Top 6 Dedicated Web Hosting Considerations by www.thehostingnews.com

Top 6 Dedicated Web Hosting Considerations

September 5th, 2009 By: Hosting News

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If you are in the market to buy dedicated hosting consider the following six points to help you make the right decision -

1.Â Data Center Matters. One of the most important aspects ofÂ dedicated hosting is the datacenter where your server is located and the kind of facilities which are offered there including power backup, disaster management and hardware repair and replacement policies.

A lot of times the hosting companies offer a choice of location in multiple data centers and let you choose the one you want your server located in. If such a choice is available, it is usually a good idea to investigate the facilities to choose the best datacenter even if it costs a bit more to save on the long-term hassles.

2.Â Who Manages the Server? Look into the contract and find out what all services will be offered by the hosting company when you buy dedicated hosting from them. Apart from managing the hardware aspect ofÂ dedicated server hosting, the hosting companies usually also take care of operating system upgrades and the security upgrades.

Find out what are the additional costs that you may have to incur if your server suffers from a DDOS attack. Some companies charge a fair bit of money for supporting your server when a DDOS attack occurs if it is on a per-incident basis. So, it may be worth it to check if the hosting company offers any package deal which includes DDOS attacks too.

Certain budget hosting companies charge you for every support incident you request after a certain number of support contacts. So it is usually a good idea to look into what all you will be charged for when you are deciding on a hosting provider to calculate what it will cost you in reality, after considering all the additional costs, to run the server with that particular company.

3.Â What Support Options are Available to you? Look into the channels though which the company will offer you support. Email and support-ticket based support is the de-facto standard when it comes to providing customer support. However, it is usually more comforting to have phone and live chat support options available considering that company is managing your web server which is, without any question, the most critical aspect of your online business.

Also find out if the company offers you a way to directly contact the network operations team in case of an emergency. You certainly don’t want to wait for the 9-5 support staff to report a critical downtime during the middle of the night. If the company has proper infrastructure in place, they should have no issues making this contact information readily available to you.

4.Â Additional Fees and Licenses. Apart from the support fees I mentioned above, try to find out what other costs you will have to incur for additional services/resources and licenses. How much will it cost you if you use more bandwidth than your allocated usage? How much will it cost you if you ever want your hardware upgraded or replaced?

Apart from services, certain commercial software comes with additional licensing costs. This particularly applies to Microsoft platform operating systems, commercial database software and control panel software. Find out if such costs are already included in the advertised prices or if you would have to pay a monthly price or a setup price to have such software on your server.

Also remember that the license and service prices being quoted to you also include the hosting company’s markup so that makes it a possibility to bargain prices with the hosting company. It usually doesn’t hurt to tell them the prices their competitors are offering and if that is the best price they can offer you for what you are buying.

5.Â Keep an eye out for deals. Apart from asking for the best price for your configuration, it doesn’t hurt to search the internet to find out if the hosting company is offering any coupons or special deals. A lot of companies usually come up with special offers or coupons and post information about them at various webhosting discussion forums and coupons websites. As the old saying goes, a penny saved is penny earned.Ã‚

6.Â Research Company’s History. A simple Google search will reveal a lot of information about the company you are planning to buy hosting from including the incidents and failures the company has had in past and, how they have managed them. You will also be able to find out what the customers of the company are saying about the hosting company.

You should always try and research information about the company from more neutral sources like web hosting review websites, hosting discussion forums, and customer blogs rather than the company’s official about-us and investor relations pages.

One final thing that you need to remember is to take time to research about the company before getting into a contract. Your server is the most important aspect of your web-presence, so the time invested in making the right decision is totally worth it.

Since 1996, Superb Internet has been consistently rated as one of the very best web hosts by all web host rating agencies, such as Web Hosting Magazine, in all areas, especially customer support and reseller services. Superb Internet provides a complete range of managed web hosting solutions, from virtual shared web hosting through to high-volume, mission-critical dedicated server solutions. SuperbHosting.net’s core focus is customer service, and continuous service improvement, with offices and 24-hour/365-day operations in McLean, VA, Tukwila, WA, and Vancouver, BC, serving customers in over 150 countries worldwide.

View further information onÂ Dedicated Servers here.