How to choose a good web hosting company for yourself or your client

As freelance web designers, one of the things we often run into is the fact that our clients need help with choosing a web hosting company. Even worse, sometimes we work with clients who are already affiliated with a company that charges way too much without offering some of the more basic tools available.

On that note, I have a friend who owns a hair salon. She pays over $40 a month for her hosting, the use of a site tool and her domain name. Not only is the web site limited in its design, by nature of this particular site tool, but should she choose to move it, there will be several complications. First of all, the hosting company is technically the owner of her domain name and will not easily let it be transferred. Secondly, because the web site is created with the site tool, she will not be able to move it to another hosting company without losing certain functionality.

In those situations where my clients are most definitely not receiving the better end of the deal, my first bit of advice is always… “We need to find you another host.” We can take the information from the web site created with the site building tool and redesign it, but keep the site on a platform that allows the client or designer complete control. In the case of my friend, I can help bring her monthly bill from $40 a month down to about $10 a month, and that includes the cost of registering or renewing a domain name.

When choosing a hosting company for your client, there are several things you need to keep in mind.

Does the hosting company include a control panel with the hosting package?

Most hosting companies out there will include a control panel with the purchase of a website. However, I have run into several situations where a client had a previously existing hosting account, and there was no control panel access. In this situation, I usually encourage my client to move to another hosting company.

Why do you need a control panel?
A control panel allows you to have easy one-click access to certain web site tools. Some of the more helpful tools would be:

With the use of a control panel, you have complete control over the above factors. If your client needs help setting up email accounts or mailing lists, you have the control to do this without having to jump through the hoops of the hosting company’s technical support department. This brings me to my next question.

Does the hosting company have a good technical support department?

When working with designing a website, there are many reasons we might have to contact the technical support department. Do your research and answer the following questions before you choose your hosting company.

Remember that you may not always be the contact person between your client and the web hosting company. As a favor to your client, make sure that they are hosted with a company that will be easy to work with.

Does the hosting company offer fair and competitive packages?

Just because a hosting company brags about cheap web hosting, this does not mean it is qualityweb hosting. They may be seriously limiting the number of email addresses you can add, or giving you a lot of space and just a little bandwidth, or vice versa.

Research and compare hosting packages. Is the package price competitive? What all does it include? Make sure that the package includes a good amount of bandwidth (transfer) and space. How many email accounts do they allow? Do they include mailing lists? Ability to add FTP users? Is there an easy database creation tool? Are there extensions for PHP, CGI, ASP, etc? If not, some of your scripts will not work when uploaded to the server.

Does the hosting company offer the ability to host multiple domains under your account, i.e. host unlimited domains? One of the perks of being able to host unlimited domains is that if you wish to set yourself up as a reseller, you have that option, and then you can create your own packages, host multiple domains and charge your clients a monthly fee. If you do this, just remember the rules of being a good hosting company, because at that point, that’s exactly how you are representing yourself.

Does the hosting company offer a backup service?

Make sure your hosting company offers some sort of backup service. This is very helpful if an unintended change has been made, and there was no manual backup made prior to the change. Within minutes you can have a copy of the file back on the server, and the web site functioning properly again.

Finally? Research, research, research!

We are blessed to be in a day and age where gobs of information is at our fingertips. All we have to do is navigate to Google and run a quick search to find the answers to virtually any question we can imagine. If ever in doubt, Google it! Social media and real-time search has exponentially expanded the type of information that can be recovered from a Google search. It is easier than ever to find user opinions on virtually any topic. So, before you make a choice on which hosting company to present to your client… do the research! Just be careful about which reviews you choose to believe. If a hosting company receives a poor review, and the reviewer is from another hosting company, the information is most likely very biased.

Good luck with finding your hosting company. If you have had any good/bad experiences with any host in particular, please share in your comments with the community. Thanks! @mhillaert

About the Author

I have worked in the hosting industry for over 10 years with my experience ranging from higher level technical support to administration and customer service quality care. More recently, I have also added web site designer and social media consultant to my resume. I love the business of consulting, and even more than that, I love the way it feels when a project is complete and my clients couldn't be happier. As a freelance designer/consultant, I rely on blogs like webdesignersedge.com to help provide me with the information that I would otherwise have a hard time finding.