Uptime is another factor to review in a web hosting company. When you have put hard work into planning and having your site created, you want to know others can view it. You should look for it to be functional for at least 99% of the time. Most hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee. Beware that a guarantee only means that if they don’t meet their uptime standard, you are given your monthly fee back on a prorated basis. They don’t usually compensate you for lost traffic or sales.

Additional important items to look at are disk space, bandwidth and the number of domains allowed. In the good old days, you were limited in all three of these. Now most hosting companies give you unlimited amounts of disk space, bandwidth, and domains. Note, however, that if you need a sudden large increase in any of these, contact your hosting company. They may be able to bill you for increases like these. Disk space is the amount of space your files, photos and videos take up on the hosting company’s servers, usually measured in MB or GB. Bandwidth is the quantity of traffic between the internet and your site. If you do some great marketing and have a sudden influx of visitors, you will need a large amount of bandwidth. An unlimited amount of domains that you can host means you can have a ton of websites up just on one hosting account. A feature of which I am very fond.

Price is another factor to evaluate. You, like everyone, want the best price you can get. But we’ve all learned that you get what you pay for. My advice with regard to hosting cost is to try to get a good price, but know that really cheap hosting does not make up for a lack of good support and services. Be aware that there are free web hosting companies, often requiring you to put up with advertising. There are some free web hosting sites that do not have advertising, but know that free web hosting services disappear frequently. In my opinion, free hosting is not worth the hassle of moving your website to a new company every couple of months.

All in all, having your own website is a rewarding experience. Just be sure that your hosting company is up to the task.

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