How to choose best hosting provider

Hosting of business solutions requires maximum stability and reliability. Once you signup for some company’s services, you always expect ultimate connectivity, quick and friendly support and fixed reasonable pricing. Some of those expectations, however, may be ruined overnight by actions of unprofessional administrators or a serious issue, which may cause downtime, loss of traffic, clients and therefore money.
Though no one is safe from human factor or act of elements, you should always study as much information as possible about your potential host. This is going to help you think all pros and cons over and choose the most optimal provider with minimal risks. The consumer tips below will hopefully help you make the right choice:
- Search for the Direct Service Provider;
- Are You Going to be Supported 24/7?;
- Local Provider - preferred;
- Does Your Provider Have In-House Data Center Staff?;
- Make Sure Your Provider Offers Uptime and SLA Guarantees (Service Level Agreements);
- Pricing Peculiarities - make sure there are no hidden fees;
- Company Age - better to be more experienced and stable;
- Check the Reviews;
- Check the Social Media Activity - of the company

You know when you steal content from someone else it's only polite to give them credit rather than make yourself look like you're the professional that thought of it first.

Well, since that's all out of the way, I do have a few things to say about some of these points.


I can only guess that you mean it's better to look for someone who owns a data center than a reseller. Which is fine, if you're looking for a place to park at least a few dozen servers. Most people aren't going to be able to bring enough business to make it worth the data center owners time to talk to them, let alone host them though.

All of the time you waste looking for something you're not likely going to be able to afford anyways, would be better spent building your business to a point where it can afford it.


The only way you're going to get support at all hours of the night, is if you're getting it from someone half-way around the world, or someone who sits in a call center at 2AM because they have nothing better to do and chances are they care more about staying on the phone with you for as long as possible so they don't have to find something to keep themselves occupied than they are going to be with helping you.

Seriously, how many times have you contacted one of these "24/7 support" lines and NOT immediately wanted to shoot yourself when you realized you're talking to outsourced support?


"local" makes me think I should be looking for a provider in Clearwater Florida, since that's where I live. However, I'm better off having my provider where it is, Texas, because I get visitors mostly from the United States and they are spread pretty evenly around the US.

"Regional provider" might be a better choice of words. Terms you may want to read about are "Internet Exchange Points" and "Network Hubs".


"Honors" would be a better choice of words than "Offers". Everyone and their uncle "offers" these guarantees, but some of the ones who offer them would rather bankrupt the company and keep everyones money, only to start a new company and do the whole thing over again, than honor these guarantees.


Everyone wants to cry hidden fees this, hidden fees that. What the hell is a "hidden fee"?
A hidden fee is typically when a service provider charges you for something that most people would consider to be included in the advertised price.

For instance, if 99% of the service providers are charging a $$$ "setup fee", a service provider with a hidden fee may advertise "no setup fee!!!" to make their offer look more attractive than the rest of the competition, but what they don't advertise, is that in order to cover the cost of setup they started charging 500% of the going rate for bandwidth overages and count every single bit of bandwidth so that people get these overage charges more often.


5 years under the same management is a good starting point.


It used to be good advice and something people would often think to do naturally, but these days most of the reviews you see are provided by "viral marketers" and people who are getting a commission if you sign up through their review.

If you're going to look at reviews, scope the providers site out first and make sure they don't have an easy to join "affiliate program". You're much more likely to get honest reviews for companies without affiliate programs. Even this isn't fool proof though, you still have to look out for "sock puppets", which are companies who send their employees out to pretend they're customers and look for critical reviews and try to discredit the original reviewer. On the other side, you have competitors who will try and poison their competition by going around making critical reviews.

So basically, like I said to begin with, do the exact oppisite, ignore reviews. They're only going to give you a headache. If you want the opinion of others, ask around in your own close circle of friends and see who they use.


This is even worse than looking for reviews. You can't even trust the wall posts of your own friends on Facebook these days because companies setup scripts that post things to users walls without them knowing.

Reviews help much in choosing the company.

tan_go, did you read what Joebert wrote at all? You might want to, because he's correct and you are not. Reviews do not help at all, for the specific reasons Joebert stated. I'll echo what he said. Ignore reviews. They are worthless.

i would appreciate if any1 can tell me what is a good hosting option for dot net website

You probably missed it. It's in the first post in this forum.
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