5 things to consider when changing hosting
Posted May 19th, 2008 by Alex Ion
Moving hosting, for an established blog is not an easy thing to do mostly because it takes time to investigate and get the best web hosting deals for a fair price and believe me this is a time consuming job. For anyone that would like to choose a new hosting for their sites here are the steps I’ve thought of.
1. Reliable hosting. This was my first concern. If the site ever gets a spike in traffic I don’t want to be called by the hosting company because they’ve shut me down. That’s not the way I like to do business, so I had to seek a reliable company at first.
2. Server Specifications. Though I’m geek, servers and bandwidth are not my best qualities so I had to search for some web hosting articles and see what exactly I need. How much RAM, how much bandwidth and if it’s ok to get a shared server.
3. The price. Spending hundreds of dollars for a dedicated server wasn’t a solution and to be honest not a necessity, but I already knew what I was looking for, so I went on WebHostingGeeks to read their web hosting reviews. Though I wasn’t planning it really paid off spending the time on the site, and I learned a lot. They actually made me understand what I want. You can also try webhostingchoice.com for other reviews and costs.
4. Payment options. I don’t like giving my credit card or Paypal details to every new hosting company that pops out like mushrooms after rain. I want to make sure that those guys are at least trying to protect people’s data.
5. Customer support. Excuse me if I don’t eat PHP or Apache at breakfast, but everyone is good at something else. When it comes to server problems, I want to be sure I can rely on a person (phone, email or support ticket) that will address my problem in a timely manner. For me online chat for support is of great value, so it really counted when I made my choice.
These are the things that influenced my decision to choose a new hosting provider, but yours may be different or you could add to these.
