Choosing a provider to host our website
Main Points to Consider
When choosing a hosting company, you need to consider the following issues:
Cost
The cost of hosting a website can vary wildly. There are generally 3 broad categories into which hosting costs fall - free, budget and professional. See below for further details.
The amount of web space on offer
You will also need to consider the amount of web space offered by a potential host. It will usually range from 5Mb to over 100Mb. 5Mb should be enough if your website is a very basic one, although you should always consider the possibility of expanding it in the future.
Domain Names
Your hosting company will be able to offer you a unique domain name for your website, e.g. www.ICTpoint.ie. They will also be able to supply you with unique email addresses, e.g. info@ICTpoint.ie Hosts may well offer these services for free or for a small additional cost. Note however that you may be charged a fee for moving your unique domain name to a different web hosting company in the future.
Technical support
You should always be clear about the level of technical support being offered by a web hosting company. For instance, free or budget host companies will often only provide technical support by email. Again, if your website is a fairly basic one, without too many graphics or add-ons, then you may find this suitable. It might be a good idea however to enquire about the timescale within which you could expect to receive a reply to your technical support requests.{mospagebreak}
Email and web forwarding
If your website is already designed and you are hosting it using the free web space provided by your ISP, you will also be able to have your domain name and emails redirected to your free web space. When choosing a hosting company, you should ensure that they offer this service without any additional charge.
POP 3 email
You will find that most hosting companies will offer "POP3" email accounts with your web space. POP3 email accounts allow a separate user name and password for an individual mailbox at your domain, e.g. info@ICTpoint.ie or joesoap@ICTpoint.ie etc. Emails can then be distributed to each staff member's computer on your organisation's server or staff can use their individual user name and password to access their mail. The more POP3 accounts that a hosting company offers, the more individual mailboxes you will be able to have.
Bandwidth
Ensuring that your website has sufficient bandwidth is crucial to running a successful website. Every time someone visits your website they are actually downloading files, such as web pages and graphics. The more visitors your site receives, the more bandwidth you will be using. Professional hosting companies typically offer between 1-3Gb of monthly bandwidth. A small website, with perhaps a few dozen visitor a day, could expect to use around 150-200MB of bandwidth per a month. Keep in mind that exceeding your monthly bandwidth could well lead to your hosting company simply switching off access to your website without prior notice. Thus, it is worth building a "bandwidth buffer" into your package, to allow for unexpected increases in bandwidth usage in the future.
Support for extra features
You will need to ensure that a potential web hosting company supports any databases, or scripting/programming languages or application extensions that your website might be using.{mospagebreak}
Online management
You will want to check whether your web hosting company facilitates online management. This will allow you to access and update your domain name, web and email options and other features.
Security
If you expect your website to engage in any sort of commercial activity, you should always use a "secure server". This will ensure the security of your website for the purpose of protecting the personal information of visitors to your website. Providing your visitors with a "secure server" will make them more confident when it comes to making donations etc. You should check with potential web hosting companies about this key service.
Service Level Agreements
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) refer to things like speed of service, technical support response times, backup arrangements, server availability, and compensation levels (should the host fail to deliver the service for which you paid). You should also keep in mind that, whatever backup arrangements you agree with your hosting company, you should always attempt to make your own regular backups of your website. This would be particularly crucial if, for example, the web hosting company were to suddenly go out of business.{mospagebreak}
Free Hosting
There is no shortage of web hosting companies that free web space only (i.e. they do not provide the Internet connection). Whilst you will save money on the cost of web space, it should be noted that the terms and conditions offered by these hosts can often prove restrictive. For example, free web hosting companies might insist on placing large banner advertisements on your website. They might also impose a very long website address on your site, e.g. www.yoursite.yoursitenameistoolong.com. It is quite likely that your free web hosting company will not provide any backup service for our website at all, leaving it vulnerable to loss of data. Free web hosting company servers can also be slow or unavailable and communicating with these companies can prove time-consuming and frustrating.
On the positive side however, choosing the free web space option may be suitable for small organisations which just want to maintain a basic Internet presence. You could also register a domain name and arrange email and web forwarding to your free web space. The option to upgrade to a budget or professional web hosting company in the future always exists.
Budget hosting
For organisations working within a set budget but want a more options than the free hosting companies can provide, a budget host may be ideal. Budget web hosting charges range from around €20 to €100 per a year. For this price your hosting company should support such facilities as databases, scripts and FrontPage Extensions. Some may even provide service level agreements though provision for any of these features is less likely as this pricing level.
Professional hosting
Professional hosting packages typically come in two types - shared server and dedicated server.
The shared server option means that your website will share a server with other websites. This can be an attractive option for organisations that require a high level of functionality and technical support for their website but don't require their website to have its own server. Shared server packages start from as little as €100 per a year.
Certain restrictions will inevitably apply under this package. For example, while all websites on a shared server will have access to standard scripts - for such things as message boards and hit counters - it is unlikely that you will have access to advanced or customised scripts. Restrictions on the amount of bandwidth your website can use and what sort of commercial activities can be carried out on it may also apply.
If your website is critical to your organisation and you want to ensure it is constantly available online, you should consider the dedicated server option. This is particularly the case if your website receives a large amount of visitors (resulting in 10 GB or more of bandwidth a month). Dedicated server hosting packages can prove more expensive, starting from about €1000 a year. For this price you can expect your server to be tailored to your specific needs. Other benefits of the dedicated server option are that your website server will be administered by skilled staff and should include a service level agreement and full technical support. With this option you will have full control over your website so keep in mind that someone within your organisation will have to be capable of managing the site.{mospagebreak}
What's the best package for you?
Before making your hosting decision, you should use the following checklist:
- Map out precisely what you are looking for and decide whether your chosen hosting company can facilitate these needs
- Check out websites similar to your own and try to get recommendations from them
- Study your chosen hosting company's terms and conditions closely
- Beware of the following:
- Treat "special offers" with suspicion, especially those promising such things as unlimited bandwidth or cut-price web space
- Penalty fees for exceeding your bandwidth
- Companies that don't publish their contact details (street address, phone number etc) on their website
- Companies that fail to respond in a reasonable timeframe to email enquiries
