Choosing a Web Hosting Partner

Unless you're planning to purchase your own servers (an expensive proposition when hardware, software, and personnel are taken into account), you will need a Web-hosting service to take your company online. Experts say the cost of that service should be included as part of your development costs for an overall information system.

So much for the easy part. Going about choosing a Web-hosting service gets a little more complicated. Price is important, of course, but it shouldn't be your only consideration. Companies that offer Web hosting extremely cheaply-or for free-have to be offsetting their costs in some way, whether by skimping on customer service, technical support, maintaining consistently operational servers, or relying on heavy banner advertising that will slow down your site's loading time.

Experts recommend that you comparison shop: Get quotes on monthly fees and ask how much space those fees will buy. "If you have any kind of streaming media [video or music], expect to pay a higher premium. If the site is unusually large, the fee will also be higher," says Valerie Shavers, the creative director of Studio 8, a Los Angeles Web-site design firm.

The going rates for Web-hosting services range from $20 - $50 a month, with one-time setup fees between $25 - $75, says Bernadette Williams, a Beverly Hills (Calif.) Internet strategist and president of i-strategy.com. Her checklist of features that should be offered by good Web-hosting services are:

• Use of your registered domain name as your Web-site address. "This is typically not available with free Web space," Williams says
• "POP" accounts, which allow your e-mail addresses to use your domain name, as in: yourname@yourcompany.com
• Access to 24-hour technical support, preferably by telephone as well as online
• At least 98% "up-time," meaning that the server will not go offline, rendering the Web site inaccessible, more than 2% of the time
• Unlimited site traffic
• Access to CGI scripts, which allow you to process online response forms
• A secure server, so you can accept credit-card orders on your site
• Regular detailed statistics (in raw data form or by report) that tell you what your page views are, where your visitors are coming from, how long they're staying, and other valuable information

In case a disaster wipes out the data in one location for a period of time, Jeanne Schaaf, a senior analyst in Forrester Research's telecom division, advises that you choose a service that has multiple geographic locations to provide redundancy. She also advises looking for a service that can scale your site up or down to accommodate seasonal peaks and dips in business. "If you're a brand-new e-tailer and your site takes off at holiday time, will your host scale it up rapidly, if that's what is required?" she asks. Pick a service that offers a sophisticated platform for e-commerce or systems networks, and a vision for what will be available online in the future, she adds.

Getting a clear picture of what your Web-hosting service will provide, and exactly how much it will cost, is essential. "There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in this industry, and small businesses are not the only ones who find it very confusing. Big companies are confused, too," Schaaf says. When you talk to a Web-hosting representative, he or she should thoroughly articulate what the company is going to do for you, not throw around vague tech terms that obfuscate the issue.

ONLINE RESOURCES. For instance, a service contract may include Web-site monitoring, but you need to define what "monitoring" really means. Will they be monitoring the site's performance from the inside only, or will they be doing the more valuable service of monitoring your end-users' experience? If they say they're going to offer you "reporting," does that mean they will give you real-time statistics about traffic on your site, or will you have to pay for copies of the data once in a while?

Too often, entrepreneurs hire well-known Web-hosting companies for their name value and eventually find quality and thoughtfulness are lacking, Schaaf says. "Look for a company that specializes in your vertical [market] or has partnerships with systems integrators or application-service providers who do," she says. "Get references for other businesses like yours that are current clients and give them a call to find out what kind of experience they have had with this company."

Where do you start looking for Web-hosting services? Always get referrals from colleagues with firsthand experience, then check out some bookmarked sites that list Web hosts, including www.TheList.com, www.HostIndex.com, CNet.com's Web Services List at www.FindAHost.com (U.S. referrals only).

