How do you select a hosting company?
We recommend that you engage in a step by step approach that aims to produce a shortlist so you can select a viable web hosting company. Although it sounds easy you need to be aware of the complexities of buying in this marketplace:
- there are lots of similar, viable hosting companies;
- arbitrarily excluding contending companies is not scientific;
- selecting on the basis of seller brand is likely to be emotional;
- it's hard to find out who all of the contenders are who provide website hosting;
- it is difficult to get a recommendation for a hosting company from someone else because they are unlikely to be buying hosting right now, and their needs may be different to yours;
- there are too many factors when selecting between vendors to come to a simple decision.
So, iIf it is hard to make a decision about my hosting company, how do I do it?
The selection of an appropriate business class hosting provider is a mission critical process so we recommend this six step process, each step of which can be broken down into component parts:
- Assess the marketplace and create a long list of vendors;
- Dismiss vendors who don't meet your minimum criteria;
- Make a shortlist of at least three web hosting vendors;
- Get competitive quotes;
- Get re-quotes based on information learned during the quoting process;
- Sign an agreement for minimum acceptable period.
This hosting selection system is a modified version of a general model of the buyer decision process:
- Want recognition;
- Search of information on products that could satisfy your needs;
- Alternative selection;
- Decision-making on buying the hosting product;
- Post-purchase behaviour.
Have a clear head when you select your hosting company
Be aware that biases can affect your decision making processes, calling into question the correctness of your decision of which hosting company to use:
- You may reject some evidence because you are personally biased, and this can have positive and negative benefits. You are likely to be more willing to accept evidence about hosting performance from a source that you like.
- You are likely to place a stronger emphasis on new information that you uncover, discounting older information because it is not so fresh in your mind.
- Uncertainty plays a part in your assessment. This means that you take a more risk averse approach to your selection of host, or you might opt for a shorter contract period.
- Peer pressure tends to affect your thinking.
- Wishful thinking or unrealistic optimism makes you see things in a positive light and this distorts your perception and thinking. So for example, one particular dedicated server hosting vendor might have a brand that you find very compelling, or they might state up front the one biggest concern that you have about selecting a vendor, making them move ahead beyond their natural place in the ranking of hosting vendors.
- Initial information creates a framework that tends to shape your subsequent research.
- You make a personal decision to screen out information that you don't think is relevant to your search.
- If you hear the same message from hosting companies repeatedly you start to believe it, or give it extra credibility.
- Conservatism and inertia mean you may be unwilling to change your thought patterns that you have used in the past to select vendors when new circumstances emerge.
- Your experiences in the past might make you unwilling or unable to consider new hosting alternatives because you reject them as being unfamiliar.
- Make sure you apply the same criteria to all hosting companies you are assessing.
- Selective search for evidence – when you gather evidence of which hosting company to use you need to make sure that you don't just gather evidence of features and service levels that support certain conclusions but disregard other facts that support different conclusions. This means you shouldn't exclude some factors that affect your host selection early on.
- Don't prematurely stop your search for information. This means you need to set a period aside for research, and not come to an early conclusion. Maybe one method to think about is to set a target of researching fifty hosting companies.
Look for the following options from your hosting company:
RAM:
- 512 MB DDR2-553 RAM
- 1024 MB DDR2-400 ECC RAM
Hard Drive:
- 160 GB SATA Hard Drive
- Dual 250 GB SATA RAID1 HDDs
Central Processor Unit:
- Dual XEON 3.06HT Ghz
- AMD Athlon 64 3200
- Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz CPU
- Intel CeleronD 2.8 GHz CPU
- Dual AMD Opteron 246 2.0 Ghz
- AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 3800
- Dual Intel XeonE 2.8 GHz CPUs
- Dual Intel XeonE 3.0 GHz
Data transfer levels:
- 1000 GB Monthly Transfer
- 1500 GB Monthly Transfer
- 2000 GB Monthly Transfer
Firewall:
- (Netscreen) Firewall services (sometimes free with managed services)
IP Addresses:
- 1 2 or 3 Free IP addresses
Other hosting services:
- Unlimited Free Reboots
- 24/7 and 24/7/365 support
- Domain name registratio