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How to Choose a Web Hosting Provider for Your Small Business
February 6, 2009
If you want your small business to be successful, eventually you will need your own website. By keeping these five things in mind while shopping for a hosting provider, you can save a lot of headaches down the road.
1. Make sure the provider has a good reputation.
Seek unbiased reviews when looking for a provider. How long have they been in business? Are there plenty of customers singing their praise online? If a provider has a lot of downtime or horrible tech support, it won’t take long to find out.
2. Do they offer hosted exchange email services?
This will save you a lot of money and problems down the road. With exchange services your employees can access their messages anywhere- at home, on the job, even from their cell phone. You also save money, since you don’t need to spend resources on IT professionals and system administrators. The exchange service handles all this for you.
3. What level of customer support do they offer?
24/7 is the only acceptable answer here. They need to have knowledgeable support specialists and offer help via several outlets including chat, toll free numbers, and email. Make sure you are aware of what level of support is available for your hosting plan and if there are any additional costs it may entail.
4. How do they handle data back-ups?
The last thing you want is to lose your site and all the information you worked so hard to get on there in the first place. Make sure the provider does regular back-ups and gives you the ability to do them yourself manually.
5. Will the provider give your business room to grow?
Check out all their plans to make sure you can grow with the provider. Can you host unlimited sites? Do they offer a comprehensive list of marketing tools? If you do one day need to switch providers, make sure they have transfer protocols in place to make it as painless as possible.
Taking your small business online is the best thing you can do to grow your company. By doing your research you can find a provider that offers maximum value for minimum dollars.
Tags: hosting, web hosting
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