Hosting your business website online requires several steps. There are thousands of website hosting providers online. Picking one out of the sea is going to be difficult and take a lot of time unless you have a plan. This is my 3 step plan.
1. Question other websites like yours
Everyone has their favorite websites that they visit all the time. You will want to approach them by sending an email and asking who they use as their hosting provider . Typically each website will have a Contact page or some way to get in touch with the owner. If you can't find anything, you can try to email the webmaster address which is usually "webmaster" at the domain. When you contact them, keep the email brief and to the point. A good example that I use is:
Dear Webmaster:
I like your website and wanted to know if you could recommend a stable hosting company to me.
Thank you for your time,
Your Name
Keep in mind to only approach sites that are in the same industry as you and about the same size as your site. If you are building an e-commerce store, you don't want to email General Motors asking about their website. Also emailing EBay would be a bad idea, even though they are also an e-commerce store they are much bigger than your website.
2. Go through web host reviews online
If you read reviews of different web hosting companies online, you will get an idea for which ones appear most often. Some sites will even put together a guide on the best web hosts in a single market. Make sure you avoid sites that are only promoting a single web host, many times these can be fake reviews.
3. Submit a support ticket with the web host
Once you have a small list of web hosts you want to try, you should email and ask a simple question. This question can even be something really easy like the differences between their plans. Doing this will let you test the support team and see how responsive they are. If the support team gets back to your fast and with a good answer, then you can probably expect the service to be just as good once you sign up.
Some hosting providers will require you to be a customer before you can contact support. An insider tip here is: to sign up for the hosting account, ask your question, and then take advantage of any money back guarantee they offer if you are unhappy with the support response.
Finding a good hosting site will take some time but it's better to do this before you jump on-board with a company you never heard of. Moving away from a bad host is a very stressful experience and is something you want to avoid at all costs.
Remember, a great web host will be completely transparent to you. You shouldn't even know that they are there. A bad web host on the other hand will be a thorn in your side every single day.
Author Resource:
Before you go; if you are looking for rails hosting I've been writing about it to my website.
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