Assessing My Web Hosting Needs

Many potential hosting issues arise from the customer not doing enough home work to properly assess their web hosting needs. As a result most relationships with a web host end with a frustrated client suffering from unfulfilled expectations.

Of course, assessing computer technology isn't something most of us have been trained to do. Which explains why most customers heavily rely upon a web host to "just make it work" and why web host sell general, all-encompassing plans as a pitch to accommodate all situations.

Web Hosting Assessment Guide

Luckily, you don't need a lot of technical knowledge to assess your website needs, just a little guidance. Your website needs can be broken down in the following resources:

• Performance
• Space
• Bandwidth
• Email
• Software
• Support/Assistance

Performance

Most users expect their website to be up and running 24/7, serving pages quickly so visitors are not waiting. Most web hosts have a handle on this requirement. Unless you signed up with price-cutting web host who is forced to over-crowd their web server, or you run resource intensive software than you should not have a problem with website performance. E-commerce, blogs, wikis and photo galleries are not considered resource intensive unless they sustain a large amount of traffic. Only forums or message boards have a reputation for bogging down server performance.

Space

Those gigabites of web space you are contemplating on purchasing, you would be surprised how little you will use. Unless you plan on archiving libraries of files, photos or emails most of the space will be a waste. A typical 7 page website will consume less than 1 megabyte (1 MB) of space. You could easily fit the entire website on a floppy disk, if you remember floppy disks from that far back. Enterprise level websites with tens of thousands of web pages may only take up a few hundred megabytes, still far short of 1 GB of space.

Bandwidth

If you are planning a new website than concerns about available bandwidth should wait till later. Most starter hosting accounts offer at least 1GB of bandwidth. Considering the average size of a web page is 30MB means your website will need to generate at least 35,000 hits per month before exceeding your bandwidth limit. 35,000 hits per month is a strong amount of traffic which will probably afford you the resources to upgrade your hosting plan when needed.

Email

Please read the fine print. Numerous hosting plans offer email service but this email service is limited. Hidden rules, clauses and updates to your service agreement will limit your email use in some way or the other. Best advice, don’t count on maintaining mailing lists or hosting 25 or more email active accounts on a small shared hosting account. First you will run out of hosting space, secondly your web host will not be able to keep up with the resource demand. Companies of unlimited resources with racks of dedicated servers struggle to keep up with the demand of email. You will have to manage your email resources but this should not deter you from taking advantage of the email capabilities offered by your web host.

Software

Admit it, most of us cannot even remember the acronym of our software, let alone remember anything else about it. Don’t worry, send an email listing your required software to the web host and wait for the response. If you don’t know the list of required software, than ask your web developer or computer expert. Still lost, ask the web host for guidance. They will be more than willing to assist in order to gain your business.

Support/Assistance

Everyone in the web hosting industry claims to offer 24/7 customer support but few if any ever deliver. Maybe as consumers we are asking too much. Both power and phone companies charge significantly more money than web hosts for around the clock service and they still fail to meet those expectations. As a buyer of shared web hosting, do not expect an up to the minute response. More realistically, during the day time you should expect a response within a few hours. Issues during the evening should be resolved by the following morning. If your business depends on 100% guaranteed up time than your IT demand warrants more investment than a shared web hosting account.