#webhosting #websites — I’m primarily known as a Canadian motivational speaker, author and Karate World Champion. I depend on my websites to promote my work out there. Although I’m not a computer techie, I can get around well enough to create my own websites and I’m run several successfully for a number of years. Therefore, I sometimes get questions about websites. So in the spirit of sharing information, here are the criteria that I use to choose a web hosting service for my websites.
Free Services
Yes, there are free website hosting services like Yahoo and Angelcities out there but if you want good looking websites and are serious about websites, I strongly suggest that you do not use the free services. You will be stuck with a long website address since free services do not allow you to use your own domain name. There is a limit of how much file space and transfer you are entitled to so expansion is limited. There is very limited functionality and the worse is the fact that they stick all sorts of advertising on your websites which really spoil the look of your sites. There are really affordable paid website hosting services out there as better alternatives.
Domain Name, Email and Blogs
You want to be able to use your own domain names and have email addresses associated with your websites. And since blogs are so popular, you want complete functionality of your blogs with the web hosting service. Not all services work well with certain blogs.
File Space and Transfer
You don’t want to be restricted in file space on their server if you end up expanding the size of your websites. Adding pages and changing webpages involve file transfer between your computer and the host servers. You don’t want a limitation in how much file transfer you can do.
Behind The Scenes
It’s nice to have some sort of behind the scenes program like cPanel where you have access to your website statistics, logs and can make other modifications to your websites.
Downtime and Service
Most important of all in my mind, are downtime and service. All web hosting services can have downtime but a good one will catch offline websites quickly and get them back up and running within say 30 minutes. I was caught with a previous website hosting service in Montreal where sometimes my websites would be offline for an entire weekend. This is not acceptable!
I’m not a technie so when I need help, I want support right away. You should be able to reach sales and especially technical support easily without being caught to just a voicemail. Even worse with the Montreal company I used before, they didn’t even have tech support open during weekends.
My Recommendation For Web Hosting Service
I currently use a web hosting service called Bluehost and have my websites on them. For a very affordable price under $10 per month, I get unlimited file space and domains. This means I can add as many different websites as I want to a single account without having to pay extra. This is why I have most of my websites and WordPress blogs on Bluehost. I also get unlimited file transfer.
What really sealed the deal for me with Bluehost is that I can get help from technical support by actually speaking to a live person there 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Now that’s great service! So make sure that you check out Bluehost if you are looking for a great web hosting service for your websites.
Thank you..really informative!!