Business owners are always weighing their choices as they grapple to understand just how technology is going to help them increase productivity and their bottom line.
No surprise, but when experts speak, those eager to learn are usually open to good advice, particularly when it comes to choosing a cloud services provider.
An overview posted on INC.com, and written by an experienced tech guru, Darren Dahl, provides a guide to the process: “10 things to Look for in a Web Hosting Service.”
Underlying such decisions is the need for the business owner to experience as much “uptime” as possible from their selected provider. He breaks down the decision-making process by adding these points to consider:
- Support: Look for a service that’s there when you need them: 24/7; the worst thing to happen? “…website to go down, or having an email issue,” said Angela Nielsen, of One Lily, web design.
- Parking Service: “Most companies buy their .com, .net, .org, hyphenated versions of their domain name…It’s most efficient …to have these in one control panel and know that you’re not going to lose…traffic,” says Beatrice Johnson, director of Brand Excitement.
- Backup: ‘Discovery recovery plan:’ find out what your hosting service provides with backup. Says Johnson: “I once mistakenly deleted…a directory for my website…(but) my host…provides) automatic backup every day.” Even backups of backups should be standard procedure.
- Uptime Guarantee: It comes down to “…uptime and redundancy,” says Nielsen. Make sure your hosting service doesn’t have spasms of “…server outages. Look for an uptime of 99 percent or more…”
- Accessibility: You need a service that will allow to make changes to web pages or email accounts. Says Nielsen: “Make sure the host…gives you access to the server so you can easily create new email accounts, makes changes to service settings, etc.”
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