Not sure which blog hosting service to choose from? There are many to choose from offering all manner of things, but what do we actually need, bells and whistles or a fast reliable service you can rely on.
After conducting a local survey to find what the average user wants from a hosting company we put together a list of the top items to give an idea of what to look for in terms of hosting packages, likes and dislikes, and how important it is to get it right to begin with.
The Cost
Cheap blog hosting should not be confused with finding the cheapest blog hosting around, the cost should be something to think about, but it should not be the only thing, once you look around for a while you will see the average prices you need to pay, and what you should be able to get for your money in terms of a decent but cost effective package
By all means look around and consider the price when checking out which blog hosting company is for you, but be prepared to pay a fair price for a very good package rather than the cheapest price possible which will be reflected in such things as the speed, reliability and the support services.
After Sales Support
Having a decent support service after you’ve decided which blog hosting package is vital, especially if you are in the process of setting up your very first blog site
It really makes no difference as to the size of the hosting company when it comes to after sales support, its all a question of how much the company wants to invest in this side of the business, one feature worth looking for though is live chat.
How reliable is the service?
What’s worst having the greatest blog site that is offline all the time, or the worst blog site that’s online all the time? What’s the point in having a greatest blog site when no one will ever see it, so when choosing which blog hosting service its absolutely vital that its is reliable, just imagine if a very popular blog site was down even for a few hours, the revenue lost could run into millions.
Add-ons, databases etc
Which extras do you think you will need? If you’re creating a blog type site then you will need some type of backend database, will you be sending or receiving lots of emails, then you will need lots of email storage and bandwidth, otherwise you could run into lots of problems. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to add-ons so its something that really need to be planned.
Easy to use service
When choosing which blog hosting company having an easy to use admin page, email and even site setup makes such as difference, it gives you the chance to get on with actually designing and writing content for your site or blog rather than having to spend time configuring the settings for it in the first place, I remember when I first started and having to do everything totally manually was very tough and a real learning curve.
Windows or Unix, why does it matter?
Thinking you don’t know anything about Unix so you’re going to use Windows for your blog hosting? Wait, firstly you don’t need to know anything about Unix when it comes to the hosting side as this will be managed by your hosting company, and secondly PHP and MySQL which are the backbones to many successful sites use Unix and are easy to install and manage.
Lastly if your going to create a Blog one of the easiest to install and manage is WordPress, this runs over Unix, PHP and MySQL
Auto domain & hosting renewal
ok so you’ve built your site, then you’ve never quite had the time to do anything else with it, so you just forget all about it, 11 months later you notice a charge on your credit card from the hosting company who have charged you to renew your hosting package with them, but they never contacted you, just charged and renewed. This is a pretty common story as some hosting companies do not give you the option to renew, they have conditions such as you have to contact them around a month before the hosting comes up for renewal, or they are will renew. So if possible make sure you have the option to not auto renew and they should then contact you prior to this.
Room for expansion
Just about any blog site starting small enables you to keep costs low, but what happens if you need to change technologies or your blog site grows very quickly, how can you expand? You could need more hosting space, faster servers to handle more visitors, even back office ad-ins such as databases, having the ability to expand quickly should be considered very early, when deciding which blog hosting company make this something to think about.
Email services
All hosting companies provide email today, having a email account associated with your domain not only makes you look more professional, but also means you are perceived as a true business by anyone you contact.
Your email services should be a standard type such as POP3, plus a web interface to check remotely or from a smart phone is a nice feature worth thinking about.
Finding which blog hosting company is right for you; other considerations
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