How To Choose Web Hosting
Services
Review Of Bluehost
As a Canadian motivational speaker,
author and Karate World Champion, I
depend on my websites to promote my work out there globally. 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.
Disclosure: I may receive a small compensation from the companies I
endorse but you can be assured that you will never be paying a higher
price if you go through one of the links here. Also I endorse
only products and services I use myself and/or have reviewed.
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