How to pick the right Web host

Where do you start? If you begin by checking the listings and ads, you'll see services with monthly fees ranging from $3.95 - $395. Some hosting companies offer to host your site for free, but you'll have to let them slap ads on your page. Are the high prices a rip-off? Are the low prices a scam? If you're going to navigate the maze of Web hosting, you need to know the answers to all of these questions. We tackle the most important ones:

1. What kind site do you have-or want?
   Would you buy a Lear Jet to run to the supermarket twice a week? Of course not. Before you hand over your credit card to a hosting service, take a long, hard look at the content you intend to post online. We've drawn up some typical Web site types so that you can match your site to a hosting profile that fits. (Note: The price ranges listed here are purely estimates. Pricing in this area is a moving target and isn't a reliable indicator of service quality.)
2. The basic site
   You want a good-looking site, but you don't want it to be expensive or time-consuming to maintain. Your site isn't exactly a bandwidth-busting hub; it falls somewhere between 2 and 20 pages. There's no shortage of low-rent hosting options that provide 20 - 50MB or more of server space for such a Web site, along with some e-mailboxes, to boot. If you shop around, you can find these basic hosting features for less than 10 bucks a month. Keep in mind, however, that you may not get phone support or top-notch Web site speed for such a low price.
3. Small-business or hobby site
   Your company, athletic association, nonprofit organization, or Drew Barrymore fan page consists of a few HTML pages that you update fairly often. It's serious stuff, but it doesn't require much hosting space-just a few CGI scripts, some FrontPage extensions, and maybe some password-protected folders. In general, this class of hosting costs somewhere between $13 - $25 per month. (If you add Active Server Pages and want server-based traffic-analysis tools somewhere down the road, you may rack up some additional charges.)
4. Online store
   Once you add a shopping cart to your site, you'll need much more than a basic host. Online stores require inventory databases, a reliable way to fulfill orders, and a tool to process credit cards. And because you're asking your visitors to put money on the line, it's imperative that you provide quick, around-the-clock technical support. These features don't come cheap. Expect to pay as much for a merchant account as you would for a phone line or cable TV service-say, around $40 - $90.
5. Bandwidth-busting media hub
   You want to share big-bandwidth items online, such as downloadable programs or MP3 files, and perhaps some streaming RealAudio or video files, too. You'll need a lot of storage space and bandwidth, and you might consider renting your own dedicated server. (Tip: If you share a server with five other domains that can't get visitors because yours is hogging the whole data pipe, you'll become unpopular really quickly.) For these capabilities, prepare to dish out hundreds of dollars per month.
6. Corporate nerve center
   You need a mission-critical Web site on which your customers, clients, and suppliers can rely. If your mail or Web server is down for a couple of minutes, you'll hear about it. Company e-mail is crucial. You're a prime candidate for dedicated or managed hosting (the host runs your site on your own servers at the host's facility). Or, if you know how to maintain a server, you may prefer a colocation scheme, in which you acquire and maintain the server hardware at your site, while the hosting company takes care of setting up network access. Generally, if you can configure and maintain a network, go with colocation: you'll get a better server for the money. Either way, you will pay a hefty premium for the service.
7. What should you look for in a host?
   Most hosting companies provide a range of services, starting with low-budget packages and moving up to more advanced, expensive features, such as secure servers, and on to managed hosting. Obviously, when you pick a hosting plan, you need to make sure it provides enough disk space for your site at a price that's within your budget. But what else should you watch for? At the very least, consider the following points.
8. Usage limitations
   Most hosting plans limit how much data you can transfer to and from their servers in a given month. Once you reach 500MB or 1GB of data transfer, most companies charge you by the megabyte for any additional traffic. How many megabytes (or gigabytes) do you need? That depends. Even fairly busy sites that average more than a hundred visitors a day transfer less than 200MB a month. (One graphics-light site we clocked had 5,000 visitors viewing a total of 15,000 pages a month, yet it used only 166MB of its monthly allotment.) However, if half of your visitors also download a medium-quality, three-minute MP3 file or a short video clip, your site will soon break the gigabyte barrier. If you have some idea of your anticipated traffic, pick a plan accordingly. If not, estimate and watch your usage like a hawk for the first few months.
9. Script and extension support
   If your Web site uses or will soon use SQL databases, CGI scripts, or FrontPage 2000 extensions (not just basic FrontPage HTML generation), you'll need a hosting plan that supports these extras-likewise with PHP and Active Server Pages. These sorts of higher-end development tools don't usually come standard.
