do is put your information in them. Okay, it's not quite that simple, you will prbably have to download them, edit them in a text editor like NotePad or program like Dreamweaver and then re-upload them...this is where FTP (mentioned below) comes in handy. But there are some great templates out there and many differ from host to host.

Dedicated IP: Every website has an IP (Internet Protocol) address. It looks something like this 123.65.29.101. Since no one would remember that, they use things like site.com. Some programs require you to have a dedicated IP. Most small businesses do not need one.

Private SSL: SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. It is an internet encryption generally used with e-commerce. Some shopping carts and software require you to pay and host your own SSL certificate. Whether you need this depends on if you are doing e-commerce AND need it. For example, if you are letting people pay with PayPal, you do not need your own SSL.

Anonymous FTP/FTP Accounts. FTP is File Transfer Protocol. It is a way for you to connect with the host and upload or download files. Anonymous allows anyone to use it. You don't have to use FTP. Most hosts also have a graphical web interface for you to upload and download files. FTP comes in handy if you want to move large blocks or many files at once.

PHP, ASP, Chili, etc. These are different programming languages. Just about every host includes these so you can add more dynamic content to your website. If you have a simple website, you don't need to worry about these. If you want to host a blog or a particular script (pre-made program in one of these languages), you have to make sure they have the appropriate language and version. For example, a PHP5 script may not work on PHP4. Generally, I look at these, but don't worry about them. I'll build my chair in the room I'm in, rather than buying the chair and worrying about how to get it through the door.

E-Mail items:
There are quite a few. Here's a quick run-down.

• POP3: Post Office Protocol. This allows you to connect to things like Outlook if you want to.
  
• IMAP: Internet Message Access Protocol. This allows things like a blackberry to download and save your messages as if they were on the server.
  
• Catch Alls. If someone sends a messages to fshgfsjh@ShirtsByMary.com, it will go to the catch all if you want. Spammers know this and use it. buy sometimes, someone will accidentally type mayr instead of Mary at your domain. You'll still get the email.
  
• SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. This allows outgoing messages. You need it to send stuff. Some scripts may also you it, like on a "Contact Us" page.
  
• Fantastico. It's fantastic. This is a program with a ton of programs included. It will automatically load and build things like shopping carts, blogs, auction pages, etc. Almost everyone offers this now and they differ very little.
  

I use Go Daddy to get all my domain names. They are $7.49 for a year.
Go Daddy also does web hosting. I have not used them, but I know many people who do and say they are great. If you want to check them out, click the banner and a new window will open.




Hosting
I use HostGator and love them. A website with unlimited space and bandwidth starts at $4.95 a month. If you use the promo code beach, you get a 20% discount off your first year.


I have never used BlueHost, but many people on CafePress and elsewhere swear by them.



In order to keep from getting sued, I'll refrain from listing the horrible hosts...besides, the list would be too long.