How to Choose the Right Web Hosting

How do we decide if a web host is good? Do bandwidth and disk storage features still matter these days? Which type of hosting service should you go with? In this article, we will get these questions answered with the following walk-through the below checklist.

How to choose a best web hosting service?

In brief –

Know your hosting needs.

• Investigate on host reliability and uptime guarantees.
• Study web host upgrading options.
• Check all hosting features (such as bandwidth, disk space, SSL etc...) based on your needs.
• Check technical support details.
• Check hosting control panel.
• Check email hosting.
• Check Price.
• Read hosting company’s ToS to find out more about account suspension and server usage policy.
• Other supporting features

Knowing Your Hosting Needs

You can never get the right web host without knowing what you need. So before you go any further – put everything aside (including this guide you are reading) and think thoroughly on your own needs.

• What kind of website are you building?
• Do you want something common (a WordPress blog, for example)?
• Do you need Windows applications?
• Do you need a special version of software (ie. PHP)?
• Does your website need special software?
• How big (or small) can the web traffic volume go?

These are some of the basic questions you need to answer for yourself. Have a quick picture of what you want to do with your website now. Figure what happens next for the next 12 months.

If you are totally new…

For newbies, the no-brainer rule is to always start small with a good shared hosting account. A shared hosting account is cheap, easy to maintain, and sufficient for most new sites. Plus, you can always upgrade to VPS or dedicated hosting in the later stage when your site grows bigger.

So we recommend Shared Hosting.

1. Server Reliability / Uptime Scores

Nothing is more important than having a 24×7 operating web host. You need a web host is operating on a powerful server and stable network connections. 99.5% and above is the recommended uptime score; anything below 99% is unacceptable.
Alternatively, you can simply track your web host with server monitor tools – many of these tools are free on trial and are very to use.

2. Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)

Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as "traffic" or "bandwidth") is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.

Don't believe any commercial web host that advertises "unlimited bandwidth". The host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive an exorbitant bill for having "exceeded" the "unlimited bandwidth". Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. I personally always stay clear of any host that advertises "unlimited transfer", even if the exact amount is specified somewhere else (sometimes buried in their policy statements). Usually you will find that they redefine "unlimited" to be limited in some way.

In addition, while bandwidth provided is something you should always check, do not be unduly swayed by promises of incredibly huge amounts of bandwidth. Chances are that your website will never be able to use that amount because it will hit other limits, namely resource limits. To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that don't provide video or music on their site use less than 3 GB of bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your site becomes more well-known, so you will need to also check their policy when you exceed your data transfer limit: is there a published charge per GB over the allowed bandwidth? Is the charge made according to actual usage or are you expected to pre-pay for a potential overage? It is better not to go for hosts that expect you to prepay for overages, since it is very hard to forsee when your site will exceed its bandwidth and by how much.

3. Disk space

For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those "unlimited disk space" schemes. Many new sites (that don't host videos or music) need less than 20 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 100 GB (or "unlimited space"), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don't let the 100 GB space be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of that, which is why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there. 

4. Technical support

If you are a beginner or you don’t have much idea about the technical terms of webhosting then we recommend you to hire a provider with support. As most of the International hosting companies, if you have any issues you need to contact them by sending tickets and need to follow up them thoroughly to solve the issues. Also you need to work by your own as they only provide steps to solve it. But there are a few companies who have call centers and direct ticketing system support available.

There are companies like Host Dazzle which offers you End user support with hosting packages. We recommend them to you as won’t have any headaches regarding the issues with it.

5. FTP, PHP, Perl, SSI, .htaccess, SSH, MySQL, Cron

If you are paying for a web hosting account, you really should make sure you have all of these. Note that some commercial hosts do not allow you to install PHP or Perl without their approval. This is not desirable since it means that you have to wait for them before you can implement a feature on your site.

The ability to create or modify ".htaccess" files is needed if you are to do things like customize your error pages (pages that display when, say, a user requests for a non-existent page on your site) or to protect your site in various ways (such as to prevent bandwidth theft and hotlinking, password-protect a directory (folder), etc).

SSH access is useful for certain things, including testing certain scripts (programs), maintaining databases, etc. MySQL  is needed if you want to run a blog or a content management system. Cron is a type of program scheduler that lets you run programs at certain times of the day (eg, once a day). Check to see if these facilities are provided.

6. SSL (secure server)

If you are planning on selling any goods or services through your website, you may want to see if the web host lets you set up SSL (a secure server). You may have seen this on other websites where their web address begins with a "https://" instead of "http://". Setting this up will normally involve additional charges or a higher priced package. At this point, the main thing is do is to check if they are available at all before you commit to the host. You will definitely need to have SSL if you plan to collect credit card payments yourself. If you're relying on a payment gateway instead, and are not otherwise collecting sensitive or private information from your customers, it's possible that you don't need this facility. For those who are wondering about what this is, but are too lazy to click through the link in the previous sentence, a payment gateway is just a third party company, like PayPal, that collects credit card payments on your behalf.

7. Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding

If you have your own site, you will probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like sales@yourdomain.com, etc. Does the host allow you to set up whatever email addresses you want on your domain, so that mail can be forwarded to your current email address, or placed into a mail box on your web hosting account itself? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software?

8. Control Panel

This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself.

Typically, and at the very minimum, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. I will not sign up with a host where I have to go through their technical support each time I want to change a password or add/delete an email account. Such tasks are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical support to make the changes for you.

9. Web Server and Operating System

Is the type of operating system and server important? I have discussed this issue at length in the article "Should You Choose a Linux or a Windows Web Hosting Package? Is There Such a Thing as a Mac Web Host?"

In general, most people will want to sign up for a web host offering a Unix-based system (like Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD) and running the Apache web server. Most web-based software assume your website is running on such a system, and you will usually experience fewer compatibility issues with it. There are also a lot of guides available on the Internet on configuring such systems, so finding help when you need it is easier as well.

In my opinion, the only time when you will want to use a Windows server is if you're running Windows-specific programs, like ASP scripts. But even then, you'll probably be better off looking for a PHP-equivalent, and using a Unix-based system.

10. Price

I was actually hesitant to list this, but I guess it's futile not to. However, I would caution that while price is always a factor, you should realize that you often get what you pay for.

11. Resellers?

Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don't know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon).

However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.

12. Hosting Companies in Saudi Arabia

If you have option of hosting your site with some local provider, it will be easier for you. The advantage here is the ease of dealing with them (they are after all easily accessible by phone call or a visit), your familiarity with the local laws and easy recourse to those laws should it be necessary. It should be your choice if your target audience is local.

- Best Web hosting Company in Saudi Arabia

Host dazzle belongs to the list among the best Web Hosting Company in Saudi Arabia in terms of shared hosting. Their advantage is they are providing end user support with all the packages. It includes:

Email setup, Outlook / Anroid / iOS Configurations, Website hosting setup & configuration, Telephonic support (with selected plans) and technical issues etc..

For more information, visit their website www.hostdazzle.com

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