10. File-transfer options
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    You'll need to upload your site from your local machine to the server it lives on, and you may want people to be able to download files directly from your site. Look for a host that offers unlimited password-protected FTP uploads to get your site online. If you prefer using FrontPage or a Web interface for uploading files, make sure your service provider supports it. If you intend to broadcast streaming media from your site (say, if you want visitors to be able to watch a video from your company's most recent press conference), make sure you know from the get-go that your hosting plan will allow for it.
11. Mail options
    How much e-mail will you need for your domain? Estimate the number of mailboxes you'll want. For example, you might pick one for each employee and add some for functions such as sales, info, complaints, and feedback. Take into account how you want to receive that e-mail. If you want to be able to use your favorite e-mail software, such as Microsoft Outlook, you'll want full POP3 access. However, look into Web-based e-mail if you want to be able to check your messages from any computer when you're on the road, at a library, or at home or work. Also, look into e-mail-forwarding options so that you can relay messages to an established e-mailbox. Make sure that you can send mail from that box and that the box size and allowable individual message size are sufficient. Many hosts limit message sizes to less than 2MB, which may not be large enough for some messages, especially HTML or image-heavy newsletters.
12. Site statistics
    You may not think much about hit rates and browser versions and types now, but once you get the site off the ground, you might want site statistic tools so that you can evaluate traffic and plan future site development. If you know which pages on your site are the most popular, you'll know by default what's most important to your visitors. If you know which browsers visitors use, you'll make sure your pages look good in those browsers. Most importantly, you'll want to know how your visitors got to your site in the first place. Hosts that offer analytical tools for reporting on traffic are keepers, and if you're serious about keeping tabs on your numbers, look for access to raw server logs so that you can run all sorts of numbers using your own statistical software.
13. How do you narrow down your hosting options?
    By now, you probably know what you're looking for in a Web host. Make a shortlist of your needs and start combing directories of Web hosting companies to determine which hosts offer what kind of package deals. First, start by browsing CNET's list of basic hosts, then try other lists such as the Web Host Directory, TopHosts, WebHosters.com, and the Web Hosts List. Each of these directories has hundreds of hosting companies and their hosting plans. Shorten the list by first picking the type of hosting that suits you best (basic, shared, e-commerce, dedicated, and so on). Next, look for plans that satisfy both your budget and basic requirements. Then, it's time to ask the big questions.
14. How's the tech support?
    Check out the host's service policy at its site, but remember: support packages aren't always as good as they sound.
15. Are other customers happy?
    The best insight you'll get into your prospective Web host is unedited customer feedback. Do the hosts on your shortlist host their own online forums? Check out those forums or search other online discussions, such as WebHostingTalk or Usenet newsgroups at Google Groups. Many gripes may come from customers who are biased or more demanding than you are, so read the reactions to any complaints as closely as the original remarks themselves.
16. Is the service reliable?
    Again, you can't judge a host by its feature list. Check out online forums for comments about a host's performance. If a host lists any customers with sites that are similar to yours, check them out at key times of day to see how quickly they load or whether they seem sluggish or unresponsive. To be more scientific, test those sites using the free NetMechanic monitoring service. If you can't find any pages to test before you register, test your own site after you've signed up and make sure you can back out of the deal if the results are unfavorable.
17. If I back out, will it cost me?
    Before you sign up, find out if you can get out of your hosting contract should the deal go sour. Opt to pay month to month, even if your host offers discounts for year-in-advance payments. Look for plans with free setup, too, so that you can test your site before your payments start rolling in. Most important, register your own domain instead of having your host register it for you. If you administer your own domain, it's easy to switch hosts: just visit your registrar and enter new names for your servers. If your host administers your domain, it has little incentive to play along and may actually charge you for any domain-related transactions.
18. Will my host be around in a year's time?
    In theory, a big, publicly traded hosting company is less likely to go belly-up and take your Web site with it. But, think Enron: a highly leveraged, big corporation may be on even shakier ground than a small, low-rent reseller. Don't drive yourself nuts trying to predict disaster. Instead, just keep your shortlist on hand.