How to Select a Reliable Hosting Support Company?
Dec 21, 2012
When budgets are scarce, companies often resort to choosing outsourcing services for their non core operating parameters and at times even their priority operational requirements as well.Outsourced technical support is not a new thing today as thousands of companies employ third party technical support organizations to handle their customer queries. But one major area where outsourced technical support is being surpassed is web hosting business. The reason is that today almost all business enterprises require an online existence if they are to live up to the expectations of their customers in a highly competitive market. Many of them do not have sufficient infrastructure and technical know-how to implement web hosting techniques on their own and hence they look forward to web hosting support from outside companies. But since web hosting is a crucial part of your business, choosing the right hosting support partner is essential to ensure that your valuable information and business data are not misused in any way. Here are some tips to choose the best web hosting support company.
Decide on whether you want a Windows or Linux server. Today Linux is the better option if you are using a PHP website or in short any web language other than Microsoft’s own ASP language enabled websites because they are inexpensive and reliable. Go in for a service provider that has both the options as it would be easy for you to choose depending on the type of website you have or you can have a live demonstration to determine which works well for you.
Go in for a service that offers you a scalable hosting plan that would initially allot you enough storage for all your files and user data if any and at a later stage when traffic and information from your website increases, it should offer sufficient storage space increments as well. Same is the case with bandwidth also as there needs to be a scalable infrastructure to support increased bandwidth requirements in future. The service provider should offer attractive packages that would bill you generously based on used space and bandwidth with options to use either of them even more and affordably.
A major criterion while evaluating a web hosting support service provider or in fact any outsourced technical support service provider is the backup they offer along with the real package. For a website based business it is essential that downtimes are avoided or resolved at the earliest and hence easy recovery from a crash should be facilitated. For that there should be an efficient backup mechanism that can be called into action periodically so that a mirror copy of your most recent settings and data that worked can be restored in the event of a crash.
Reliability and support after sale is also a key factor. Make sure that the service provider has a reliable network connectivity and that they offer excellent after sale services for the packages. You should not be left to defend against any mishaps on your own.
So the above tips should be evaluated before selecting a web hosting support service and if you find a service provider that offers all of the above and even more, then without a doubt that is the one meant for you and you should go for it.